Last week, Canadian securities regulators issued an exemption allowing APX Inc. to operate its crypto-backed lending platform without registering as a securities dealer or filing a prospectus. Framed as a time-limited, tailored effort to support innovation, the decision is a significant and unjustifiable expansion of Canadian securities law - one that reclassifies a basic collateralized loan as a securities transaction. Rather than encouraging innovation, the decision risks chilling market deve

Regulating stablecoins under Canadian securities law is legally incorrect, undermines innovation and competition in payments, and is inconsistent with the policy approach to stablecoins taken by other major economies. If there’s any hope of having Canadian stablecoin policy that supports innovation, protects consumers and is aligned with international consensus, the federal government needs to get in the stablecoin game, and provincial securities regulators need to stay out of it.