Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty, left, and Minister of State Denis Lebel leave after making a security regulator announcement in Ottawa on WednesdaySean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Phil Anisman never stopped believing.
Ever since he was hired as a young lawyer by the Trudeau government in 1973 to study an overhaul of Canada's fragmented securities law regime, Mr. Anisman was confident the day would come. Six years later, in 1979, he tried to make good on the promise by delivering to Ottawa three staggeringly heavy books, each a different shade of blue, that exhaustively laid out the legal background for a national securities regulator.
For a time, it appeared Canada was poised to join the rest of the industrialized world and centralize its creaky regime of provincial securities fiefdoms. But it was not to be. The Trudeau government in 1981, then battling a separatist government in Quebec, backed away from a proposal that inflamed the provinces. Mr. Anisman's weighty tomes found new work as door stops and dust collectors in law firms and newsrooms across the country.
"I've never known why," Mr. Anisman said Wednesday.
Three decades of studies, experts' panels and "wise person" committees have failed to solve the one big obstacle - a succession of federal governments seemed unable or unwilling to summon the fortitude to challenge provincial securities regimes. Yesterday, the Harper government moved to end that stalemate by unveiling new draft legislation and a canny legal and political strategy for implementing it. The result is a carefully crafted proposal that is designed to minimize political backlash and encourage collaboration with the provinces.
First, Ottawa is handing the debate about its constitutional authority to impose a national regulator over to the Supreme Court. Second, it is offering the provinces the choice to opt in or out of the new regime. If they don't like it, the provinces can keep primary control over their local securities police and laws. Borrowing a well-oiled phrase about Canadian culture, it could be said the proposed Canadian Securities Regulatory Authority is as national as possible under the circumstances.
For the federal plan to work, Ottawa has to overcome a number of legal and political issues. First it has to convince the Supreme Court of Canada that it has the constitutional authority to establish a national regulator. Most legal experts believe the country's highest court will approve Ottawa's request, most likely next year.
If Ottawa is lucky, such support from the Supreme Court will give it enough leverage to win over its most determined provincial opponents, Alberta and Quebec, which have launched separate legal challenges to a national regulator in their provincial courts.
If the provinces refuse to budge, then Ottawa faces the grim prospect of a legal and political standoff. The federal government could wave a Supreme Court decision that favours a national regulator, while Alberta and Quebec could convince their respective Courts of Appeal that Ottawa has no right to regulate securities markets.
In such a scenario, Canada could find itself with an ungainly regime dominated by a national regulator with a few outlying and overlapping provincial agencies.
As one Bay Street securities lawyer who declined to be quoted observed: "It will be better, but we can ask is it worth all this effort?"
Mr. Anisman still thinks so. He's betting Ottawa is on the right track this time. "They are almost there."