The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada recently published its findings during a review of Domestic Banks sales practices.
The FCAC report comes partly as a result of CBC's Go Public campaign last year which began to expose some of the mass amount of criminal activity taking place in the Canadian financial system, often with the help of regulators who are supposedly there to protect the public. Many other individuals and smaller independent news sources have also been instrumental in shedding light on crime in the financial sector, none more so then former Bay Street Exec Mr. Larry Elford whom has recently published a book 'About Your Financial Murder'. Mr. Elford who has spoken in front of the House of Parliament on these issues, can be found contributing to Unpublished Ottawa or on Facebook at Investment System Fraud.
The FCAC's new report can be found here Financial Consumer Agency of Canada - Domestic Bank Sales Practice Review.
An exert from the Executive Summary of this report can be seen below, note the use of a new term - mis-selling. It would seem FCAC has adopted the same wizardry that the World Bank, Central Bank of Ireland and a UK Financial Task force are using to magically make billions disappear with no questions asked by the unsuspecting public. An excellent article on the Guardian outlines the true business model of the UK Financial System, it is a model built on deception and fraud. Banksters and their lawyers continue to use confusing language and terms to cloud what they are really doing.
See exert on mis-selling below.
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Executive summary
This report presents the findings and conclusions of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s (FCAC’s) review of the domestic retail sales practices of Canada’s six largest banks (Bank of Montreal, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto–Dominion Bank), which are subject to federal consumer protection legislation overseen by FCAC.
This review focused on retail banking sales practices to identify and evaluate risks to consumers. FCAC examined the drivers of sales practices risk, assessed the effectiveness of the controls put in place by banks to mitigate these risks and recommended ways to more effectively reduce them.
Risks associated with sales practices include the potential for breaching market conduct obligations and mis-selling. Market conduct risk refers to the potential for breaching the legislative obligations, voluntary codes of conduct and public commitments that are overseen by FCAC.
FCAC defines "mis-selling" as the sale of financial products or services that are unsuitable for the consumer; sales that are made without taking reasonable account of the consumer’s financial goals, needs and circumstances; and sales where consumers are provided with incomplete, unclear or misleading information. This definition of mis-selling is informed by research conducted by the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the Central Bank of Ireland, the G20/OECD Task Force on Financial Consumer Protection and the World Bank.
Source - https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/fcac-acfc/documents/programs/research-surveys-studies-reports/bank-sales-practices.pdf
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What is most disturbing is that the FCAC seems to have adopted a term used by its friends in the banking industry to hide or downplay what could be or often is a blatant criminal offence.
The term mis-selling seems to have taken the place of criminal activities such as Section 341, and 361, of the Canadian Criminal Code. It is important to note that the highlighted words in the above exert - 'misleading information', are part of the definition of mis-selling.
In a nation that operates under the true rule of law, a sale made when misleading information is given in order to make that sale is often a criminal offence. Below are several Canadian Criminal Code laws regarding fraud and deception.
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Fraudulent concealment
341 Every one who, for a fraudulent purpose, takes, obtains, removes or conceals anything is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
- R.S., c. C-34, s. 301.
False Pretences
Marginal note: False pretence
Marginal note:Exaggeration
(2) Exaggerated commendation or depreciation of the quality of anything is not a false pretence unless it is carried to such an extent that it amounts to a fraudulent misrepresentation of fact.Marginal note:Question of fact
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2), it is a question of fact whether commendation or depreciation amounts to a fraudulent misrepresentation of fact.
- R.S., c. C-34, s. 319.
