Thank you very much.
Thank you for inviting me here today.
I'm a commercial litigation lawyer, so I'm a civil lawyer, not a criminal defence lawyer. I practise, as the chair said, at Bennett Jones, a firm in Toronto. The focus of my practice is commercial fraud litigation, so I act for victims of fraud--typically, corporate victims of fraud. In the last number of years, in addition to that I have acted in a number of cases in what I classify as consumer fraud, investment-type fraud, and telemarketing-type fraud.
So while most of my practice is for corporations, I've also had quite a bit of experience with individuals who have been defrauded in what I call a consumer or investment type of fraud. In those cases, the key is to attempt to get the money back for the victims, so I can speak a bit about that. In my experience with respect to these consumer frauds and the corporate frauds, I've also dealt with law enforcement and the crowns for a number of years and with how they deal with these types of consumer frauds.
With respect to the bill you're considering, I agree that Canada needs to change its focus in how it deals with white-collar crime. The bill is a step in the right direction. However, it is not something that will completely deal with white-collar crime or comprehensively deal with it, in my view. My concern is that, on its own, it deals with only one small aspect of white-collar crime--the sentencing part.
My concern is that once we get to sentencing currently in Canada, while there has been and is a perception that sentences are light, with the well-prosecuted, well-investigated cases, the sentences have been certainly more than two years. You'll see a number of examples in the materials that have been circulated. My concern goes to the first two steps before you get to sentencing, which are law enforcement's investigation of white-collar crime in Canada, and then, once a crime is investigated and gets to the crown's office, the crown's ability to prosecute that type of case.
Those are my general concerns. With respect to specifics, I would raise two concerns. One has to do with the $1-million threshold. This means that when you get to the crown part of the criminal process, you're asking the crown's office to deal with quantifying a fraud, which crowns are typically not well equipped to do.
If you're going to add a layer of complexity at the crown's office, you need to back that up with more resources. The concern with respect to adding the $1-million threshold they have to establish is that if you're making the prosecution of white-collar crime more complex, fewer cases will get prosecuted, which would be the opposite of what I understand the intent of the bill to be. If you're prosecuting them, they will take longer to prosecute, and the delay inherent in the more complex frauds may result in more cases being withdrawn because of the constitutional infringement of the right to a speedy trial.
The second concern I'll address is with respect to the mandatory consideration of restitution. In reading the Hansard notes and the presentations made to you by victims of fraud, the concern I have is that people will assume that the criminal sentencing process will get them their money back. It does not, and it will not under this bill.
The draft bill you're considering provides a form for victims to fill out, and then says that the sentencing judge “shall consider” restitution. The problem there is that it does not change the law with respect to when a sentencing judge can grant restitution. I'm not suggesting that it should be changed, but the problem is that the criminal process and the criminal courts are not an adequate way for victims to get restitution or to get their money back. So to the extent that the bill raises expectations in that area, I think that is a concern.
Those are my general themes. I am prepared to talk about any of the other areas that you'd like to question me about, but that is the extent of my presentation.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.