Open Ownership response to British Columbia consultation on a Public Beneficial Ownership Registry
Introduction
RE: British Columbia Consultation on a Public Beneficial Ownership Registry
Open Ownership drives greater corporate transparency across the world by making it easy to publish and access high-quality, linked data about who owns companies.
Open Ownership is pleased to contribute to the British Columbia (B.C.) consultation on a public beneficial ownership (BO) registry, and delighted to be included in the consultation documents as a case study for public registries. This response is focused on why making the proposed BO registry public would improve its policy impact.
With an increased push for BO transparency both globally and in Canada, Open Ownership recommends that the B.C. Government capitalises on the current opportunity to adopt emerging international standards and best practice on BO disclosure, and make BO information available to the public as open data, free of charge, in a central registry.