Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, witnesses.
If I could begin, please, with the comparison of the Federal Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it makes for an interesting juxtaposition. I'm glad you drew that parallel for us. I certainly do agree with your point that for both public and private institutions there's a crisis of confidence amongst the general public. Where we part somewhat is that Sarbanes-Oxley was introduced as a swift dramatic reaction. It was symbolic as much as practical, I think. Something had to be done. The reaction to the corporate world here, the corporate community in Canada, is that we would prefer voluntary compliance to ethical guidelines rather than the rigidity of Sarbanes-Oxley. That's the message we had from your boss and others.
I can tell you, I used to work for an international union and we had $40 billion in our relatively small union pension fund that we managed on both sides of the border. And white collar crime became a blue collar issue very much amongst the beneficiaries of our pension plan. So I disagree with you partly in the tone and the content when you make the case that perhaps we're doing here what the Americans did with Sarbanes-Oxley and that they were going over the top. That's the message we got from the Liberals. The immediate reaction to this bill was that it really wasn't that bad; we don't have to go so hard on this; we don't want to imply that we were a bunch of crooks. Well, that's the tone I'm getting from your reaction. Maybe you're underestimating how horrified Canadians were at both the Liberal scandals and the corporate community's malfeasance.
The rules we've put in place here don't come close to Sarbanes-Oxley. I was reading that Kenneth Lay would have walked away free had he been charged here in Canada under our rules, whereas he's going to be led away in handcuffs in the United States.
You raised the issue of independence of auditors. Why is it that in Canada the auditor of a major corporation can also be selling tax advice and other financial services to the same company? To me, if I were a pension trustee, I would say, don't invest in that company because there is a clear conflict of interest. But you're willing to allow that to.... I'm not questioning your right to criticize the Federal Accountability Act as being too stringent, but I certainly take it with a grain of salt, because your own institutions haven't gone very far to satisfy Canadians fears.