"Now is the time for those who care about these issues, and understand how pivotal they are to our place in global markets, to speak up. Now is the time for businesses to measure the effect of the changes that are imminent and make clear what those changes will do to their businesses."
Today at a speech in Winnipeg to the Canadian Club, Ms. Stymiest discussed the competitive pressures facing the Canadian capital markets. She said having 13 voices instead of one, describing the complex regulatory hurdles faced by issuers across Canada weakens Canada.
"While we are a vast country in physical terms, we are small in terms of the world's capital markets," said Ms. Stymiest. "American markets have 56 percent of the world's market capitalization. We have just two percent." Regulatory fragmentation, she claims, needs to be addressed and we must determine how we balance local needs and national priorities.
A week ago, a white paper on securities regulation in Canada, which is the follow-up to last spring's national symposium, concluded that Canada faces a diminished role in global capital markets unless a more effective securities regulatory structure is identified and implemented. The paper, by Douglas Harris of the Capital Markets Institute (CMI) at the University of Toronto, analyzed current proposals for reform in an attempt to determine their strengths and weaknesses.
While in Manitoba, Ms. Stymiest also took time to meet with local issuers, the government and institutional investors. 43 Manitoba companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the TSX Venture Exchange and they have a combined market capitalization of $27 billion. In fact, Winnipeg-based companies represent 27 percent of the financial services companies listed on the TSX.
Copies of Ms. Stymiest's remarks and the White Paper on Securities Regulation are available on tsx.ca.
TSX are the initials attached to the core operations of the TSX Group: Toronto Stock Exchange, TSX Venture Exchange, TSX Markets and TSX Datalinx. TSX Group operates Canada's two national stock exchanges serving the senior equity and public venture equity markets. TSX Group is headquartered in Toronto and maintains offices in Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver.
