Bill C-21 (Historical)

Standing up for Victims of White Collar Crime Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing for fraud)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to
(a) provide a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment for a term of two years for fraud with a value that exceeds one million dollars;
(b) provide additional aggravating factors for sentencing;
(c) create a discretionary prohibition order for offenders convicted of fraud to prevent them from having authority over the money or real property of others;
(d) require consideration of restitution for victims of fraud; and
(e) clarify that the sentencing court may consider community impact statements from a community that has been harmed by the fraud.

Standing Up for Victims of White Collar Crime Act

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a very valid point. I want to point out to my colleague from Winnipeg Centre that he should not forget about the Canada pension plan, which is actually the biggest fund in the country currently.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

It's $140 billion.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is $140 billion. My friend knows the amount.

There is no question. I would hate to think of the labour movement and workers generally as being raving capitalists. They are not. They would be much more prudent if they were doing the advising.

I will take issue with him about the need for bringing people off the floor and letting them make decisions, when we look at some of the fiascos that came out of the most recent financial collapse. These so-called experts got taken in by the asset-backed paper that did not have any assets behind it, by using regulatory assessments of these assets and valuing them, clearly not understanding them.

I sometimes think it might be better if we simply had the honesty and integrity of the average worker making those decisions, maybe having people explain to them how the system works. The common sense we would get from the average worker might go a long way to preventing the kind of abuse we have seen in the last round as stock markets collapsed.

I want to make one more point. There is no question that this hurts people badly. We have seen Nortel workers showing up constantly both here and at Queen's park in Toronto. When one actually talks to them, one hears their pain. It is a two-parter. It is not only the financial loss they have suffered but all of the negative consequences that is going to have, including the loss of health benefits and the impact on their personal health.

I argue with them not to think this way, but I know it happens. I know from having clients over the years who have suffered as victims of these schemes. There is guilt that goes with it. It is unfortunate that is the case, but it is one of the side products of these types of crimes and one that really should push the House even more to make sure preventive and punitive programs are put in place that will put an end to it.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows that in the United States the Americans put away more than 100 embezzlers from WorldCom and Enron and Conrad Black. On the other side, the Canadian experience is that we have put away almost nobody in this country. Yet the Americans still had the experience with Bernie Madoff getting away with $65 billion.

At least the U.S. has moved to re-regulate, to reverse the period of deregulation under the Republicans for the last 8 to 10 years. They are at least taking the issue seriously in the United States now and attempting to re-regulate. Even though it had a better system than Canada and was more effective in putting people in jail, it still allowed a lot of abuses. It is time Canada caught up, rather than falling further behind the United States.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with his analysis of what happened in the United States both in terms of the U.S. prosecuting much more forcefully than Canada has and, at the same time, allowing the regulatory function, which is really about prevention, to be diminished. They are putting it back in place and we need to be doing the same here in Canada.

We need to get more aggressive. We need to put the units in place that can do the investigation and guarantee that we are going to get convictions in both cases. We heard from the United States and they know how to do it. They just do not have the staffing and resources to carry it out.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to intervene on debate on Bill C-21. I don't think I had the opportunity in the previous session.

What I first thought about the bill, I will be honest, was that the government was approaching the Criminal Code and its need for occasional reform as a kind of a smorgasbord. One time it would take a section over here and fix it up and then take another over there, and by the time we are finished.... I think our order paper shows a number of Criminal Code amendment bills at this time.

I thought it is taking a lot of parliamentary time and it is a lot of procedure. Why did the government, if it wanted to make some Criminal Code amendments, not put them all in one bill? We could have debated it and dealt with it that way.

The government chose not to. I thought it was for political reasons and I still do. However having viewed the process, I see that it actually gives the House an opportunity look at each of the bills more closely. Sometimes that is scary and sometimes that is helpful. At least it gives us extra time to debate. If the government had a Criminal Code amendment bill with 10 or 20 components, most of us would be unable to address most of the components, if we wanted to.

Looking more closely at each of the bills will probably tilt toward a better product. Perhaps a bill with more scrutiny has fewer problems down the road and is less likely to encounter difficulty in the other place, should the Senate pick it apart, and is more likely to be successful in the real world when the police and the courts deal with the new legislation.

This particular bill deals with sentencing for fraud, and it modifies the Criminal Code provisions related to fraud convictions. My party is supporting this in the context that a bill of this nature was probably inevitable over time.

If we look back over recent history, we wonder why something like this had not come forward sooner, but looking at the evolution of fraud crimes we also have to look at the evolution of financial services. If we look back at it, we can see how complex the evolution has been since the second world war.

I was not here then, happily, but before that we had basically cash and cheques, some kind of a postal money order and bank money orders. That was a simple financial world. However since then, this has proliferated. We do not just have cash, cheques and money orders. We have credit cards, debit cards, ABM cards and cash cards that actually hold a cash value and we can spend the cash value. There is a whole area of financial species that a fraudster could focus on.