Marginal note: False pretence or false statement
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- (a) by a false pretence, whether directly or through the medium of a contract obtained by a false pretence, obtains anything in respect of which the offence of theft may be committed or causes it to be delivered to another person;
- (b) obtains credit by a false pretence or by fraud;
- (c) knowingly makes or causes to be made, directly or indirectly, a false statement in writing with intent that it should be relied on, with respect to the financial condition or means or ability to pay of himself or herself or any person or organization that he or she is interested in or that he or she acts for, for the purpose of procuring, in any form whatever, whether for his or her benefit or the benefit of that person or organization,
- (d) knowing that a false statement in writing has been made with respect to the financial condition or means or ability to pay of himself or herself or another person or organization that he or she is interested in or that he or she acts for, procures on the faith of that statement, whether for his or her benefit or for the benefit of that person or organization, anything mentioned in subparagraphs (c)(i) to (vi).
Marginal note: Obtaining execution of valuable security by fraud
363 Every one who, with intent to defraud or injure another person, by a false pretence causes or induces any person
- (a) to execute, make, accept, endorse or destroy the whole or any part of a valuable security, or
- (b) to write, impress or affix a name or seal on any paper or parchment in order that it may afterwards be made or converted into or used or dealt with as a valuable security,
is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
- R.S., c. C-34, s. 321.
Source - http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/index.html
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In order to be brief as possible in this post I will limit my dissection of the FCAC's report to addressing a couple key points although there is certainly more to cover on what is a truly laughable yet disturbing piece of work.
Right now across Canada tens of thousands of financial 'advisors' are committing one or more of the above criminal offences all the time. Certainly some may not be aware of the nature of their crimes or what they are doing, they are simply working as sales people for financial firms and led by legal advisors and paychecks. That said the guilty parties involved for certain are the financial regulators such as the BC Securities Commission, the Ontario Securities Commission and the rest of Canada's so called financial regulators. Without these self funded and self regulating organizations help it would not be possible for the mass fraud that is occurring to continue.
This is not an accusation made lightly, this is not mere conjecture or hypothesis. In fact we welcome any provincial regulator, specifically the BCSC and CEO Brenda Leong to challenge these accusations in a real court of law if they disagree with them.
Mr. Larry Elford among others has thoroughly demonstrated these claims.
See exert from financial expert, Mr. Elford on Unpublished Ottawa here.
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This is how a "confidence man" works:
Prior to September of 2009, the license and registration category of your investment "advice giver" was (in 99% of cases) one of the following two choices:
a) a registered investment adviser (the "Do no harm" fiduciary professional)
or
b) a registered "salesperson" (the one where they could act against the investor interests)
Investors were not well informed, back then, as most, if not all persons who were registered in the "salesperson" category preferred to call themselves by a non registered and non-regulated title, spelled "advisor".
By clever use of a single "Vowel Movement", millions of investors are deceived, and led to believe they have a "do no harm" fiduciary-duty professional, while the salesperson and the dealer have accomplished a clever bait and switch. They will have convinced trusting clients that they are dealing with someone to be trusted, while actually hiding the saleperson's lesser duty of care.
“ the confidence man is someone who preys upon peoples confidence in them”
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Fast forward to September of 2009, when the CSA (umbrella organization of all 13 Canadian Provincial Securities Regulators), decide to change the rules/laws in Canada, REMOVING every mention of the word SALESPERSON in the Securities Act, rules. They replace that rather clear term, with the term "DEALING REPRESENTATIVE". To be fair, they did, in some documents place the word (Salesperson) in brackets, immediately behind the word "Dealing Representative". That helped maintain some of the original info and intent of the disclosure.
Still, one a small step was taken in the direction of "editing out" the term "Salesperson" from the Securities Rules and laws in Canada. The important thing to keep in mind, is that Securities Commissions did NOT move to eliminate the commission sales role from "advice givers", but rather they simply allowed commission-sales "advice givers" to obfuscate their 'label', to in effect be less clear and open to their investor clients. Allowing them to hide their registration and job role from investors.
They continued (as they do to this day) to refer to themselves as "Advisors" in most cases, despite Securities Act rules and laws against "misrepresentation of ones registration category". It simply serves investment salespeople better if they do not tell their customers that they are "salespersons". Trust (and the customer's money) is eaier to gain if they conceal the true "salepserson" registration behind a not-true advisor title...(gaining trust by cocealment?)
