Absolutely. Obviously there are bad financial advisers out there, and there are good ones. I'm not going to sit here and say that the investment community is lily-white on this either, but it is important to note that the government intervened and broke a promise here.
We have people I know of who invested in the company I work for because they believed Stephen Harper's promise not to tax income trusts. So they believed, going ahead, that would be fine, that there would be no adverse fiscal regime changes, and there have been.
To quote one of my investors, “Gee, I guess I wouldn't have been screwed so badly by the government if only I'd diversified more.” I think that's the summary feeling that's out there.
Sure there are cases where probably people held too high-risk a portfolio, too high a proportion. I'm not going to deny that. But by the same token, there was a sudden sea change in the fiscal regime, contrary to the government's own promise.