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Canada's public venture market

The public venture market community in Canada has long been recognized as the premier ecosystem in the world for supporting the ambitions of entrepreneurs and the success of early-stage public companies. TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) serves at the centre of this sophisticated, interconnected community of stakeholders, which includes entrepreneurs, investors, financiers, brokerage firms, securities lawyers, accountants, industry professionals and regulators – in Canada and around the world. Each element plays a key role in the vitality of the ecosystem.

Canada's public venture market has a proud history. In fact, some of this country's most recognizable companies and most enduring success stories sprouted from venture roots. But the time has come to write the next chapter for TSXV.

Our industry has experienced many bull and bear market cycles over the years. Unfortunately, the last few years have been extremely challenging for Canada's public venture market. Macroeconomic factors, and particularly the sustained downturn in commodities, have highlighted vulnerabilities in our market and underscored that our model must continue to evolve.

Over the past few months, the leadership team at TSXV has met with hundreds of market participants to discuss current issues and instigate progressive solutions. In response to direct feedback from clients and the larger Canadian capital markets community, we have focused closely on some of the major factors impeding the success of the venture market today. Obviously, not all conditions are within our control, but where we can effect change to better meet the needs of our clients, we will. This is our objective; this is our pledge. We are excited to share details of our proposed improvements in this paper, and to reinvigorate and revitalize Canada's public venture market.

How will we do this?

TSXV is committed to making a positive, tangible impact in three important areas:

• We will reduce our clients' administrative and compliance costs, in a meaningful way, without compromising investor confidence.
  
  
• We will expand the base of investors financing companies and generally enhance liquidity.
  
  
• We will diversify and grow the stock list to increase the attractiveness of the marketplace overall.

There are numerous actions required to fulfil each of the commitments above, and each has both near- and long-term benefits to the marketplace. We have begun to implement some changes and initiatives. For the outstanding initiatives, we have assigned aggressive timelines to help ensure their value can be realized as soon as possible.

Some initiatives, particularly those relating to TSXV policies and significant changes to TSXV practices, are subject to securities commission approval.

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