We also have a whole new world of online Internet financial transactions. We even have online gaming, charities online, fake charities online and shopping online. In the world of securities we have stocks, bonds, GICs, T-bills, life insurance, pension plans and pension plans that are self-administered. All of these are financial envelopes, many of which did not exist 50 years ago, where the bad guy is still out there trying to get a piece of the action.

Even in our own federal financial envelope we have RRSPs, home ownership savings plans, RESPs, RRIFs, savings accounts, chequing accounts and all manner of other investment accounts. The average person might be forgiven for getting lost in this whole area of financial expansion.

In addition, the world of finance has gone global. It is not just bad guys here but it is bad guys internationally. The financial world has expanded in a huge proliferation.

In addition, something that happened somewhat slowly, which we did not notice, was that since the second world war we have all become a lot more wealthy. We in this country take for granted the wealth that we generated. The GDP per person has gone up, if not exponentially, very favourably. Canadians are much wealthier than they used to be.

These trillions of dollars of wealth, financial transactions by individuals, corporations, government and charities, have increased the opportunity for those who would steal from us to go ahead and do it in many different ways.

Fraud is essentially the criminalization of the old tort of deceit. Fraud is when someone intends to enrich himself or herself by taking money from another individual by deceit. That was the simple concept of fraud. However, with the backdrop of this proliferation in financial services and wealth and globalization and inter-con activity enhanced by the Internet, that basic law of fraud has stayed the same.

Although we are proposing an amendment now dealing with the sentencing for fraud, it would not surprise me at all that we would see a further change in how we approach some of the crime in the area of financial services shopping because It is quite likely that the bad guys who are doing this now will continue to do this and will find ways to disrupt and steal from innocent Canadians.

In the bill, there is reference to a restitution procedure. It has been in the code as a sentencing option for some time now. It is not used frequently but it is used. Bill C-21 contains a restitution procedure and some forms that are contained as a schedule to the bill, by which a victim of this type of fraud can ask the court for restitution. I have some concern about this. I am not suggesting that it will not work but it may have some break in problems.

The first issue that I want to flag for the consideration of members both here in the House and on the justice committee is that the reference to restitution in the courts under this bill does not really say who would be in charge of the process. It does not say that the crown prosecutor would be in charge of this process. It just seems to say that if someone wants restitution, he or she will need to fill out the form and send it in.

Our criminal courts are not used to this. I am not saying that this will happen but I have this vision of a criminal court starting to act like a small claims court. The prosecution is complete, there is a conviction and then the judge turns to the clerk and asks whether there are any requests for restitution. The clerk will say, “Your Honour, we have 728 applications for restitution, totalling $1 million.”

Of course the judge has spent his or her career convicting people, not as an accountant. Judges do not have calculators on their desks. They do not have the time to go through 728 restitution applications. So there is an administrative function here. That was the second point.

Third, there is this restitution function and an application form of sorts. It is a fairly brief application. There is nothing wrong with it. It is kind of short and simple. It does raise the expectation of the victim, who may be one of many, that he or she will get restitution because he or she has been invited by somebody to fill out the form and send it in the judge. The judge has the form, the form is filled out and it says that $7,528 is what this guy stole. It raises an expectation that the court will be able to deal with this.

I do not think that criminal court judges would be ready for that, although some of them have handled restitution orders previously, but it will need a kind of a management system. In fairness, the federal government does not manage these courts. It is done by the provinces. Therefore, the provinces will need to generate some system. They will need to hire somebody who will to understand this and manage all of these forms and requests for restitution that come in.

While it is certainly part of the Criminal Code, it will fall to the provinces, the crown attorneys, the court clerks and the judges. I am pretty sure the judges will resist the criminal court becoming a small claims court or the equivalent of it. They will say that if they want to do small claims court stuff in the criminal court, then they should bring in a small claims court judge.

I do not know if that will happen. We will wait and see. I wanted to flag that and the higher expectation that might be there on the part of the victim that he or she would receive restitution simply because he or she followed the rules, filed the form, put in the amount and are hoping the judge will give them an order.

Last, I will deal with the restitution exercise. I hope the Department of Justice will be able to describe at the committee hearings the impact of a bankruptcy or likely bankruptcy on the whole restitution procedure or on the order. Will a concurrent or subsequent bankruptcy mean that the restitution orders are worthless? If they are worthless, it is probably not worth the time to spend a whole lot of administrative hours, court time and the judge's time sorting out the restitution if, in the end, there is a bankruptcy.

At some point, someone administratively will need to identify some assets or an asset that could produce a recovery for the restitution claimants, that issue of the relationship between the restitution order and a concurrent or related bankruptcy.

Also, and this is really a bankruptcy issue, which is federal, but let us say that the crook has transferred some of these assets or the proceeds of the assets into the name of a relative. What jurisdiction does the court or the judge have in relation to those asset transfers or the hiding of those assets in the face of a restitution order?

One of the members spoke earlier about this getting very close to some of the organized crime sentencing procedures and proceeds of crime legislation that already exist on the books.

