Over the years, a number of people have been warning that there are problems with the regulatory system, and I had the great pleasure of accompanying Dr. Al Rosen to Ottawa in June of the year Minister Flaherty issued the income trust decision. That created great flak, but Dr. Rosen presented a report where the Accountability Research Corporation had studied the top 50 business income trusts in Canada, and already many investors had lost most of their investments in some of those trusts. To me, that was a very significant warning to the government that something was wrong, and whether Minister Flaherty made the right decision or not, something had to be done. It might have been done in a different way, but he didn't create the problem. The problem was created by industry.
We've had warnings on our website. There have been various journalists warning about faulty products like principal-protected notes. This misleads people into thinking the principal is protected, but I've heard from one of our members who called me and said, “ I've found the ideal product; my principal is guaranteed; I'm getting return of 8%.” And I said, “Ed, you'd better look into it, because it sounds too good to be true.” Three months later he called me and said, “Stan, I don't believe it. The interest rate has been cut to 4%, and when I tried to get money back, they said I could only get it back at the end of the guarantee period, 10 years out, and if I want my money now I get 70%.”
The problem is that the media in some respects does speak out, but not everybody is able to.