I can answer that question. Thank you.
I think the offences of theft and fraud, which Ms. Morency mentioned in her opening statement, are quite broadly drafted and apply to a wide range of circumstances because there are various ways in which people can obtain the financial and other sorts of economic resources of victims.
Theft, in principle, is the idea of obtaining through taking without having authority to take; and fraud, in principle, can really be thought of as persuading, through some form of trickery or deception, the victim to give you their property in circumstances that are marked by dishonesty in some way.
The particular modalities of the way these offences can be committed are not expressly set out through these general offences. They're more framed around the basic ideas of taking without permission or obtaining through some kind of deception.
There are in the Criminal Code a variety of other more specifically framed criminal offences. I think most charges that we see will fall under the rubric of either theft or fraud and there can be a substantial amount of overlap between those offences. Some forms of wrongdoing can be prosecuted as both theft and fraud, and in those particular cases, the Crown may choose to proceed under one or the other.
They would be the main types of offences that we would see charged in these kinds of cases, even though there is, for instance, a specific offence of obtaining funds through the misuse of a power of attorney. Even that form of conduct can be captured as fraud, because that's a dishonest and unauthorized use of the permission that a person has that would equate to dishonest behaviour.
The predominant charges we see in these types of cases are likely fraud, where there is some deception that takes place that leads—