Madam Speaker, the member just touched on an important difference between Canada and the United States.
There are several cases in the U.S. but I will talk about the case of the Southern Baptist Council where there were millions and millions of dollars involved in a Ponzi scheme there. What happened is that the early investors who received these enormous returns had to, at the end of the day, give all the money back. The result was that the investors overall were able to recoup, I think, 40¢ to 50¢ on the dollar. They were not entirely happy about that but at least they got something back. That happens and has happened many times in the States.
Fundamentally, it is all about regulations and the regulatory bodies. The regulatory body here in Canada has been asleep for years. I want to quote from an article from Canadian Business Online dated September 27, 2007. It reads, “Canada's losing war against white-collar crime”.
The author was talking about the RCMP's launch of the integrated market enforcement team, which I talked about earlier, that was started under the previous government in 2003. It had only five convictions in five years and yet in the United States 1,200 convicts are in jail because of its laws.
He goes on to say:
Just ask people on Bay Street who they are afraid of. It’s not the cops, it’s not the OSC. It’s the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission because they have real teeth.
Is that not sweet? The Canadian Bay Street investment community is not afraid of the cops in Canada and not afraid of the Ontario Securities Commission but it is afraid of the United States Security and Exchange Commission which has real teeth.
Regulation is the problem. We keep appointing people to the regulatory bodies who golf and go to Christmas parties with the people they are supposed to be regulating.