I do not know whether these aspects have been sorted out or whether the provinces and the crown attorneys who will need to administer it have been consulted on this. I am not objecting to restitution orders but this legislation seems to be importing a fairly conspicuous wholesale procedure. We know that in some of these cases the frauds can go into many millions of dollars with many people being hurt. While the new sentencing provisions are intended to target the big-time fraudster, the million dollar threshold is described in one part of the new law, I think there may be a learning curve here, if I can put it that way, and possibly there may be further legislation needed if the courts are going to get seriously into the restitution procedure.

Another of our colleagues was good enough to mention crime prevention, as my colleague from Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe did. This legislation deals with the crime and the effects of the crime after it has taken place. It is closing the barn door after the horse has left. While there is a role for that, while it is drawing a line in the sand for our society, there is nothing in the statute that appears to reach out and deal with some kind of prevention of crime in the first place. It does not get out in front.

As a society, I think we will need to invest a bit more in crime prevention. If we can cut some of these massive frauds down by half, one-quarter or one-third, that would be worth it, but we need to invest institutionally in methods, which means looking to our securities regulators, bank regulators, chartered accountants, lawyers, real estate brokers and mortgage brokers. Most of these organizations self-regulate and we need to look to them. I am not too sure about the process but somewhere in that administration and regulation of those professions and institutions we will find some ways to spot a big fraud early.

As members know, many of the big frauds do not actually start out as big frauds. Many of the big ones started as quite small and then, once the mistake was made or the money stolen, however small it was, more money is taken to infill and to hide and it grows. It gets to the point where the crook, who may not have set out to be a crook in that sense, ends up robbing Peter to pay Paul and moving all kinds of money around and harming so many people. If our regulatory mechanisms could spot some of this in the early stages, it would go a long way.

I recall in Ontario a very sad case of a guy who was selling fake franchises. Even though that is provincially regulated, a way has not been found to prevent that kind of fraud. However, at the end of the day the principle of caveat emptor must remain. The buyer must beware. We must ensure our citizens are educated, sensitive and wary of these kinds of things. That type of public education is very valuable.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing for fraud).

Generally speaking, the bill makes five new amendments to the Criminal Code. First, for persons who commit fraud over $1 million, it provides for a minimum sentence of two years. Second, it adds four aggravating factors for various types of offences involving fraud over $1 million. Third, it also creates a new discretionary prohibition against employment. Fourth, it allows judges to order restitution at their discretion. Fifth, it provides for a statement called a “community impact statement” to be considered.

At first glance, all these measures may seem laudable, but that is a mere smokescreen. The content of this bill lacks forethought in spite of the fact that it has been introduced in this House twice. The first time, it died on the order paper when the Conservatives prorogued Parliament at the instigation of the Conservatives. Prorogation, which we roundly criticized, has not produced any improvement in the Conservatives’ bills. If this is the best they can do, it is cause for concern.

For example, take the new two-year minimum sentence to be imposed for general fraud over $1 million. My party and I have spoken at length about this already. Minimum sentences upon minimum sentences are not particularly useful. They have no significant effect on criminals’ behaviour. Moreover, a minimum two-year sentence for fraud over $1 million amounts to reducing the sentences currently being imposed. When we questioned the Minister about this, he was unable to cite a major fraud case where the sentence was for fewer than two years. At this time, sentences are more on the order of six to seven years for major fraud cases. So why would we set a minimum sentence of two years for cases of fraud over $1 million? That is the question.

With respect to the aggravating factors that will supposedly be added once the bill is passed, they are already considered by the courts. The Vincent Lacroix ruling, for example, lists those factors point by point. Sure, putting aggravating factors that already exist down on paper is another way for the Conservatives to look good, but it will not really produce any concrete results. Since the Conservatives came to power, we have got used to this way of doing things.

Like my colleagues, I am going to resign myself to voting for this bill in principle, but only so that the committee can improve it. The Minister has completely missed the mark by tackling economic crime this way. A number of points are not addressed in this bill. For example, release after serving one-sixth of the sentence has not been eliminated. This means that people like Earl Jones and Vincent Lacroix could get out of prison even before serving a reasonable portion of their sentence. Before setting minimum sentences, we need to start by limiting speedy releases for people who deserve harsher sentences.

I would like to take this opportunity to talk about one of my constituents who was the victim of fraud. I will thereby demonstrate the many flaws in Bill C-21. This person sought help from my offices in Compton—Stanstead. They had RRSPs amounting to several tens of thousands of dollars. At a meeting of investors, the person met several financial planners who subsequently advised the person. They had the person withdraw their RRSPs and then invest in various ways. A little while later, the constituent in question could no longer find the money from their RRSPs. The planners had defrauded them. Not only was this person defrauded, but on top of that they owe a significant amount of money in taxes for withdrawing the RRSPs.

This person was retired. And I do mean “was” retired. They now have to go back to work to repay the money owed to the government, while the looters are still at large. The money belonged to this person. It had been saved over several decades of working. How is this bill going to help this person?

This bill would not even apply to their situation. This person has lost several tens of thousands of dollars. That is a long way from the $1 million fraud cases covered by Bill C-21. The kind of situation I have described happens more often than one might think. So why would we limit ourselves to fraud over $1 million? We have to go after the big thieves, but we also have to go after the little ones who have more victims.

