Thank you.
First of all, I would like to say thank you for the opportunity of bringing a senior's point of view to the committee on this subject.
We do wholeheartedly support the amendments that are being proposed in Bill C-52. The only thing is that, in my point of view, there are a couple of things that are not there.
The first one is the point of restitution. For these people, it's not automatic; it's something that has to be applied for. The victims have to make it known that they want restitution. Many of them are senior people who do not have the skills and are not computer literate. Many of them don't even own computers, let alone being literate with them, to be able to obtain this information. So I think when the perpetrators are charged and convicted with the fraud, the point of restitution should be automatically there. As I heard earlier that it only lasts for the time of the sentence, I think this is something that should be reinstituted: that those people still owe that debt until that restitution is paid, even if it's for the rest of their lives.
Seniors are probably more vulnerable than anybody else because many of us grew up in the time and day when your name was your reputation and your means of doing business was very often with a handshake. Properties changed hands without any paperwork because two people agreed that one was going to sell a piece of property to the other one, and they shook hands on it with the price. When these people are offered something that looks almost too good to be true to them, they don't have the skills because they've never run into this in their lives. Society has changed, and that is no longer a way we can do business. We have to be more vigilant. I think Bill C-52 is one step along that road.
The other thing I notice in Bill C-52 is that the person who is the actual perpetrator of the crime is the only one responsible. Most of the people who have been charged so far are people who have worked for large companies in the investment business, and there is nothing in there that says the company has to bear a responsibility. Any place I've ever worked at, I had a supervisor looking over my shoulder, and I think probably this is the case there, but obviously the supervisors aren't looking over their shoulders in order for them to be able to do this. I think the company also bears a responsibility.
We're also in favour of the crime unit that Mr. Logan has suggested. This is because, with these seniors, when they go to report it to the police, they say, well, that isn't what they do; they've got other things to do that are higher priority, such as somebody being robbed or mugged or something of that sort. But with the crime unit, they have a special place to go where it will be looked at and some action taken on it.
We definitely support the bill as it is, and we hope further things can come of it.
Thank you.