Finance committee  IIROC is also in our building and we use the same elevator banks. I'm not against the single regulator at all. What bothers me, within the realm of the single regulator, is that very little has to do with investigation, prosecution, and so on. That's why I want them split off.

Finance committee  It has to be, because we have the situations where you work this particular scam in British Columbia, you scoop out what you can, you move to Alberta to work it, and so on. The databases don't exist in this country, to my knowledge. Even the lists of the people who are doing it

Finance committee  What the governments do is have offshore bank accounts. I spent 15 years with three of the auditors general here in Ottawa, and the point is, in trying to take the budget information, it's just about impossible to see where that goes. Some of that can easily be leaked into an off

Finance committee  Yes, and it's a choice. Whether the opposition parties know that this is going on or not, I can't comment on that. Things have changed. The point is, you cannot wipe out all of the offshore accounts when you're using them yourself. That is my point.

Finance committee  I think we're saying the same thing. What I'm trying to say is there are certain transactions and events in Canada, as in the case of Nortel, which was asked about before, in which you have to ask where that cash went, because many Canadians lost, and the losses were in the billi

Finance committee  I think as I said in the material distributed, that compartmentalization drives me crazy, with the various governments across Canada, because I'm always off the particular subject. So cooperation has to occur across different government departments, and this can be done. I don't

Finance committee  The evidence is overwhelming that they have messed up the Nortels and the business income trusts, and on and on. We can't gather evidence to support this. It doesn't exist.

Finance committee  Where do you think the money went that those people made? That stock went up to $124, and there were people doing all sorts of things with it—shorting it. They were also the executives, and I can't comment because there is this eventual criminal trial. There was a lot of those ty

Finance committee  Where is the money? I think I know where a lot of it is, but it would take a fair bit of proof.

Finance committee  I didn't say that. I'm just saying that you can probably cut off 70%, 75% of scams that you can work in Canada just by having a few pieces of decent legislation that provide the resources to investigate and prosecute.

Finance committee  I'm talking about the individuals who are trading the stocks, getting the bonuses, and so on. This is all published. It is in the National Post and Canadian Business. We said, “Look, here's what these guys are doing. You should not be investing in this stock, because this is all

Finance committee  The U.S. banking system is totally different. I took my graduate studies in the U.S. and had to do various reports on this. You can't compare a half dozen big banks in Canada to literally thousands and thousands of state-regulated banks in the U.S. Canada was easier to regulate.

Finance committee  —I'm standing on that. Still, the general point that you're getting at is, for sure, how can we deregulate accounting when the rest of the world—most, unfortunately—is going in the other direction? I belong to all the big accounting associations, so I'm annoying all of them at t

Finance committee  You can go to certain lawyers who will be very helpful, yes. Is the word out on the street what lawyer to go to? To some degree. It's not something I have completely sampled. It's not just the lawyers; it's the accountants as well.

Finance committee  I've hammered two or three times at this: self-regulating organizations. This has not worked in Canada for years. We keep clinging to it. The evidence is overwhelming for self-serving.... As long as the discipline is occurring within the accounting organizations or within the mut