To illustrate further, let us say that this person lost $1 million. Will a minimum prison term help this person get their money back? No. However, if the looters can be found someday, then yes, they might get a minimum of two years in prison. But as I said earlier, the sentences currently being imposed are on the order of six or seven years. The same is true for the aggravating factors proposed in the bill: they are already being applied now. This does not change anything at all.

The bill also creates a new discretionary prohibition order against continuing to work. Judges will be able to prohibit fraudsters from seeking or working in a job in which they would have authority over someone else’s money, real property or securities. That does nothing, though, to help people who have been defrauded. In addition, the bill gives judges a great deal of latitude to decide on their own, without any guidelines, how long this employment prohibition should last. Should judges really be given this much discretionary authority? We will have to discuss it in committee.

The bill also does nothing to resolve the restitution issue. Once again, the Conservatives are happy with mere window dressing. The discretionary restitution order is replaced by a requirement that judges “consider making a restitution order”. That is just word play. Once again, the Conservatives are aiming in the right general direction but they are way off the mark because this bill does not really change anything for the victims of economic crime.

Another problem is the bill’s failure to deal with tax havens. Dealing with them would actually be an excellent way to provide restitution to the victims of economic crime. Thanks to tax havens, money belonging to those who were defrauded can disappear without a trace. If we deal with them, we may be able to trace victims' money.

There will always be people, of course, who try to beat the system and take money from small investors. It is up to us to find the best ways to prevent this crime.

I should emphasize that I am entirely in favour of punishing so-called white-collar criminals. But that is not enough. If all we do is put criminals in prison, they will just get out someday and start all over. We need to find better, more far-sighted solutions. We have to prevent these crimes and take measures that will make it much more difficult to defraud Canadian and Quebec taxpayers.

A little more than a year ago, the Bloc Québécois proposed a plan for dealing with economic crimes. It aimed to prevent these crimes and punish fraudsters so that justice could be done. In my opinion, the most important measures are those that help victims because they suffer the worst consequences of fraud.

In addition to eliminating parole for white-collar criminals after one-sixth of the sentence has been served, fraud over $5,000 should be included in the Criminal Code.

As things currently stand, the first paragraph of section 380 of the Criminal Code provides for a maximum sentence of 14 years for fraud over $5,000, but that is all. In contrast to the minister’s bill, which pertains only to economic crimes over $1 million, we need to deal as well with smaller cases of fraud involving small investors. It is all very well to fight cases of fraud exceeding $1 million, but crimes this large are relatively rare. I am sure the minister agrees with me on that.

In fighting economic crime, we should also ensure that banks are required to report irregularities in trust accounts to the competent authorities. People should certainly act responsibly when choosing a financial planner. They should do all that is needed to check things out. It is up to the banks, though, to do their part as well and work together in good faith with the Autorité des marchés financiers.

As I said before, the time has come to deal with tax havens. To do this, why not amend the Income Tax Act to stop the use of them? For far too long, the Conservatives and Liberals have been endorsing practices of this kind. It has to stop, especially as tax havens could be a major source of compensation for the victims of economic crime.

Speaking of victims, it is obvious that the current government does not really care about them at all. Bill C-21 has a short title, the Standing up for Victims of White Collar Crime Act, that is far from a true reflection of what it is really about. Once again, the Conservatives are light-years away from telling the truth. This bill makes a timid effort to deal with fraudsters, but it fails utterly. One thing is sure: it does nothing at all to help the victims of these crimes.

When it comes to economic crimes, we need to focus above all on the victims. It is all very well to put the perpetrators in jail, but that is not enough. We in the Bloc Québécois will put the emphasis on this kind of approach by proposing a provision in the Income Tax Act that would allow victims to deduct the amounts that were stolen instead of treating them as capital losses.

Bill C-21 is clearly inadequate. It contains a few timid, makeshift measures, but it is far wide of the mark. As I said, we will be happy to study it in committee and improve it. We will do our duty by proposing a constructive alternative to the views of the Reform—Conservative government.

In conclusion, I would just like to say that this bill is further proof that the values of the Quebec nation are poles apart from the values of the Conservatives.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased, as the member of Parliament for Don Valley East, to rise and speak on Bill C-21. This bill is particularly important where I am concerned. As an accountant, as an FCGA, as a fraud investigator, I think it is high time this bill was introduced.

So that people understand what is involved in the bill, we need to give a little background.

The legislation was introduced in response to several high-profile white collar crime cases, including Norbourg Securities and Earl Jones in Quebec, and in the wake of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme and revelations in the U.S., many Canadian investors have grown increasingly concerned about white collar fraud.

Other than the title, this bill is the same as Bill C-52, which was introduced during the previous parliamentary session and died at prorogation while at committee.

Bill C-21 has several components that need to be reviewed and addressed in committee.

It introduces a mandatory minimum sentence of two years for fraud involving more than $1 million, regardless of the number of victims. It specifies aggravating factors to be considered at sentencing, including the psychological and financial impact on victims, the age and health of victims, and the magnitude and duration of the fraud. It requires the court to indicate what mitigating and aggravating factors were considered in relation to the sentence.

