Mr. Chair, since time is slipping by rather quickly, I will get back to the issue of banks and respective responsibility.
It is entirely false to claim that responsibility for the Earl Jones affair lies with the Autorité des marchés financiers in Quebec. Jones was a fraudster. He was on nobody's books. He was not licensed, and the same thing could happen irrespective of the authority that would be licensing legitimate people.
The minister is an attorney, as am I, and I'm sure his staff would be able to consult the court documents and show them to him. They will show that what I'm saying is the case. In Earl Jones, the Beaconsfield branch of the Royal Bank of Canada on St. Charles Boulevard had all the information required to show that Earl Jones was carrying out an elaborate fraud with trust accounts that were not real trust accounts. You know how I know that? Because that's word for word what the Royal Bank put in. You know what the federal government, which is in charge of the chartered banks, did about this? Zero. Nothing. Zip. Nada.