Good afternoon, honourable members of the justice committee and fellow participants.
It is unfortunate that I need to be here. I wish to thank all of you for your labours with this bill and to encourage that we push harder yet.
The 3,000 people that I and we represent seek benefit from this bill's development, and we felt it highly important to stand in front of you and say that we support your efforts and also to ask what more we can do to help.
We hold the most unfortunate status, to the best of our knowledge, of being the victims of our nation’s largest financial fraud—a most precarious and prestigious honour. Few people can comprehend a billion-plus dollars. The financial hardship with our people is simply overwhelming in thousands of cases. We are living in an epidemic of fraud today, with little or no deterrent to slow down those who are inclined to it. We need to empower and give resources to our authorities to do the job, and we simply do not do that right now.
I suggest criminals land on a gentle pink pillow in Canada, to the grand detriment of those they have victimized. If fraud under half a million dollars is presented to the police, they do not act. We suggest it is because they cannot act within the restraints of budgetary and other resource concerns. And trust me, the bad guys know this.
How does it come to be that after one provincial regulatory body, the Alberta Securities Commission in this case, fines a man, he continues to garner funds—millions—from unsuspecting investors after that? We Canadians need an effective and efficient national regulatory body that does not drop the ball and that offers systems that effectively give restitution to victims of such fraud.
Our story and abuse began in the mid 1990s, and here we are 14 years later.
We further encumber our RCMP special forces in white collar crime in not having access—this is unbelievable—to the data gathered by the regulators once a criminal case has been launched. I appreciate deeply our privacy laws in this nation—I really do—however, there is something off and out of step with this picture. We also cut the officers' travel budgets when we need them to travel outside, let alone within, our national borders to do the work.
Being from Alberta, I ask how it is that we have been name-tagged “Nigeria of the north”. We have yet to find accountability in the Bre-X story. Also, we let other nations prosecute our criminals, as in the case of Conrad Black in the United States.
The highest per capita income in western civilization rests with Alberta right now. I suggest that we are being targeted by these predators. Who wouldn't come to Calgary or Edmonton when they know that their residents have the disposable income? The bad guys know this.
In this bill’s summary, there is mention of the creation of a prohibition order to prevent convicted persons from having access to or authority over property and wealth of others. May we humbly suggest and say out loud that it is long before they are convicted that most burn through the resources of others, literally defending what has been stolen. Fines are paid by investor funds to regulatory bodies all the time.
The summary also mentions and uses the word “consideration”—so “we'll think about it”?—of restitution for victims of fraud. We ask the honourable members of this committee to find and establish in law something beyond this word “consideration” of restitution. Are we able, once conviction is at hand, to take the wealth and property of the convicted? May we at least freeze liquid assets in the process? Can we find those assets hidden out there in the world beyond our nation's borders, and can we do it economically? Can we service those who have been harmed in a manner that is just and focused on the truth?
Please answer my questions with the word “yes”.
I thank you for the opportunity, your time, and surely your attention.
Thank you.