Angry in the Great White North

From Terence Corcoran's column about the Andrew Rankin case:

The premise behind most criticisms of the OSC is that it has a dismal record of cleaning up a securities market that is rife with malfeasance.

A contrary and more plausible view is that Canada's securities markets are not hotbeds of wrongdoing and that the OSC has spent far too much time and money trying to create and capture corporate criminals. Maybe the Canadian market is relatively clean -- the problem is an OSC that's looking for dirt and creating more problems than exist.

I came to a similar conclusion in considering the Brian Mallard case:

In those stories and in this one, regulators seem to assume that the advisors and traders are all cheats. They are all criminals with something to hide, and it's not a fishing expedition when you know you are going to find evidence of a criminal act -- even if you don't know specifically what you are going to find. Of course, a court would never grant a search warrant under those conditions, and that is why we hear over and over and over again a call for more court involvement in the realm of securities regulation, investigation, and enforcement.

In both cases, it was only the defiance of the Rankin and Mallard, and the resources they expended on legal help, that moved the cases from the realm of the regulators, who act as judge, jury, and executioner, and into the courts, where the rules of evidence and the presumption of innocence combined to show the cases to be motivated more about a desire to collect trophies than to protect investors.

Meanwhile, Dalton McGuinty's government has tabled Bill 151, which will give the OSC (through its proxy, the Canadian Public Accountability Board) the right to see privileged solicitor-client information, without presenting evidence or seeking permission from the courts. Fortunately, the Ontario Bar Association and the Opposition at Queen's Park are trying to put the brakes on this.

In the mean time, we'll keep watching.