I'm Canadian and I've never heard of a body of government, whether federal or provincial, called the Canadian Securities Administration. Are you maybe referring to the Canadian Securities Association (which is something totally different)? Here, we don't have a federal body like the SEC; instead, we have disjointed, inconsistent, overstretched, and impotent provincial securities commissions. We are light years behind in progress compared to the U.S. in terms of securities regulation and associated legislation like Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. But that's a conversation for another time.
The cease trade is simply due to bank policies. With TD, for example, if there's a cease trade in one province on a specific security (although that security is tradeable in other provinces), you won't be able to buy that security in any province if you use TD's trading platform.
Good luck to everyone. There is a great risk vs. reward here.
