Thank you, Madam Chair.
As you mentioned, I am the executive director responsible for enforcement, and with me is my colleague Christian Desjardins, director of assessment and inquiry.
The Autorité des marchés financiers, or AMF for short, is the regulating body for financial markets in Quebec, and its mission is to regulate the financial sector.
The AMF proactively monitors issues and challenges related to financial fraud at all times. That monitoring takes many forms and is carried out by a number of teams within the AMF. Those efforts are complemented by the AMF's active involvement in Quebec, Canadian and international committees.
We have multi-sector teams working together to ensure market oversight, cybersurveillance and vigilant monitoring. We also invest heavily in major awareness campaigns and strategic partnerships.
Since March 16, the AMF has been in telework mode. We were able to quickly set up the teams needed to keep enforcement and awareness work going remotely. With a few exceptions, all employees are fully operational from home. We've had to ease up on activities such as in-person interviews and testimony, but it hasn't affected operations. Information-gathering and analysis work, as well as video-conference interviews are carrying on.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the AMF has stepped up its web surveillance. It also sits on an investment fraud task force that brings together all of Canada's securities regulators to share information on illegal activities identified in connection with COVID-19.
In addition, the AMF is on a task force established by the North American Securities Administrators Association, which represents securities regulators in Canada and the United States. The purpose of the task force is to coordinate the communication of potential investment fraud stemming from COVID-19, coordinate related investigations and make the public aware of potential risks.
Another step we have taken is establishing a market monitoring strategy to better target potential market manipulation and insider trading. Accordingly, we've been keeping a closer eye on pharmaceutical companies that falsely advertise vaccines or quick fixes, for instance.
We've also made a dedicated effort and tailored monitoring activities to detect potential insider trading in connection with the extended deadline for financial reporting granted by regulators in response to the pandemic. The extension for filing market-related information heightens the risk of insider trading, with executives, professionals, advisers and others having access to non-public sensitive information for a longer period.
That's it for the market oversight and enforcement piece.
Now I'll turn to public outreach and education, an area where we've been extremely proactive. The AMF has sought to raise public awareness by posting COVID-19-related fraud prevention alerts on its website, and stepping up the number of fraud prevention posts on Facebook and other social media sites.
We've sent letters to Quebec's leading seniors associations and consumer groups to remind them that our support services are still available and to encourage them to report scams and other problems they encounter.
Lastly, we've issued multiple investor warnings, which are posted on social media sites and often passed on by our partners.
I'd also like to highlight an important initiative. Back in March, after noticing the number of COVID-19-related scams, we started investing in a large-scale awareness campaign that ran from April 6 to May 5 on television and online including on social media sites.
I want to underscore the number of education initiatives we undertook using TV, social media and other means to reach seniors and vulnerable populations.
The AMF is one of Canada's financial regulators, and we constantly work with all regulators in Canada, as well as international regulators.
Thank you.