Let me give you a little background on how we came to see plain language as a critical part of how we do our job.

A few years ago, we adopted a new approach to defining our role as the senior regulator of the British Columbia securities market. We realized that we needed to get at some of the root causes of problems we encountered in regulating the markets – problems such as people not complying with our regulations or industry's justified complaints that regulation imposed an excessive burden on the cost of doing business. One cause we identified is that our rules and regulations had become too complex, too numerous and difficult to understand.

The solution was to cut down on the complexity and the number of regulations and to make what regulations were left clear and understandable by all. Plain language is clearly a prime part of that solution.

As part of that process, we realized we needed to move from the prescriptive approach to regulation – coming up with more and more rules to address specific problems – to an approach based on a limited set of principles. Again, plain language is part of that solution.