It allows the court to prohibit an offender from assuming any position, voluntary or paid, that involves handling other people's money or property. It requires judges to consider restitution where possible and when possible, and it requires judges to consider community impact statements at the time of sentencing.

This bill is very close to home, as I know a number of constituents who were involved or who gave money, their life savings, to this Colgate whitening thief and were told that they would get a 400% return. People think anybody who is involved in a Ponzi scheme or who partakes in it is greedy or does not know what they are doing. I think it is the lack of financial acumen that gets people involved and it is the hype.

It is important that the government realizes that when it prorogued Parliament, Bill C-52 went to bed, and Bill C-21 has been introduced, but in the meantime a lot of people have suffered and this suffering could have been prevented. Vulnerable Canadians, taxpayers, have lost their total savings in this scheme. People have lost their houses. People have lost their jobs. People have become depressed because they lost all their money. It was important when we were studying Bill C-52, which is now Bill C-21, that it should have been there. It should have been in place. It should have been able to help those very vulnerable people.

The impact of white collar crime costs the taxpayers and the treasury a lot of money, because hard-working Canadians have lost their money. The fraudsters are committing fraud against these vulnerable people. Fraud is not victimless. Fraud preys on the weak and the vulnerable in society. We, the Liberals, support sending the bill to committee because we believe it is the right principle.

The principles behind the stricter sentencing rules are very important, but we also know that they are not enough to prevent these frauds from happening. Sentencing is important, but prevention is equally important in white collar crime.

I would like to know why the government does not use this opportunity to do more. The opposition and the public have been calling on the government to end the one-sixth accelerated parole provision for these types of offenders and the government has not acted yet. We hope that by sending it to committee we can have some practical changes.

While we support the bill's focus on stricter sentencing guidelines for white collar criminals, we believe the scope is too narrow to be truly effective in the fight against fraud. We would like to see that when it goes to committee there is a wide consultation with the stakeholders, the people who have been marginalized, the people who have been robbed of their hard-earned dollars. We would like to see that the financial industry is also engaged in this discussion, because they are the ones who probably regulate the financial industry, the people who do our investments, et cetera, and it is important that these people are also held to a very high standard and that there is important legislation to ensure that fraud is not committed by professionals or by any other laymen who would bring about a Ponzi scheme.

The stakeholder reaction to the legislation has been mixed. While victim groups have been lobbying the government to strengthen white collar criminal provisions, some have expressed discontent that this bill falls short, as I mentioned, because it fails to address regulation or the one-sixth accelerated parole review rule.

The Canadian Bar Association has expressed its opposition to this bill, citing that it would increase pressure on an already taxed criminal justice system and not improve on what is already available in the Criminal Code. Furthermore, the Canadian Bar Association opposes the mandatory minimum sentence in favour of judicial discretion at sentencing.

The RCMP has expressed its support for the bill, indicating a mandatory sentence for such crimes has the potential to be a useful deterrent against criminal activity.

If we come to what this bill would really do, many times in the House we have heard that there is no greater fraud than a promise not kept. The bill died on the order paper last year, taking with it the life savings of every Canadian who has fallen victim to fraud since then. However, this bill, as I have reiterated, would not be enough. It is important to send it to committee. It would send the right message, but words without deeds ring hollow to Canadian mothers now finding themselves wondering how they will feed their kids, or to grandparents without anything to leave behind, or to families that have lost their savings and have had to give up their houses, their cars, everything, to put food on their table. The financial security of families has been ruined while this bill died at prorogation.

I hope the government will not delay by doing any more photo ops but will put enough meat on the table and will help the opposition parties in their desire to bring justice to those who are seeking justice.

While the government was doing its press conference, Canadians, as I mentioned, have lost their savings. It is important that the bill move forward at a quick pace and be sent to committee for further study.

The bill provides nothing, for example, for the prevention of crime, only punishment after the fact. No jail sentence and no restitution can make up for the sense of betrayal and hurt that follows fraud. No jail sentence and no restitution can restore the confidence or livelihood of a Canadian cleaned out by someone who the victim had grown to trust, a new parent without a nest egg, or a dying grandparent without a bequest. Prevention keeps Canadians safe. Nothing is more important to the livelihood of Canadians, and nothing in this bill provides a hint towards it.

I have heard a lot of stories from people who have been defrauded. They had been approached by people who they considered friends and trusted and they were taken for a ride. Colgate whitening comes to mind. People sometimes do not know the difference between a fraudster and a genuine investor. We have seen it in people trying to sell electronic Canadian stamps, without realizing that it is the purview of Canada Post.

How do we keep Canadians safe? In order to keep Canadians safe, it is important that the bill be sent for study and that there be a high level of consultation but that Canadians be given an opportunity to be engaged or educated in fiscal management. There should be an opportunity to have transparency and clarity as to what one can feel is a good investment or bad investment. Nobody is asking the government to oversee this. We are asking that the bill have provisions for prevention.

