The Ontario Securities Commission (“OSC”) recently published its proposed Statement of Priorities for 2024-2025 (the “Statement”), outlining the initiatives on which the OSC intends to focus its resources and actions over the next fiscal year.

The Statement supports the OSC’s commitment to be effective and accountable in delivering on its mandate to: protect investors from unfair, improper or fraudulent practices; foster fair, efficient and competitive capital markets and confidence in the capital markets; foster capital formation; and contribute to the stability of the financial system and the reduction of systemic risk.

Key Initiatives

To this end, the OSC has identified multiple priority initiatives, which include:

• publishing and implementing a new six-year OSC Strategic Plan;
• advancing work on environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) disclosures for reporting issuers; the OSC notes that an updated staff notice on ESG-related investment fund disclosure is expected to be published by March 2024 and the Canadian Securities Administrators continue to develop a revised climate-related disclosure rule for reporting issuers that are not investment funds;
• considering comments received in response to proposed amendments to corporate governance disclosure requirements published in April 2023 and whether to require disclosure on aspects of diversity beyond the representation of women;
• assessing the implementation of the Client Focused Reforms as well as the impact of registrants’ approaches to shelf formulation and decisions to rely on predominantly proprietary products;
• advancing initiatives to strengthen the short selling framework;
• considering whether to allow order-execution only firms to provide non-tailored advice to do-it-yourself investors;
• advancing cooperation and collaboration with Indigenous peoples by developing an OSC action plan for truth and reconciliation;
• enhancing information sharing with the Canadian Public Accountability Board;
• conducting initiatives for retail investors through specific education, policy, research and behavioural science activities;
• strengthening the dispute resolution framework of the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (“OBSI”) and modernizing the OSC’s disgorgement framework; actions will include developing a framework that provides an independent dispute resolution service, such as OBSI, with the authority to make binding compensation decisions and publishing a proposed rule that would govern the distribution of disgorged amounts collected by the OSC;
• strengthening oversight and enforcement in the crypto asset sector; actions will include applying regulatory obligations to crypto firms that provided a pre-registration undertaking, coordinating with the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization to facilitate crypto firms becoming members and continuing to develop a regulatory framework for value-referenced crypto assets;
• modernizing delivery options for regulatory and continuous disclosure filings for issuers by developing final amendments to implement an access model for certain continuous disclosure documents for corporate finance reporting issuers as well as a proposed access model for investment funds’ continuous disclosure filings;
• facilitating financial innovation;
• furthering initiatives that promote capital formation and foster competition; actions will include monitoring the use of Ontario Instrument 45-507 Self-certified Investor Prospectus Exemption (Interim Class Order), considering potential rule amendments that would introduce a prospectus exemption based on relevant educational and business experience and considering taking steps to reduce the length of the hold period applicable to securities distributed under the accredited investor exemption by seasoned reporting issuers;
• executing the OSC’s Inclusion and Diversity Strategy; and
• integrating digital and data capabilities and processes to support effective decision making, risk monitoring and streamlined operations at the OSC.

The OSC accepted stakeholder feedback on the Statement until December 18, 2023. For more information, see OSC Notice 11-798 Statement of Priorities: Request for Comments regarding Statement of Priorities for Fiscal Year 2024-2025 as well as the comments received.

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