Who Is the Canadian Investor?

• Author: Anita Indira Anand
• Pages: 12-25

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Who Is the Canadian Investor?

One of the main ideas in this book is that investor welfare matters.

This simple fact is the driving force behind this examination of the

capital markets and the basis for the reforms proposed here. Investor

welfare is at the heart of every securities regulator’s mandate, and it

should play a much greater role than it does in education and public

discussion. Why? Because our economy functions to a large extent

because investors are willing to place their money in the capital mar-

kets. It is therefore important that one question is answered before

this book goes any further: Who is this Canadian investor?

What Is an Investor?

One way to dene investors is to describe them as “nancial con-

sumers.” One could think of it this way: in order to meet our needs

in the modern world, we become consumers of many dierent types

of products — we buy food to eat, clothes to wear, and transporta-

tion to get from one place to another. We have nancial needs, and

to meet these needs, we oen become consumers of nancial prod-

ucts: people might take out student loans to get an education with

money they haven’t yet earned; get a mortgage in order to spread

out the cost of buying a house; or invest in a retirement savings

plan so that they will have something le over aer they stop work-

ing. Of course, many people see the capital markets as a means not

just of meeting nancial needs as they arise, but of signicantly