The bill fails to keep Canadians safe because it prefers punishment to prevention. I believe this is in line with the Conservative government's perspective on crime. Crimes are complex. Crimes are best considered by judicial experts, men and women of the bench with entire professional lives dedicated to finding fair and balanced judgments.

I am not sitting as a judge and neither is any member of the House, but as an accountant, financial consultant and fraud investigator in my previous life, I think it is important that people realize that there are ways in which prevention can take place. Everyone says that prevention is better than a cure, and nobody knows it better than those who are victims of fraud.

When I talked about the Canadian Bar Association, it is opposing this bill for a very simple reason. It is keenly aware that what might work in Gander likely does not work in Moose Jaw or Toronto and what is appropriate today might not be appropriate tomorrow. Cases are unique and it is both reckless and irresponsible to assume that we in the House could tell a justice presiding over a case that we are more qualified than he or she to determine the appropriate sentence for a particular crime.

The bill provides for a mandatory minimum sentence for the commission of a fraud exceeding $1 million. While this seems to be reasonable, I believe it is not for us in this place to impose such conditions upon the trained, qualified and professional judges presiding over decisions. There should be guidelines, not minimum sentences, and judicial discretion, not rigid mandates from a place far away. When a crime is committed in, say, Don Valley East or Toronto, I want a judge in Toronto to examine the case on its own merits.

Bill C-21 is worthy of further examination. It sets the right tone. It should be sent to committee for further study.

However, the bill does not do enough to reassure those people taken in by the Earl Jones fraud, the Norbourg security fraud, the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, the Colgate scheme, or the many other schemes that we know of or that have not been reported. It does not assure the wounded victims of past fraud or the hesitant investor that we need now more than ever in this period of economic uncertainty a prevention tool. This is an important first step. I hope that the House will send the bill to committee and that we will have a logical and thorough discussion of the bill so that it may help others avoid such problems.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing for fraud).

Bill C-21 was introduced in the House on May 2, 2010 by the Minister of Justice. In fact, it is identical to Bill C-52 which was introduced during the second session of this Parliament, and did not become law because of prorogation, which we are very familiar with around here, on December 30, 2009.

The intent of the bill is to help crack down on white collar crime and increase justice for victims through measures that include a two-year mandatory minimum sentence for fraud over $1 million, additional specified aggravating factors for the court's consideration in sentencing, a new type of prohibition order, new obligations on the judge with respect to restitution orders, and a new type of impact statement to consider in sentencing.

The fraud provisions of the Criminal Code were most recently amended in 2004 in response to global impact of corporate scandals associated with companies such as Enron, Tyco and WorldCom. These amendments created a new offence of improper insider trading, increased the maximum sentence for the offences of fraud and fraud affecting the market from 10 to 14 years, and established a list of aggravating factors to aid the courts in sentencing.

The federal government also announced it would create a number of integrated market enforcement teams composed of RCMP officers, federal lawyers and other investigators, such as forensic accountants, to deal with capital market fraud cases.

Now the question is, with all of this supposed action on the part of the government, why are we not seeing results? Why are these fraud schemes still being uncovered?

We have to go back a number of years. I think most people have heard of Charles Ponzi and Ponzi schemes, but there are still a lot of people who are not familiar with the concept. A very large percentage of fraud schemes that are uncovered are in fact of this type.

Essentially, it is the use of investors' money that is taken in today to pay off previous investors. What happens is that organizations offer high rates of return and they entice people to give them money. Then, rather than invest the money in proper facilities, they simply use the money to give a promised return to their previous investors. We know that in doing that, eventually things are going to fall apart.

These schemes tend to go along. In some ways they are similar to the chain letter concept that people are familiar with. While the market is expanding, as happened in the 1920s and in the 1990s, these schemes can continue unabated for a number of years before they are found out. Eventually they are all found out because when the market drops, the people who are running the scam do not have the funds available to pay out. It essentially becomes a run on the bank. Everyone wants their money back, and they do not have the liquidity to do it. Basically, they run out of people to invest in their scheme.

In the case of Charles Ponzi, he collected approximately $9.5 million from 10,000 investors by selling promissory notes paying a 50% profit in 45 days. As a matter of interest, Charles Ponzi lived in the United States for a number of years, but there is a Montreal connection. In 1907, Ponzi moved to Montreal and became an assistant teller in a newly opened bank basically servicing new immigrants to the city. The man who owned the bank paid 6% interest on bank deposits, double the going rate at the time.

I emphasize the fact that the success of these schemes is based on people's greed, in that they are offering a very high rate of return. That is something the public should be very aware of. On checking the market and the banks, people will see that the average rate is roughly the same among the banks and institutions. When one institution offers double the rate, then people should be suspicious that something is wrong.

Even today, if one financial institution comes out with an offer that is higher than the others, people should not be lining up to buy that investment. People should be questioning why the institution would offer a higher rate of return. Perhaps it is short of money and may not be able to pay investors back.

