On Monday, September 14th, I flew to Ottawa to represent the Shire Victims Group. Monday night was mostly a travel day, but I met with the Honorable Jim Prentice, Minister of the Environment at 8pm Monday night. Now one might ask why I would meet with Minister of the Environment, but it just so happens that he is my Member of Parliament. I had an excellent meeting with Minister Prentice where I discussed our particular situation. Our message was well received and the Minister encouraged me to follow up with him after I returned home. He also encouraged me to be strong and keep up our fight.
Specific recommendations made to the minister were:
1. Securities Commissions should handle all communications to investors regarding the cease trade order citing the specific allegations. Allowing a company under cease trade to provide official notice to investors using their own wording is not acceptable and is misleading to investors.
2. Creating a clear process for the intake of white-collar crimes complaints such as the proposed Securities Crimes Unit. Today there is a lack of clarity amongst divisions who should take a complaint and whether the complaint should be investigated.
3. Provide additional resources to police fraud units to reduce investigation times. Slow investigations lead to loss of critical evidence, lag in prosecutions, and reduced success of civil claims.
4. Creating a single Canada-wide National Securities Commission with a harmonized regulatory and enforcement framework. It is evident that individuals & corporations are able to simply pick up & relocate to other provinces in Canada and continue to perpetrate fraud.
5. Licensing the exempt market. This raises responsibility of those selling securities to the public to take reasonable care in knowing the nature and legitimacy of the investments for which they receive a commission.
6. Imposing mandatory minimum and stiffer sentences for white-collar crime. The life-time impact on victims of white collar crime is frequently no less than for violent crimes.
7. Eliminate the "one-sixth" rule completely, whereby non-violent criminals are eligible for parole after serving a small fraction of their sentence.
Tueday, September 15th was a jam-packed day. It started with hearing our story carried again by CBC Radio News. They covered the Syndicated Gold Depository SA story and mentioned our story and that I was in Ottawa as part of a group lobbing the federal government on a Securities Crimes Unit with hopes to lead to more effective investigations and enforcement.
At 8:30am, we had a meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office. The meeting was an opportunity for many victims groups to bring their stories forward in support of changes in legislation to protect Canadians from white-collar crime and to ensure that victims of white-collar crime receive support and see justice served. All who attended positively received the meeting and an invitation was extended to develop an on-going relationship to continue to develop changes to protect and provide justice for all Canadians with regards to white-collar crime. Government representatives at the meeting were:
PMO:
Julie Gaudreau - Special Assistant for Quebec
Adam Blinik - Special Assistant for Justice Groups
Sabrina Anzini - Special Advisor Legal Affairs and Policy
Department Of Justice:
Ken Bednarek - Senior Policy Advisor
Genevieve Breton - Director of Communications
At 11:00am, the first press conference was held in the Charles Lynch Press Theatre in the Center Block of Parliament. The subject of the first conference was “New Securities Crime Unit in Addition to New National Securities Commission”. Diane Urquhart, an independent financial analyst, is proposing a new structure to receive and assess securities crime complaints and to assign the criminal files for investigations and prosecution to the appropriate police services throughout Canada or to the RCMP. More information on her proposal can be found in the Securities Crime Unit video at http://www.ismymoneysafe.org. Several victims groups spoke in support of the proposal.
At 11:30am, the second press conference was held in the Charles Lynch Press Theatre in the Center Block of Parliament. The subject of the second conference was “The Fight Against Financial Crime”. Many victims groups shared their stories and proposals. I represented the Shire Victims Group and my press release was sent out by email to our group yesterday. Joey Davis of the Earl Jones Victims Committee also officially announced the BE STRONG Movement and The Canadian Coalition of Citizens Against White Collar Crime. Their website is http://www.bestrongfoundation.org.
Both press conferences were broadcast live to the offices of all Members of Parliament. The second press conference (including my statement) was also carried live by CTV News Watch and CBC Newsworld.
After many press interviews, we then met with Justice Minister Rob Nicholson who briefed our group on the changes to be announced at his press conference and advised us that he is committed to ensuring victims are heard. Three of the group members were present at the press conference: Earl Jones Victims Group, Norburg Victims Group, and Diane Urquhart. The changes being put forward by the Justice Minister are:
- Amend the criminal code to allow for mandatory penalties for fraud
- Additional aggravating factors to justify longer sentences
- Requirements that the courts consider restitution orders
Further, the minister also talked in our meeting about future actions that may include:
- Prohibitions to limit criminals ability to ever repeat similar crimes in the future
- Continued push to pass a bill to end house arrest
- Promise to talk to the Public Safety Minister to remove ability for those convicted of white-collar crime to receive parole after serving only 1/6th of their sentence.
At 2:20pm, we were guests of the PMO at Question Period in the House of Commons where the issue of white-collar crime was raised by a few of the members.
http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=watch&lang=e&watchID=1e
The groups who attended the meetings on Tuesday were:
Earl Jones Victims Committee
Norburg Victims Committee
Norshield Victim Group
Nortel Bankruptcy Justice Committee
National Pensioners and Senior Citizens Federation
United Senior Citizens of Ontario
Diane Urquhart – Independent Financial Analyst
Finally, at 3:30pm Joey Davis of the Earl Jones Victims Group and I were interviewed on CPAC Primetime Politics with Peter Van Dusen. You can watch the story online here:
http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&lang=e&clipID=3085
I finally arrived home at 10:30pm on Tuesday night.
