On June 26, 2025, the Canadian Securities Administrators (“CSA”) published their 2025-2028 business plan (the “Plan”), which sets out the priorities that the CSA have committed to pursuing over the next three years.
Strategic Goals
The Plan outlines four strategic goals:
Goal 1: Focus on the capital markets
Initiatives will aim to reduce regulatory complexity, improve clarity and enhance the competitiveness of Canada’s capital markets. The CSA intend to:
Goal 2: Focus on investors
The CSA will continue to reinforce investor protection by:
- pursuing a coordinated disruption of online investment fraud that will include detecting and removing unregistered investment websites;
- adopting a disclosure framework for promotional activities and addressing abusive promotional activity;
- strengthening the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments’ (OBSI) powers and finalizing a binding dispute resolution framework;
- reviewing the vulnerable investors regulatory framework;
- evaluating opportunities to harmonize the registrant risk questionnaires;
- developing investor education programs that address do-it-yourself investing issues, social media and influencer impacts and higher-risk investment products; and
- developing fraud prevention and investor protection communication tools.
Goal 3: Focus on innovation and technology
The CSA intend to focus on ensuring that the regulatory framework keeps pace with emerging technologies while enhancing their own data and technology capacity. Plans include:
- continuing to assess and determine the need for a regulatory response relating to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the capital markets;
- building regulatory capacity for emerging digital business models that may pose risks to investors;
- reviewing and assessing the need to introduce data gathering rules on investment funds; and
- enhancing enforcement through improved technology and analytical capacity.
Goal 4: Focus on systemic risk
The CSA intend to strengthen their ability to identify, assess and respond to systemic risks that could impact financial markets or the broader economy by:
- promoting financial stability through systemic risk monitoring;
- reviewing, assessing and/or updating the regulatory framework for exchange-traded funds (ETFs), derivatives trading facilities and the liquidity risk management framework for investment funds; and
- reviewing cybersecurity risk management requirements.
Other CSA Initiatives
In addition to the strategic goals, the CSA intend to monitor and assess:
- international developments to determine whether the Canadian derivatives regulatory regime aligns with global best practices;
- developments in short selling to determine if regulatory changes are necessary;
- changes in trading practices, technological advancements and regulatory updates that could impact the Canadian equity markets;
- market developments related to investment funds, including vehicles that provide exposure to long-term assets and environmental, social and governance (ESG)-related investment fund disclosure;
- developments, risks and novel issues in the crypto industry, and oversee the transition to CIRO’s registration and regulation of crypto-trading platforms;
- domestic and international regulatory developments with respect to climate-related and diversity-related disclosure; and
- CIRO’s efforts to enhance timely and efficient account transfers and improve retail account disclosures as well as CIRO’s reassessment of the regulatory obligations governing CIRO-regulated firms.
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