Securities Enforcement Accountability Coalition

A group called the “Toronto Police Accountability Coalition” is making progress with the Ontario Government on the creation of an independent civilian body to investigate complaints from the public against the police. The Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant and retired Superior Court of Justice judge Patrick LeSage are taking leadership on the issue of police not being permitted to investigate police. We will borrow the concept of a ” Canadian Securities Enforcement Accountability Coalition”. The objective of this coalition would be to promote integrity and accountability in the enforcement of securities and accounting fraud and offences. To ensure this integrity and accountability, the “Canadian Securities Enforcement Accountability Coalition” should demand that all Federal and Provincial Governments have bona fide independent audit procedures in place to validate the integrity of white collar crime policing, covering the RCMP, the provincial securities commissions’ enforcement operations, the SRO’s enforcement operations and the CPAB. These independent auditing procedures should be capable of receiving evidence of misconduct from whistleblowing employees and the investing public. The “Canadian Securities Enforcement Accountability Coalition” approach is an idea for packaging the various initiatives we have all been involved in during the past two years. The concept of enforcement accountability will be difficult for legislators to ignore in the face of the federal sponsorship scandal, the ASC scandal, and the growing body of document evidence available from the public on bad faith and favouritism exhibited by provincial securities commissions and the SRO’s. Stan Buell and Jim Roache have both drafted letters seeking an independent audit of the OSC enforcement operations (work in progress). Larry Elford, Stan Buell and I have sent similar letters calling for an independent audit of the ASC. Maybe, we can use these various letters as prototypes for the “Canadian Securities Enforcement Accountability Coalition” letter demanding the same integrity and accountability standards throughout all the white collar crime enforcement agencies and accounting oversight agencies across Canada. Does anyone agree that this narrow approach for a coalition could be timely and an effective first step for reducing corruption in Canada.

Diane Urquhart