Draft Derivatives Laws Issued For The Canadian Cooperative System Harmonize Divergent Provincial Approaches

Draft derivatives regulations and a revised draft of the uniform Capital Markets Act (CMA) were issued in August 2015 as part of the process to implement the new Cooperative Capital Market Regulatory System (Cooperative System). The governments of Ontario, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island and the Yukon (Participating Jurisdictions) intend to participate in the Cooperative System and to adopt the CMA and these proposed regulations. The introduction of the Cooperative System will fundamentally overhaul the Canadian securities and derivatives regulatory landscape.

We discussed the derivatives laws that were set out in the initial September 2014 draft of the CMA in our November 2014 Blakes Bulletin: Regulation of Derivatives Trading Under the Proposed Canadian Cooperative Capital Markets Regulatory System. A number of minor changes have been made to the treatment of derivatives in the revised CMA and initial drafts of regulations to