December 10, 2004
Canada Moves Toward Unified Securities Regulations...Finally
Despite Canada's stature in the world with much forward thinking in many areas, securities legislation has not been in this category. The regional provincial control in this country mean that they have THIRTEEN securities regulators. Wow. This has made for little progress and that Canada's securities regulations have fallen behind much of the G7 countries.
Finally, yesterday there was a change: some unification of the regulations has finally occurred. The regulations mimic much of the Sarbanes-Oxley sections, with the exception of Section 404, internal controls. The Canadian version is quite vague. Hopefully, this too will improve over time. Let's face it, everyone talks about Enron, but last time I checked Bre-X and Nortel were based in Canada. So there are enough fraud cases everywhere to justify tighter internal controls in Canada as well.
For a summary of some of the new board mandates, see the excerpt of an article here:
" Board Mandate: The board should adopt a written mandate (new) in which it explicitly acknowledges responsibility for the stewardship of the issuer, including responsibility for:
Finally, yesterday there was a change: some unification of the regulations has finally occurred. The regulations mimic much of the Sarbanes-Oxley sections, with the exception of Section 404, internal controls. The Canadian version is quite vague. Hopefully, this too will improve over time. Let's face it, everyone talks about Enron, but last time I checked Bre-X and Nortel were based in Canada. So there are enough fraud cases everywhere to justify tighter internal controls in Canada as well.
For a summary of some of the new board mandates, see the excerpt of an article here:
" Board Mandate: The board should adopt a written mandate (new) in which it explicitly acknowledges responsibility for the stewardship of the issuer, including responsibility for:
- satisfying itself as to the integrity of the CEO and other executive officers and that these officers create a culture of integrity throughout the organization (new)
- adopting a strategic planning process and approving an annual strategic plan
- identifying principal business risks and ensuring the implementation of risk management systems
- succession planning,
- adopting a communication policy,
- internal controls and management information systems, and
- developing the issuer’s approach to corporate governance, including establishing a set of corporate governance principles and guidelines specifically applicable to the issuer. "
For the complete article, click here.
To learn more about how to effectively document and test your company's internal controls, see www.issuescentral.com for more information about Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Playbook(tm).