In this case, Mr. Ponzi eventually rose to be the manager of that Montreal bank. He found out that the bank was in serious trouble because of bad real estate loans. Does this sound familiar? This was in 1907, in the last century, not in 2007. The bank was funding interest payments not through profit on investments, but by using money deposited in newly opened accounts. The bank eventually failed. The owner ran away to Mexico with a large part of the bank's money. This is how Mr. Ponzi got started. At the end of his career, I believe he died penniless and was not able to hide his ill-gotten gains.

However, that is not the case with the modern versions of the Ponzi scheme, in the sense that the schemes we see now are sophisticated and are planned well enough in advance that the money, as one of the members mentioned earlier, is sent off to tax havens. In 1907, Mr. Ponzi probably did not have the wherewithal to take his ill-gotten gains and get them off to Panama, Switzerland, or other tax havens. Perhaps he even believed that his scheme would never end. Maybe he misunderstood what he was doing.

The same cannot be said for an investor like Bernard Madoff, who essentially stole $65 billion. We are not talking about millions; we are talking about billions, $65 billion. This is a guy who opened the stock exchange on a routine basis. He knew all the players. He was an insider. He was a guy who was approached for advice.

Ten years before Bernie Madoff was arrested, there were attempts to gain the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States with information. It was well documented before the House of Representatives in the United States last year when Harry Markopolos detailed the whole sordid history. Ten years prior to that he had worked for Rampart Investment Management in Boston and his boss asked him whether he could duplicate Madoff's strategy. He said that the funds police each other. In the competitive world of business, competitors watch each other. It was not a surprise to other competitors in his field that he could produce returns because it is to be expected that some funds will out-perform others, but to do it on a consistent basis, month after month, year after year, raised red flags.

Somewhere along the line, Bernie Madoff's fund should have had a loss. At least once over a 10 year period, he should have shown a loss. Even the best of funds that go up on a routine basis do not go up forever. If the sector the funds are invested in does well, it will do well for maybe six months or a year, but it will not do well each and every month, year after year. Bernie Madoff's fund raised a red flag.

Harry Markopolos figured this out very quickly. He gave information to the SEC, but it did not listen to him. The SEC on several occasions checked Bernie out. It investigated his funds annually and stated that his returns were on the level. The SEC, the cop that was supposed to police the fund, did not do its job. It did not do a proper report, and this allowed this ponzi scheme to continue unabated year after year. Meanwhile, more people and organizations bought into the fund. This shows that deregulation has created a big problem in the United States.

Members will know that in the 1920s, after the stock market crashed, the president of the day was looking for somebody who could regulate the financial institutions and the stock market on Wall Street. Many members will know that he recruited none other than Joseph P. Kennedy, who had made large amounts of money in the wild and woolly unregulated markets of the 1920s. Justifying his appointment of Mr. Kennedy, the president said something to the effect that it took a thief to catch a thief. A lot of the rules put in place under Mr. Kennedy stayed in place for many years.

The system operated fairly well under those rules until, during the Bush years, Republicans adopted a philosophy of deregulation. The whole idea was to deregulate world markets. All financial institutions had to go global, and the way to do that was to have super financial institutions.

We saw this happen more or less in Canada when the current Conservative government was in opposition and the Liberals were in power. Canadian banks were trying to get the government to deregulate, which would have allowed them to swallow each other up and get bigger.

To the Liberal government's credit, it did not do go this way. That is why the current Conservative government is not in the mess that it could be in right now. I am sure the Liberals were all for deregulation, but had they had their way we could be in as big a mess as Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, or any of the other countries that opted for a deregulated environment.

A big part of the puzzle is to deal with this deregulated environment and try to pull the whole system back under some kind of control. The United States is doing that. It is starting to re-regulate huge sectors of the investment industry, the banking industry, in an effort to combat this type of activity. In spite of that, the American system over the last 10 years had a much better track record than the Canadian system. All we have to do is look at the number of bad guys that the Americans put in prison over the last few years and compare it to how many the Canadian system put in prison. We would have to look long and hard to find anybody who ever went to jail in Canada for white collar crime and fraud. There may be one or two, but that is about it. We are talking about single digits.

In the United States, several hundred people were put in jail for their white collar crimes, including the people who ran WorldCom and the people who ran Enron. Conrad Black, a Canadian who committed his white collar crimes in Canada, was not touched by Canadian authorities. In fact, he was eventually prosecuted and put in jail by the American system, the same system that spawned Bernie Madoff and the Ponzi scheme and the same system that is now attempting to re-regulate itself.

In Canada, a parallel country, we were not very aggressive on enforcement and the prosecution of these white collar criminals, judging by our record, and we are not looking at re-regulating. So I would say we have a long way to go. The government is bringing in this bill, which we will be supporting to get to committee as we did the last time before the bill died after the House was prorogued, but remember that this is just a small part of the whole puzzle that the government should be dealing with. The government should be looking at setting up some sort of task force to look at re-regulation. No doubt it will, in view of what is happening in the United States.

