On Friday April 27th, The Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX") issued a Notice of Approval for Amendments to the Normal Course Issuer Bid Rules in the TSX Company Manual (the "Amendments"). The Amendments will come into effect on Friday June 1, 2007.

The Amendments affect how a normal course issuer bid ("NCIB") is carried out on TSX. The Amendments include:

Normal Course Issuer Bids – Sections 628 - 629.3:

• The TSX has replaced the current 2%-in-30-days restriction with a daily buy-back limit for all issuers (other than investment funds). Under the Amendments, issuers will be permitted to repurchase up to 25% of the average daily trading volume ("ADTV") of the listed securities of the issuer on any trading day. ADTV is calculated based on the trading on the TSX of the listed securities during the six month period immediately preceding the date of acceptance of the NCIB by the TSX.
• Issuers will continue to be restricted from purchasing more than 10% of an issuer's public float (as defined in the TSX Manual) or 5% of its issued and outstanding securities during any 12-month period.
  
• The Amendments provide for a new exception to permit one "block purchase" per week. Specifically, issuers will be permitted to buy back one block of securities per week which exceeds the daily repurchase restrictions (described above). A "block" is defined in Section 628(a)(ii) of the Amendments as a quantity of securities that either (a) has a purchase price of $200,000 or more, or (b) is at least 5,000 securities and has a purchase price of at least $50,000, or (c) is at least 20 board lots of the security and total 150% or more of the ADTV for that security. In addition, and in contrast to the draft version of the Amendments originally published for comment in October 2005, NCIB purchases may be made on the same day of a block purchase, up to the time of the block purchase. Once the block purchase exemption has been relied upon in an given day, no further NCIB purchases may be made for the remainder of that trading day. It should also be noted that issuers are not permitted to purchase blocks under the foregoing exemption from insiders (the definition of which remains the same).
• The TSX Manual currently requires that purchases made under an NCIB be made at a price which is not higher than the last "independent trade" of a board lot of the listed securities. The definition of what does not constitute an "independent trade" under Section 629 has been revised to make clear that any trades directly or indirectly by a broker making purchases for the bid which are made in order to facilitate a subsequent block purchase by the issuer at a certain price will not be an "independent trade".