Industry and Technology Committee on June 11th, 2026

[Anthony Quinn]

Thank you very much.

The fraudsters are using more and more powerful psychological tricks and efforts to convince Canadians to fall for these scams. It's not necessarily related to cognitive issues. It's more likely to be someone's exaggerated sense of their own awareness and ability to interpret these financial decisions. I think we have to look to international jurisdictions that have put more effort into protecting them, beyond education—the U.S. and the U.K.—and really encourage....

Again, parliamentarians, require these institutions, particularly banks and telcos, to play a greater role in the protection of Canadians, seniors being the largest number and losing the most money. Put in requirements that if they are not making these provisions and protections and are not putting them in place to prevent the frauds, they will be responsible for the financial losses. If they are put in that position, they will be more likely—more incentivized—to increase protections for Canadians.

[Bruce Fanjoy, Liberal, Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

I will pass the remaining time to Mr. Bains.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Fanjoy.

Thank you to the witnesses for joining us. I'm going to try to quickly get into this.

Mr. Quinn, I'm from Richmond, British Columbia. It has the longest life expectancy in Canada and a lot of seniors living here.

I know you talked about telecoms. We heard from previous witnesses today about the sophistication behind the fraud and the scam compounds. You talked about the emotional side and how clever the fraudsters are becoming. We also heard, previously, about loneliness. They target people who are lonely. Can you talk about some specific gaps and provide recommendations for our financial crimes agency, moving forward? Are you participating in submissions for the financial crimes agency?

Also, telecoms provide alerts if there's a call that appears to be a potential scam. Do you wish there were alerts available in the banking system, in some way?

[Anthony Quinn]

I think all of the above apply, sir.

The idea that banks and telecoms are not doing anything is not what I'm trying to get across, but there is certainly room for more. We see on our phones the alerts indicating that this may be a scam call, but many calls are still getting through. On the social media side, as my colleague from Wealthsimple mentioned, there is literally a deluge of fake and phony ads on social media, which is where seniors are gathering for much of their information and their digital lives.

When it comes to gaps, I think my answer would be that we would like parliamentarians to really take an aggressive approach to regulating the institutions, through the CRTC and the control you have over financial institutions, to require them to play a greater role.

We cannot ask the victims—seniors and younger Canadians—to be experts in all of these developing fields, but we should be requiring these large, national institutions, which have no competitors and are earning billions of dollars a year in revenue from Canadians, to be true partners in protecting us from the fraudsters.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

Thank you. I believe that's my time completed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fanjoy and Mr. Bains.

Mr. Ste-Marie, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank both witnesses for being here.

Mr. Smith, you're telling us that other countries require digital platforms, such as Meta, to verify the authenticity of companies offering financial services through their advertisements, and you're asking that this be done here as well. Is that correct?

[Colin Smith]

Yes, that's correct. You can see listed on Meta's website the list of countries that require additional verification for any advertisements in a number of industries, including financial services. This is something that Meta has the technical capability to do but chooses not to do in Canada.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

I'm stunned.

Do you know if other countries with stricter checks have seen this type of fraud decrease among their populations?

[Colin Smith]

That is my general understanding, yes. I'm not necessarily an expert in all the stats in other countries, but this verification step is definitely important. In the context of what we've seen impersonating Wealthsimple, it's been as egregious as deepfakes of our CEO pitching stocks to Canadians. It is clearly fraudulent material using our brand.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

This is truly concerning. Thank you very much.

Do you know why Meta does not offer this additional verification process in Canada? In other countries, did this require the passage of a law or regulation—something the government hasn't done here yet?

Do you believe that the fact that this process hasn't been implemented here constitutes a form of laxity on the part of digital platforms?

[Colin Smith]

Yes, I believe a big part of why they haven't done them here is that it's just extra friction in the process of putting ads on the platform. I do think it's a spot where the government could step in.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Quinn, thank you very much for being here as well.

We hear too many horror stories like the one you referred to, where seniors find their accounts drained of their life savings, and nothing is done about it. This has to change. There are many cases in the Quebec media, on public affairs programs, that report on the scams that have taken place. It's been a few years now. Things are moving very slowly.

From your remarks, I clearly understood that telecommunications companies, financial institutions, and digital platforms must be held more accountable. On that note, I'd like to hear your opinion on the issue of civil liability. If someone has been defrauded and there are reasonable grounds to believe that the platform where the advertisement was posted was negligent, should the platform be held jointly liable?

[Anthony Quinn]

I don't think I could argue against that, sir.

We have arrived at a situation in Canada of blaming the victims for not educating themselves or not being aware enough. I believe we have to turn the tables to protect Canadians. If this means holding the platforms themselves accountable—the telecoms, the digital service providers or the financial institutions—I would not think that our members would disagree with that.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you. Obviously, we're talking about crimes here; what's being done and these thefts are criminal acts.

Earlier this week, Meta told us that it is making significant efforts to reduce fraudulent ads, even though it takes an average of four days to remove them once they've been reported. Furthermore, as you mentioned, there is a flood of fake ads on these platforms. We've also heard that perhaps 10% of the ads are fraudulent, but that Meta generates revenue from them.

In your opinion, what percentage of fraudulent ads should mean that an organization is designated as a criminal organization?

[Anthony Quinn]

It would be hard for me to speak to the percentage, but when we know the funnel through which the majority of these crimes are being perpetrated is Meta and similar organizations, I think we have to hold them to a higher standard, require them to be part of the solution and not allow them to continue to be the funnel through which these international or domestic criminals are working.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I am yielding my remaining 10 seconds of speaking time to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

You had about 15 seconds left. As always, thank you for your generosity, Mr. Ste-Marie.

Ms. Kronis, the floor is yours for five minutes.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks so much.

Mr. Smith, I'm going to ask you a few questions.

I thought you put it really well when you said that the system has moved to attacking the people who are using the systems—as opposed to attacking the systems—and getting the clients to move money. Of course, the big challenge with that is that it's happening at the speed of cyber. There has been a huge focus on trying to get data after the fact, but prevention, at this point, is largely reactive. Is that fair?

[Colin Smith]

The way we've been tackling this at Wealthsimple is to think about putting security features more directly into the client experience in our application so that they're part of how our clients interact with Wealthsimple. It's not just the behind-the-scenes fraud rules and models that we run.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Of course, the hard part for you is that the financial institutions really are the face of this. When someone finds out that they've been scammed, the first place they call is the financial institution. In many investment scams, once the money is sent, especially if it's sent through crypto or some kind of offshore platform, recovery is virtually impossible. Is that correct?

[Colin Smith]

That's generally true. We do attempt recovery on behalf of our clients in fraud cases, but there can absolutely be challenges in doing so.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

From a systems perspective, you do try to do some proactive things, but from a legislative perspective, the system's still really dependent on the victim spotting the fraud and reporting it after the fact. Is that fair?

[Colin Smith]

I don't think that's entirely fair. We take a lot of proactive measures on behalf of our clients. That could be placing warnings in the app if we see something that seems suspicious for a client before they do a transaction. For example, if we have a client who is attempting to move money in crypto for the first time, there's a non-dismissible breather screen that goes up, warning about the typical types of scams that happen on crypto, and they have to accept it to move past it.

We're definitely thinking about how we can be more proactive, despite the legislation that you mentioned.

[Tamara Kronis, Conservative, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

That's really helpful to know.

As a financial institution, do you have any way to police things like big investment ads, other than having someone sit there and behave like the user?