The CSA has issued its second round of consultations on its proposed requirements to clients regarding cost disclosure and performance reporting. FAIR Canada supports improved the proposed cost disclosure, performance reporting and client statements initiative. Currently many retail investors face a barrier to successful investing as they are unable to assess their current financial position and cannot accurately determine what their investments are worth or how they have performed. FAIR Canada will be submitting comments, seeking improvements to some of the proposed requirements. FAIR Canada thinks that such reporting is long-overdue and is dismayed by the proposed three year transition period, which is far too long and unnecessary. FAIR Canada supports the effort to improve disclosure and transparency, but cautions that such measures, on their own, are not sufficient and that other substantive reforms, such as a requirement to act in the “best interest” of the client, should also be implemented. FAIR Canada also urges the CSA to look beyond improving disclosure and consider substantive changes in order to protect investors. Barbara Shecter reports about the proposals, noting that Ed Waitzer, co-director of the Hennick Centre for Business and Law at Osgood Hall Law School, similarly wonders whether regulators are even focused on the right issue when it comes to investor protection and that the focus should be on eliminating conflicts of interest and changing compensation incentives to promote the availability of unbiased advice rather than on disclosure.