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Securities enforcement? Turn to criminal justice
Your investigative series on the inability of Canada's securities regulatory system to enforce our laws against fraudsters outlines the problem very accurately, but in my view misses the mark in identifying its source.
The series focuses much attention on the inability of regulators to collect fines and order prison sentences. In the early 1990s, the Ontario Securities Commission recommended that changes be made to the Securities Act to provide it with more enforcement powers, thereby shifting the responsibility for enforcement from the criminal justice system to the regulators. The provincial government acted on this request and amended the Securities Act to provide the OSC with much broader investigatory powers, as well as authority to levy heavy fines.
As you note, securities regulators now prefer to prosecute cases using their own powers, rather than referring these cases to the police and courts. It is easier for the regulators to get "wins" in administrative proceedings. Unfortunately, the "losers" in this scenario are the members of the public who suffer financial losses because the regulators cannot enforce our securities laws against white-collar criminals.
For many reasons, law enforcement is a job which should be done by the police and the courts. The criminal justice system has the power to order prison sentences and collect fines. Regulators do not have the same powers, because those appearing before them do not enjoy the same procedural protections.
It would be best to return securities enforcement work to the criminal justice system. The new co-operative regulator would provide an excellent opportunity to begin this process.
Alexandra Raphael, Toronto
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All about access
Re RT Can Buy Access, But Canadians Will Decide Its Fate (Dec. 27): Peter Menzies's column on the Russia Today television channel is right on. We must allow such channels – or else we are hypocrites with double standards, and we are not.
International propaganda channels sponsored by the American government have been around for decades. People know it is propaganda, and take it with a grain of salt.
Banning RT would equal Communist countries' information-control era. While visiting Egypt, I accessed TV channels from 18 European countries, several American channels and at least one from each of Canada, Russia, more than a dozen Arab countries, Israel, China and others. Now … that's being open.
Sam Elaraby, Kirkland, Que.
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Freedom of the press is important, but I wonder: Why should a regulated monopoly profit by selling access to my TV to a foreign government, while at the same time, that foreign government does not extend the same access to foreign broadcasters, either government owned or privately owned?
The BBC might be state-funded, but there is no major barrier to Canadians being able to distribute news in Britain in print or by other means. But with Russia or China, information flows freely only in one direction.
In trade, there is the idea of reciprocity. Maybe when it comes to media which are owned and controlled by foreign governments, and which clearly operate as extensions of their governments' foreign policy, we should either tax or ban access to Canadian homes of such propaganda – unless those countries allow us equal access to their home markets.
Brian Graff, Toronto
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Big boys' vroooom!
Re Big Love (Dec. 29): The answer for those who – like Matt Bubbers, the author of this article – wonder why there is a truck culture, the answer is this: When you give every little boy a truck for each and every birthday, Christmas, and holiday event, they grow up and want … a truck! Just add a salary, and vroooom! A truckin' billion-dollar business.
Barbara Klunder, Toronto
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In the mail, from Russia
Re The Department Of Meddling (Dec. 29): I was taken back many years by your article on Russian spying. When I was a curious teenager in the 1960s, I encountered an offer of a free Russian-language course, complete with a textbook by Nina Potapova.
More because of my interest in stamp collecting than linguistics, I sent off a letter and soon received a package from Russia containing a slim, paperback textbook, filled with exotic Russian print and English instructions. For a short time, I thought I might actually learn some of the language – I recall ecTb MOCT or something similar, meaning "There is a bridge, " I think – but the five stamps on the package were my triumph. I saw myself as the only person in the Soo with genuine Russian stamps in my collection!
I did receive a couple more letters from Russia, but was never approached to reveal state secrets. A friend of my dad, however, did mention to him later that my name was on a watch list in the post office.
I think that was as exciting to me as those stamps!
Graham Duncan, Mahone Bay, N.S.
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Sanctions won't do it
Sanctions have not worked and will not work to stop North Korea's nuclear weapons program. They serve only to increase the resolve of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to create nuclear parity with the other nuclear-weapons states (Amid Strict UN Sanctions, China Cuts Off North Korean Oil Exports – Report On Business, Dec. 27).
There is a presumption that somehow the existing nuclear nations have the right to nuclear weapons and the "bad guys" – i.e. North Korea and Iran – do not. North Korea publicly stated that it withdrew from the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003 because of the United States' failure to live up to its obligation to disarm under Article 6 of that treaty.
The recent Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, signed this past July, codifies that nuclear weapons are illegal, just like biological and chemical weapons.
Any diplomatic overture to North Korea that has any chance of succeeding must address universal support for this treaty.
Mark Leith, Toronto chapter, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
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An immodest proposal
Re Stop And Smell The Pastys (First Person, Dec. 27): I can understand why you spelled "pasties" the way you did, since otherwise it might have looked as though you were writing about those things employed by ecdysiasts to cover their modesty. Nonetheless, the plural of "Cornish pasty" is indeed "Cornish pasties."
Christopher Kelk, Toronto