Canada bank regulator says has no role in ABCP

TORONTO, April 22 (Reuters) - Canada's banking regulator said on Tuesday it has no role in the country's C$32 billion ($31.7 billion) frozen asset-backed commercial paper market.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions told reporters it does not oversee firms that created nonbank ABCP but stopped short of pointing a finger at any one player for the ABCP crisis.

"Investors are protected in this country but we do not have a mandate to protect investors, other agencies do," said Julie Dickson, the superintendent financial institutions.

"There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle and you have to look at every single piece, understand every single piece and then come to a conclusion."

The OSFI media briefing followed waves of criticism thrown its way for a rule that has been blamed for causing some banks to shy away from making emergency funding payments to commercial paper conduits when they got into trouble.

The rule was first issued in 1990 and allows banks to refuse to put up extra capital to back securitization structures if there is too much risk involved.

The third-party, or nonbank, ABCP market seized up in August as investors refused to buy new paper, and a committee is trying to propose a complex restructuring of the nonbank paper into longer-term notes.

A relief plan to help individual owners of frozen Canadian asset-backed commercial paper is in the works and a vote on the plan is set for April 25.

($1=$1.01 Canadian) (Reporting by Frank Pingue; Editing by Peter Galloway)