In a business world that feeds on take-no-prisoners rivalries and revels in military expressions to depict its "battles," common sense and conciliation are in short supply.
Case in point: the federal government's latest push for a national securities regulator with the help of Ontario and British Columbia.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty calls it the "co-operative" regulator. That is false advertising. The initiative was concocted behind the backs of Quebec and Alberta, two provinces that have long fought Ottawa's attempts to encroach upon their jurisdiction over securities regulation, and that have won their case all the way to the Supreme Court.
The court's finding hasn't stopped the current system's critics from trying to create something new.
Chief among those critics is Mr. Flaherty, who is so obsessed with creating a national regulator that he sees it in his cereal bowl.
The Flaherty camp argues that with its patchwork of regulators, Canada's system is more costly to investors and issuers. Investors are not as well protected, they say, because the system makes it harder to catch and to prosecute financial swindlers.
True, Canada's system is unique in the world. But the claims that it is costly and inefficient, which are held as iron-clad truths, are largely unsubstantiated.
In the Canadian passport system, provinces recognize the decisions made by others, so companies don't need to knock on every regulator's door in order to do business. The exception is Ontario which, in good co-operative spirit, refused to join.
This system has not been proven to be more costly for investors and for issuers. In fact, there is evidence of the contrary. Regulatory costs per issuer stood at $33,600 in Canada in 2003, according to 2009 research conducted by Université Laval professors Céline Carpentier and Jean-Marc Suret. This is less than in the United Kingdom ($37,300), in Australia ($123,000) and a lot less than in the United States ($324,700).
Nor is Canada a haven for white-collar criminals because it lacks a national regulator. Sure, Quebec didn't catch Vincent Lacroix or Earl Jones in time. But the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had Bernard Madoff under its nose. It is not a question of regulatory structure but of resources and willingness to investigate and prosecute fraudsters. The best-designed system could be inefficient if there is no enforcement to back it up.
Given how long this debate has lasted, there is no point in attempting to convince the current system's detractors of its merits.
The passport system is also far from perfect. Getting all the country's regulators to agree is at times painstakingly long; they failed to meet on say-on-pay votes, for instance. But the new system proposed by Mr. Flaherty would still require a consensus on key issues, which could translate into lengthy negotiations.
Let's just say we all agree to disagree. But even if Canadians don't see things eye-to-eye, surely we can agree on this. Trying to ram this new system in Quebec and Alberta's throats, by isolating the two provinces, is utterly counterproductive.
The Quebec government has already indicated it will challenge the co-operative national regulator every step of the way. And in that fight it has the full backing of the province's political and business elite, from the National Bank of Canada to the Desjardins financial group. Keeping the province's securities regulator in Quebec is as unifying an issue as the Charter of Quebec Values is divisive.
And so the federal government will start another round of court battles and of political bickering where common sense and conciliation should have prevailed.
If Ottawa is truly concerned about protecting Canadians and with systemic risks, there are surely more pressing issues. Just looking at the way we transport hazardous materials by rail across this country, I can already think of a couple.