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Canada’s securities watchdogs are teaming up to determine whether and how much “abusive” short selling is taking place in the country’s capital markets.

The Canadian Securities Administrators, an umbrella organization that coordinates the activities of Canada’s 13 provincial and territorial market watchdogs, is in the preliminary stages of a project that involves reviewing “the nature and extent of abusive short-selling in Canadian capital markets,” Brian Kladko, a public affairs manager at the British Columbia Securities Commission, said Thursday.

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“We are in the information-gathering phase of this initiative,” he said in an interview, speaking on behalf of the CSA.

His comments followed the publication of a CSA notice on a separate topic: problematic promotional activities by companies. While that report was concerned with promotional campaigns that “appear to be undertaken for the specific purpose of artificially promoting interest” in the companies’ securities, the CSA said it was planning a separate project to analyze the impact of activist short sellers on Canada’s capital markets.