Ontario commits to join Canada’s securities passport after nearly two decades outside
The passport system lets companies obtain prospectus receipts, exemptions, and registrations across multiple jurisdictions through a single principal regulator, Norton Rose Fulbright noted.
All other provinces and territories adopted it when Multilateral Instrument 11-102 took effect in March 2008, McCarthy Tétrault said.
Ontario, home to Canada’s largest capital market, stayed outside: where another jurisdiction acts as principal regulator, prospectus filings and many registration and exemptive relief applications must currently clear both that regulator and the Ontario Securities Commission.
For a company based outside Ontario, clearing its home regulator has never been enough on its own, wrote J. Ari Pandes, a finance professor at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, in a Calgary Herald opinion piece.
To raise money from Ontario investors, such a company also faced a second review, added fees, and delay at the OSC, even though other provinces already accepted Ontario’s approvals, Pandes said.
