Wetston named to Senate

FINANCE

Two Bay Street stalwarts are on the list of new Senate appointment recommendations Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled Monday: Howard Wetston, former chair of the Ontario Securities Commission, and Sabi Marwah, who was a longtime senior executive of Bank of Nova Scotia.

Wetston, a former Federal Court of Canada trial judge and one- time chief executive of the Ontario Energy Board, retired last November from the OSC, where he had served as chair and CEO since 2010. In April, he joined Toronto- based l aw f i rm Goodmans LLP as counsel.

As head of the OSC, Canada’s largest capital markets regulator, Wetston beefed up enforcement by launching the Joint Serious Offences Team, a partnership between the OSC, the RCMP Financial Crime program and the Ontario Provincial Police Anti- Rackets Branch. He also put the wheels in motion for the creation of a paid whistleblower program, and a disclosure regime intended to promote more women on corporate boards and in senior management.

Dale Lastman, chair of Goodmans LLP, said he doesn’t yet know whether Wetston will be able to continue working with the law firm. “If smart and classy and nice and decent and caring and being passionate are qualities that would make a good senator, then Mr. Wetston will make a good senator, as would Mr. Marwah, who I also know,” Lastman said.

Marwah, who joined Bank of Nova Scotia as a financial analyst and climbed the ranks to the positions of vicechairman and chief operating officer, retired in 2014 after 35 years at what is now Canada’s third-largest bank. He has also served as a director on the boards of Torstar Corp., Cineplex Inc., George Weston Ltd. and Telus Corp.

Marwah’s official biography posted online by the Prime Minister’s Office notes that he is from India, and that he has worked extensively over the past 15 years “to showcase the rich diversity of Sikh and South Asian art and culture.”

Former Scotiabank chief economist Warren Jestin said, “You think of him as a guy who ran the day- to- day operations of Scotiabank, but his interests and skills are far wider than that.”