Speaker 0:  can you explain the role of the ontario securities commission and other provincial bodies in start up seeking investment?

Speaker 1:  absolutely. so the ontario securities commission or any securities commission, they regulate and control all securities related exchanges, marketplaces, trading, buying, and selling, essentially across their whole province. and so anytime there's securities being exchanged, that usually would fall under the purview of the securities regulators. so, one, they wanna make sure that investors going into and buying private securities are kept safe and given the right information they need so that they're not confused or, you know, misled about what they're buying. on the flip side, they wanna make sure that the people issuing the securities are doing that in the compliant way, in a way that's transparent and very clear to investors about what they're buying and what the company does. and then overall, they're very much focused on protecting the market and the sort of all the participants in the market as a whole. so they wanna make sure there's no fraudulent transactions going on. they wanna make sure that everyone is being able to transact and engage in the exchange of securities in a safe and secure way. so for example, cryptocurrency is fully regulated under the ontario securities commission because crypto currency is typically a security. anytime a private company is buying and selling shares, those shares are securities. a good way of thinking about security is any sort of exchangeable asset tied to the ownership or control of a business. so pretty much all shares are securities, but also any sort of debt vehicle. so if you're buying debt units or bonds, though or convertible notes or safes, those are also securities. so all of those, you know, derivatives, you know, swaps, forwards, those are also securities. so the osc also regulates, for example, the toronto stock exchange. they regulate all of the public companies, but they also regulate all of the private companies. just because we're private doesn't mean we get to escape regulatory oversight. there's just different rules that are a lot simpler because typically private companies are not as large and complex as public ones.