It is self-evident that the existence of ten jurisdictions, each having the right to make its own laws for the incorporation and regulation of limited liability companies and each exercising that right, must not only complicate matters greatly for the individual investor, shareholder, or creditor but must also operate as a serious drag on the commercial and industrial development of the nation. One way out of the impasse in which Canada finds herself would be to secure an amendment to her constitution whereby the federal legislature would be given exclusive jurisdiction over companies, and the provinces would surrender their exclusive jurisdiction over property and civil rights so far as was necessary to ensure the effectiveness of the federal control over corporations. This solution is ideal rather than practical, for it assumes self-negation on the part of politicians and comprehension on the part of the electorates greatly exceeding any yet evinced.
An alternative, but distinctly inferior, solution would leave the jurisdiction divided as it is at present but induce all ten legislatures to agree upon uniformity in the essential features of their company laws. This plan would do nothing to remove the handicap under which the federal legislature labours by reason of its lack of jurisdiction in the law of contract, but it has been talked about and is regarded by the mass of people as a practical step—notwithstanding the abortive results of the two Dominion-Provincial Conferences already held on the subject.