Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the finance committee hearing.
My name is Murray Candlish. I am a semi-retired farmer in Daysland, Alberta. My wife, Cindy, and I had $350,000 in ABCP when it froze last August. That money is what we have saved over 28 years. It consisted of funds we received from selling our farmyard, the sale of our farm machinery, my mother's inheritance to me, a gift from Cindy's dad, and small amounts we had put away for many years.
Farmers don't have a pension plan to rely on in their later years, and we were trying to build savings that we could help our children with and ensure a decent retirement with. Our savings did not come easily to us. We went without and worked very hard to obtain them.
June 2006 was when we became involved with an investment adviser who was referred to us by our credit union manager, whom we trusted very much. We placed our savings in a mutual fund that he thought was appropriate for us. Over the next five months we were down $30,000. We felt very uncomfortable about losing this much and were afraid of losing more. We asked our investment adviser to get us out of that mutual fund and into a savings account that was very safe. He recommended a 90-day SIT trust that was triple-A rated.
I asked him what assets were involved with it. After our recent experience with the mutual funds, I was a little shy. He replied that he didn't know what the assets were, but his quote was, “If this fails, the entire banking system in Canada will fail.” It was that statement that convinced me to place our savings in what we now know is asset-backed commercial paper.
From 2006 until August 2007, everything was fine. Our investment adviser told us that our funds were frozen, but not to worry, everything would be fine. Now we are here in April 2008, and we know that everything is not fine. In fact, everything has turned horribly wrong. Our life's savings may only be worth half of their original value, at best.
The last eight months have been something that I will never forget. All of our dreams are slowly disappearing as the value of our savings erodes. We've always promised our children that we would get them a decent start in their early years, like helping with college and perhaps a small down payment on their first house.
My wife has worked hard all her life raising three children and working by my side on the farm. She is now working at a nursing home. She doesn't deserve to have her dreams evaporate like this.
At first we were in shock. How could this be, when we were in a savings account that was as good as a GIC?
We watched the days go by, waiting for the next deadline to arrive, only to be disappointed that another deadline was being set, and in early March rumours began circulating that this paper we owned might have a very reduced value. That is when I decided to take a more proactive approach and do what I could to help recover our savings.
In the last month I can honestly say I have received at least 300 e-mails and a couple of hundred phone calls, many of them from folks like me. The stories they have told me are slightly different in content, but they all have the same ending. Many of the stories made my stomach churn.
Members of the finance committee, please help the individual investors in our fight to get back what is rightfully ours. If the individual investors are guilty of anything, they are guilty of trusting the integrity of the Canadian banking industry.
Thank you.