Comment by hylaride
2 days ago
> past Federal governments have said "hey look this is stupid let's just merge the regulators so we can do one good job instead of 10 bad jobs" but politics got in the way.
It gets messy. Ontario is the de-facto "legitimate" Canadian securities regulator because it's where our overwhelmingly largest stock exchange is (the TSX). Ontario obviously wants to protect that. When he was Minister of Finance for Ontario, Jim Flaherty defended the status quo tooth and nail. As soon as he became minister of finance federally, he immediately changed his tune.
Part of the problem is that the constitutional quirks in Canada have frustratingly annoying jurisdictional separations. For example, criminal law is a federal responsibility. The provinces cannot sentence somebody to prison for more than 2 years (which is why you often see people sentenced to "two years less a day"), so securities violations that aren't outright traditional fraud are essentially a slap on the wrist. There are other quirks, for example criminal law is defined federally, but policing is mostly provincial. There's also the fact bail is set at the provincial level and the federal government gets enormous grief about people getting bail too easily, when it's the provinces not properly funding the jails, forcing judges to essentially let all but the worst offenders out to reoffend (the problem is somewhat overblown in the media, but it is a problem).
The issue is made worse by the fact that the last time somebody tried to amend the constitution, it blew up in the government of the day's face (that was already unpopular for other reasons) and politicians have been fearful of touching it since, because they know it'll balloon into all sorts of regional demands - the constitution was barely able to be patriated in the early 1980s - and even then with some very questionable clauses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
The provinces cannot sentence somebody to prison for more than 2 years (which is why you often see people sentenced to "two years less a day")
No, that's a separate issue. Sentences of less than 2 years are served in Provincial custody; longer sentences are served in Federal custody.
Ah, I think you're right. I was quoting from memory, but it's still a strange separation.
It dates back to the construction of Kingston Penitentiary. They needed a rule to determine who would serve their time in local prisons and who would be sent to the Pen.