We are submitting this letter as a follow-up to the letter we received on October 23, 2014 from the Minister’s Office in response to our request of January 10, 2014 to add the BM&F Bovespa Exchange of Brazil, the Korea Exchange of South Korea and the Taiwan Stock Exchange of Taiwan (Republic of China) to the list of designated stock exchanges for the purpose of the Canadian Income Tax Act (the Act). We are very pleased that the Department of Finance has taken steps to expand the DSE List in light of our recommendations. The BM&F Bovespa Exchange of Brazil and Korea Exchange are welcome additions to the DSE List.
If you recall from our prior meetings and discussions/submissions, we maintain that there are still strong arguments in favour of discontinuing the DSE list altogether, however we respect the Department’s position to maintain a list and have therefore prioritized the following 3 additional exchanges for your further consideration:
- National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE)
- Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE)
- Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET)
We note that we previously recommended the Taiwan Stock Exchange be added to the DSE List but this was not reflected in the Minister’s response letter. Our Members continue to believe that the TWSE merits inclusion in the DSE List and we request your further consideration of this exchange. All of the above recommended exchanges are commonly accessed by portfolio managers for non-registered investments, meet the criteria included in our July 25th 2013 submission, (i.e. OECD country, member of IOSCO, Income Tax Treaty etc.) and are all included in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index.