Effective June 29, 2020, maintaining extra-provincial entities from the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec as well as Federal companies will require less effort with the introduction of the Multi-jurisdictional Registry Access Service (MRAS) into Corporate Registry operations.
With MRAS, Saskatchewan and participating provincial registries will exchange data to enable more accurate and efficient registration processes across the registries.
Business corporations and limited partnerships from MRAS jurisdictions – the New West Partnership Trade Agreement jurisdictions (Alberta, B.C., and Manitoba) as well as Federal and Quebec corporations – will benefit from three key improvements in service delivery:
- Fewer submissions required across jurisdictions – leveraging information from the participating registries, the Saskatchewan Corporate Registry will make certain updates to extra-provincial entities without the need for a customer to file an update.
- Reminders to file updates with the Registry – In scenarios where a change made in the home jurisdiction can’t be used to automatically update the Saskatchewan extra-provincial entity, the Registry may send a notification acknowledging the event and requesting the necessary updates be filed. This extra reminder will be particularly useful for law firms and other organizations that file on behalf of extra-provincial entities.
- Less data entry – Preparing submissions, when necessary, will be quicker and more accurate as the basic entity information from the home jurisdiction will be auto-populated on Corporate Registry forms.
The four western provinces of the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA) have all adopted the MRAS-enabled service delivery model. With MRAS-enabled improvements now in place, Saskatchewan business corporations and limited partnerships must now submit extra-provincial filings directly to the target NWP registry and can expect similar service improvements from other participating corporate registries when maintaining their extra-provincial registrations as well. Businesses from Alberta, B.C. and Manitoba are to file directly with the Saskatchewan Corporate Registry for any Saskatchewan extra-provincial submissions.
MRAS service improvements are added to the existing benefits for businesses registered in the NWPTA jurisdictions, including lessened administrative requirements such as no annual return filings for extra-provincial entities and fee relief for many submissions.
At present, MRAS-enabled processes are not in place for Cooperatives and Limited Liability Partnerships. As such, Corporate Registry will continue to facilitate delivery of extra-provincial filings to the NWPTA jurisdictions, now including Manitoba, for these entity types.
Federal corporations and Quebec corporations, while not part of the NWPTA, are participating in the launch of MRAS. Business corporations registered in those jurisdictions will benefit from the three key improvements list above as well.