Making the Canadian Securities Administrators Passport System Effective  

From: Harvey Naglie 

To: Capital Markets Observers 

Date: July 27, 2026 

Re: Making the Canadian Securities Administrators Passport System Effective  

A securities issuing firm operating nationally today answers to as many as 13 provincial and territorial regulators, each with its own filings and decisions. 

Ontario’s new commitment to join the Canadian Securities Administrator’s passport system closes the largest remaining gap. Once implemented, every province and territory will have accepted that a participant should deal principally with one regulator and reach the whole country. 

That is important, and overdue. The holdout added a provincial process to national rules Ontario already followed – a drag on the cost of raising capital in its largest market, and at odds with the capital-formation mandate Ontario itself gave the Ontario Securities Commission in 2021. Joining removes that friction. It is not, by itself, enough. 

A passport streamlines decisions such as prospectus receipts, registration and exemptive relief. It does not create one securities act, one regulator, one fee schedule or one accountable decision-maker. The Canadian Securities Administrators is an informal council of the provincial and territorial regulators: No independent statutory authority, decisions by consensus, instruments that bind only where each jurisdiction adopts them – as Ontario’s long refusal to adopt the passport demonstrates. Yet with full participation it could become the functional core of a national system, delivering most of a national regulator’s benefits without a federal statute. 

Ontario’s commitment changes what is possible. The country need not spend another decade arguing about a “national regulator” – that project ground to a halt in 2021. The work now is to build the functional equivalent. 

The first step is to make the commitment concrete. Participating governments and regulators should publish an implementation agreement with a firm timetable, identify every decision and filing to be brought within passport, and end the Ontario “interface” procedures requiring the OSC to opt in separately. A commitment without dates, scope and deliverables becomes another harmonization announcement whose promise never reaches the market. 

Second, the CSA should modernize its governance and resource its centre. Consensus is defensible for fundamental legislative changes, but a poor rule for project management, technology standards and routine administration. 

The terms of reference should permit supermajority decisions on operational matters – with a public opt-out on policy administration, but binding agreements on shared infrastructure. That preserves provincial authority without giving every member an invisible veto. The centre also needs a stable multi-year budget and permanent national teams, so national policy is developed once, not recreated across provincial committees. 

Third, the principal-regulator model should reach across the full supervisory lifecycle. The passport already lets a firm deal with one principal regulator for prospectuses, registration and exemptive relief; it does not carry that logic into ongoing oversight. Each issuer and registrant operating nationally should have one lead regulator for examinations, continuous-disclosure review and conduct supervision, others relying on its work unless a clear local risk warrants intervention. Extending it to Ontario, and from one-time decisions to the whole lifecycle, would cut duplicate reviews and keep conduct problems from falling between jurisdictions. 

Fourth, Canada needs a more common rulebook and fee experience. Legislatures can enact harmonized provisions, incorporate national instruments by reference where permissible, and set common effective dates. Participants should get one consolidated invoice through the national filing systems, revenues allocated behind the scenes. Thirteen legal authorities need not produce 13 administrative experiences. 

Fifth, the CSA should treat data, supervision and enforcement as national functions even where proceedings remain provincial. SEDAR+, the National Registration Database and the insider-reporting system already provide shared infrastructure, and the CSA’s 2025–2028 Business Plan commits to stronger data management and enforcement technology. Those should become a common data layer, shared risk-scoring, coordinated case allocation and public reporting. The question should be which regulator is best placed to act, not where a file first landed. 

Finally, national efficiency must not become a euphemism for weaker investor protection. Earlier proposals for a single regulator treated investor representation, complaint resolution and restitution as secondary. The CSA has begun to move, proposing in 2025 an independent dispute-resolution service with binding authority – though British Columbia is pursuing its own legislation and Quebec keeps a separate regime. That should be consolidated into a national floor for investor rights, a stronger independent investor voice, and consistent access to redress regardless of province. 

Ontario’s decision ends an argument, not the reform. In 2021, I argued that Ontario should join the passport only within a broader renewal to streamline decisions and modernize regulation. The first half is now accepted; the second must not be forgotten. 

Canada may never get one securities commission or one statute, and the courts have closed the door on a federal regulator. But the CSA route was never a constitutional question: The Supreme Court settled that years ago, and provinces have always been free to build this together. It can still create one regulatory experience – and with it a lower cost of capital and more competitive markets for issuers and investors. Whether regulators and governments now turn cooperation from consultation into collective execution is up to them. 

Harvey Naglie is a financial services policy analyst and a former senior policy advisor with the Ontario Ministry of Finance. 

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The views expressed here are those of the author. The C.D. Howe Institute does not take corporate positions on policy matters.