Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion put forward by the Bloc member.
This issue has been around for quite a number of years. It has provoked a lot of debate and emotion on the part of people in the chamber and all across the country.
It is not so much about what the final structure of the proposed organization would be, but more about how the people who would be running it would make decisions that would help people in this country.
For example, Ontario has a big securities regulator. In the last couple of years it has had a grand total of two convictions. However, the regulator in the United States managed to get convictions on 1,000 cases or more over the last couple of years.
It is interesting to note that Conrad Black, who is doing time in a Florida prison--maybe not for long, but he is there now--committed his white collar crimes here in Canada, but it was not the Canadian system that took action against him; it was the American system that took action and put him in prison for the crimes that he committed here in Canada.
If this exercise is all about centralizing the activities of a national securities commission in Ontario as the Bloc member has suggested, if it is all about a few more jobs for Bay Street, and if it is all about saving a few dollars on compliance costs, then we would be better off staying with what we have.
Manitoba has a small securities commission which works very well. There are members in this chamber who know that the system in Manitoba works well. The people on that commission are local and they know what is going on in the local market. If someone complains that somebody is selling securities without registering a prospectus with the securities commission, that activity bubbles up in the smaller jurisdiction and the information gets to the securities commission and it acts.
That is what the system is supposed to accomplish. It is all about protecting the public, making sure that members of the public are not get taken advantage of, that they do not lose money because of people involved in shady practices.
This is not about saving some compliance costs and making it easier for a big company to file one prospectus rather than 13. This is not about creating a few more jobs for some Bay Street people. This is all about having a system in place operated by people who believe in enforcement, people who actually do their jobs. This is not about taking people from industry and putting them into positions of regulatory authority.
We saw what happened recently with Bernard Madoff in the United States. Harry Markopolos delivered the entire case against Bernie Madoff to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and nothing was done. Why? Because the whole commission was run by former salespeople and executives of the very investment companies the commission was supposed to be regulating. That is the real problem.
The public would be better served if we had an effective structure, one that looks out for the public instead of looking out for the businesses it is supposed to regulate.
We have this problem throughout society. It is not just peculiar to the securities industry. We have it in all sorts of businesses wherever the government is trying to regulate. I hate to keep picking on the insurance industry, but there is a regulatory body with respect to the insurance industry. It makes some sense when government makes an appointment to a board that is governing that industry, that it tries to get somebody who knows something about the industry. It would be nice to appoint a bunch of people who have a blank mind on the issue, but that is not what happens. The government tries to get some people on the board who know about the industry.
What happens is that the people who are chosen come from the industry. At the end of the day, there is a regulatory body made up of people who, in essence, are trying to keep tabs on and regulate their friends. That is why we have so many difficulties in this whole regulatory environment.
We have to deal with this from a different perspective. We have to deal with it from the standpoint of protecting the consumer and getting people whose motives are pure, whose motives are direct, who want to enforce the law and want to make sure that the public is protected. That is the bottom line.
I have less concern about the area of provincial jurisdiction than some members here, particularly the members who introduced this motion.
Having said all of this, the government is embarking on an exercise where it is trying to enforce its views in a situation where it is a minority government and we are dealing with constitutional issues. We all know where constitutional issues have gotten us over the years. Some of us went through the Meech Lake debate and the Charlottetown debate. We should have learned enough from that process to know that it is best to leave these issues alone.