Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'll tell you a bit about our organization. It's been in existence for 57 years. It started largely in the province of Saskatchewan and it has grown to where we now have 380 organizations affiliated to our federation, with an approximate total membership in excess of a million individual seniors.
What has been happening in the last few years is that more and more of our members are depending upon their individual investments for their retirement income. As you know, the number of people who are covered by a pension plan has been declining for some time, and therefore a good number of our members have to operate in the market.
We appreciate that Parliament is moving on Bill C-52, and I think it's a step in the right direction. However, I want to assure the committee members and the chair that it's not quite sufficient for our members. Let me give you an example.
In the Bre-X case, you had a situation where it was a publicly sold security. Let me tell you that the president of Bre-X had an exit strategy all along. How are you going to get hold of the president of Bre-X who is now, I understand, living either in the Turks and Caicos Islands or somewhere, beyond the Canadian jurisdiction? To a certain extent, with that bill, unless you have an extradition agreement, really nothing will happen.
The other thing is that when seniors are defrauded, quite often they're ashamed to report it. To a certain extent, they're leery of the rest of the family because they feel they should have consulted the family. But we then find out that somebody does goes ahead and lay a complaint and the person is prosecuted.
You know, there's nothing in the legislation that says, if a person is found guilty of fraud, they're not only found guilty of the fraud perpetrated on the person who complained...but there should be compensation and restitution for all of the people who got defrauded by that particular person. I think to a certain extent the bill falls short.
We passed a resolution at our convention, which emphasizes the direction we seniors would like to go in. I'd like to read that resolution:
Whereas the federal government, in the January 27, 2009, budget set out the plan for regulatory reform of Canada's capital markets; and whereas the expert panel on securities regulation that reported in the Hawkin Report, published January 2, 2009, recommends reform of the multiple and provincial Canadian securities regulatory schemes to a single Canadian securities regulator; and whereas the Canadian capital markets need efficient, effective, and shareholder-friendly regulatory protection; and whereas a change in the Canadian securities regulatory schemes has the support of the majority of the provinces; and whereas a single securities regulator will enhance the detection and prosecution of serious capital market crimes, where the current fragmented system of provincial securities regulations has shown that it cannot prevent such crimes; and whereas the current financial crisis has provided the motivation and optimism that such a reform to a single Canadian securities regulator will work and be supported by most provinces; therefore it be resolved that the National Pensioners and Senior Citizens Federation lobby the federal government and opposition parties to establish a national securities regulator through legislation that enhances the right of investments.
The reason it's so important for seniors to have a regulatory framework is that, to us, prevention is really the answer to stopping crimes. If you have a strong regulatory system, where, for instance, we could separate people who either sell or advise in the security field into different parts, that would be a beginning. If we could license them properly and bond them properly, that would be another help. We think the answer to white-collar crime, especially as far as seniors are concerned, rests more on the side of regulation than really punishment, because, as I said, these crooks are pretty smart. They always have an exit strategy. We know it's awfully hard to recuperate these fraudulent gains.
Quite often they ship it out of the country, they transfer it to the rest of the family and so on, and it makes it very difficult. And for an average senior to have access to the judicial system, it's very hard. We're saying prevention is the answer to white-collar crime, especially when it comes to the question of seniors.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.