We also have to look at tax havens. We had a very comical situation here last week. We were debating the implementation of a free trade deal with Panama, which is on the tax haven list of the OECD and a list in France indicating that it is a tax haven; 350,000 private companies are hiding money in Panama and the government is talking about getting a free trade deal in place with Panama when even the Americans will not do it because Panama will not sign on to the OECD protocols about exchange of financial and banking information. On the very day that this was happening, The Globe and Mail carried an article about an employee of a Swiss bank who left the bank and went to France with computer disks containing several thousand accounts. But 1,800 Canadians are on that list. The government was somewhat embarrassed, because there were these 1,800 people who, by the way, had to invest a minimum of $500,000 in the Swiss bank.

They were flat-footed because they do not have the answers. They have not done anything on cutting down tax havens and trying to stop tax evasion. They have a moratorium. Two years ago when a similar bank employee from a Liechtenstein bank walked away with computer disks and went to Germany and sold them to the German government, Canada found that there were 100 people from Vancouver on the list. What happened? They were given amnesty.

The Conservatives say that if anybody wants to come in and admit they have money in Panama or someplace they should not have it, they are free to do a voluntary reporting and the government will not do anything to them. It will not even tap them on the wrist. If they pay the back taxes, they are home free. Is this any kind of message to be giving people out there, telling them that they will have an amnesty if we catch them?

Now we have 1,800 people whom we have uncovered, not because of all this police activity, but because of a bank employee.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I will have to stop the hon. member there, as his time has expired, and open the floor for questions and comments. The hon. member for Kitchener Centre.

[Stephen Woodworth, Conservative, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the comments of my colleague across the way. I have some interest in the subject. I am a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, and we have been studying organized crime for quite some time.

Interestingly, we have discovered that white-collar crime, including a whole host of fraudulent schemes, is being carried out by organized crime from within Canada. People have described our existing laws as too lax to deal with this development.

We have also discovered that organized crime, ironically, is committed by organized criminals, sophisticated people who are driven by the profit motive, and who are not just drug-addled unfortunates.

I am wondering if my friend would agree that, when dealing with organized, profit-driven, sophisticated criminals, deterrence is effective, and that we should therefore be increasing the penalties for such crimes.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Manitoba government recently cracked down on the Hell's Angels, a criminal gang in Winnipeg, and seized the clubhouse and their assets under the proceeds of crime laws. Certainly, in the last 20, 25 years we have seen marginal steps by provincial and federal governments to start dealing with the proceeds of crime. We have always argued that taking away the money supply from the criminals, from the drug dealers, removes the incentive to commit crimes. That is the way to do it.

It was not until the RICO laws took effect in the United States that the government started to make real progress against organized crime families. Had the United States not taken the initiative to step up the law enforcement and prosecutions and put these gangsters in jail where they belonged, it would still have the problem it had before.

Some big improvements have been made, and I think the government should be looking at that whole area. It is not just one bill today, dealing with this area. There is a whole bunch of other areas, including re-regulating the whole financial services industry, perhaps in cooperation with the Americans.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I want to invite my colleague from Winnipeg to talk again about this important issue of the tax evaders, but I want to ask him about a larger subject. It is my premise that we have to change our thinking. The change has to start right in Parliament in the way we deal with these tax evaders. It goes to the underpinnings of our justice system, our rule of law. It goes right to the heart of democracy.

This is the fourth or fifth list of tax evaders we have received. Last week's list named 1,800 tax evaders who had accounts in Switzerland. Basically, they will walk into the nearest CRA office and get amnesty, the same as everyone else did. No one will be charged.

On the other side of the coin, last night a couple of teenagers were caught stealing a carton of cigarettes from a service station, and they will get 18 months in jail. We have to think. What are we doing as a society? The multimillionaires who steal from the taxpayers will be at cocktail parties tonight. There is no sentence. There is nothing at all. Then we get a couple of kids who steal a carton of cigarettes and they each get nine months in jail.

We have to have a discussion about this. I think this crime is just as heinous as most other crimes, but there is no punishment. If they are caught, they report to the CRA office and they get amnesty. Nobody is in jail for setting up these accounts in foreign countries.

I ask my colleague to talk about it from a larger perspective. What does our society think about, and how does it treat these criminals? I will call them criminals as opposed to people who do other things. What is the difference?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there clearly is a double standard here. A half a million dollars is the minimum amount of money that one must put into this Swiss bank, so we are not talking about hundreds of thousands of people here. We should not be giving them the signal that they can have amnesty by walking into any Revenue Canada office in the country, volunteer their information and somehow they will be free and clear. How is that giving anybody the right signal here?

If people are rich, they can simply invest their money in Panama, in Barbados, in Liechtenstein or Switzerland and, if they get caught, they can simply walk in to a Revenue Canada office and they get amnesty. That is a terrible way for the government to be approaching the problem.

The government pretends it is tough on crime. I would like to see some of it because it certainly is not being very tough on crime when it comes to these white collar criminals. I would like to see some changes in the way it operates in this area.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a relatively easy question for my NDP colleague. I just heard our Conservative and Liberal colleagues act as though it were really important to make some headway in the fight against white collar crime. But we get the impression that both of these parties are dragging their feet on this issue, as they are on others.

Could the member speak to us about that?