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Fast forward to January 2018 and the new changes quietly put into place have now deleted the (salesperson) clarification from the "Understanding Registration" page of the CSA web site. It appears that the provincial governement regulators truly do not want the public to "Understand Registration", when it comes to investment salespersons...
This again brings to mind the regulatory double mandate, double-bind,..of having to do what they industry pays them to do....or else.
Ten million Canadians who rely upon their investments to support themselves financially in retirement should not be treated to intentional obfuscation and apparent deception, by the investment industry, and most certainly not by government empowered (but industry paid/selected) securities regulators.
This smacks of foxes guarding the henhouse, and helping their fox friends to pillage the hens, while working for a provincial government which tells the public that they are safely regulated and protected. It smacks of a breach of the public trust.
Source - Why Would 13 Canadian Securities Commissions Deliberately Deceive Investors?
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As we have said many times on this blog, lawyers and bureaucrats can alter the laws to make crimes legal however this does not make it right, nor does it make it any less of a crime.
It would seem deception is the norm in the financial industry in Canada. (and the West),
See the below exert from CBC for more on how the criminal code violations covered above are being violated on an ongoing basis, with the help and blessing of financial securities commissions across Canada.
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Deceptive employee titles
A recent report by the Small Investor Protection Associationfound there are 121,000 people registered as financial professionals in Canada, and the vast majority are registered as dealing representatives — salespeople licensed to sell financial investments.Only about 4,000 of these registered financial professionals have a fiduciary duty, which is a legal obligation to act in the client's best interest.
Even though the FCAC received 4500 complaints for review according to its Commissioner Ms. Lucie Tedesco governance could be beefed up, however there was no evidence of systematic mis-practices (crimes) going on. MP Mr. Francesco Sorbara questions her on this as seen in an exert from the transcript of the May 28th/18 report to the Standing Committee On Finance below.
Larry Elford says thousands of bank employees across Canada are salespeople with fancy titles. (Dave Rae/CBC )
"The game today is to earn clients' trust," said Larry Elford, a former certified investment manager with RBC and lead researcher of the SIPA report. "And never let them know that you are actually a commissioned salesperson and you don't have to honour that trust."
The stakes are high, says Elford, who points out that a two per cent management fee on mutual funds typically cuts an investor's retirement fund by about half over a 35-year period.
What's in a vowel?
A common trick for misleading customers, according to Elford, is the banking industry's use of the term "financial advisor" — spelled with an "o."He says "advisor" is an unregulated title that anyone can use, whereas the title "adviser" — spelled with an "e" — can only be used if the employee has a fiduciary responsibility to the client.
"Advisors can sell you the third, fourth, fifth or least beneficial product to you," Elford said. "They do that a great deal of the time if it makes them more commissions, or if their bank manager is telling them they need to sell more of the house-brand product."
The Ontario Securities Commission confirms that "adviser" is a legal term under securities law that describes a person or company that is registered to give advice about securities, whereas "advisor" is not.
In an email to Go Public, the Canadian Securities Administratorsconfirmed that it does not regulate most titles used by employees in the financial industry.
Source - CBC - Banks Deceptive Titles Put Investments at Risk
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The deception that has been outlined in the above article and many others, has been documented by numerous people and organizations and should not be allowed to continue in a nation which operates under the rule of law. Unfortunately to often today true rule of law has been replaced with rule by law, this difference is vast. The rule of law is a concept that gives law its power. Under the rule of law the law is applicable to all people and it is free of conflict of interest, it is not arbitrary or whimsical. Today in Canada and many other so called democracies where the rule of law is supposedly the governing ideal of society we have seen this twisted to become 'rule by law'. In other words officials who have become corrupted and self serving now make laws to protect themselves and their cronies as they use their positions of power to rob the public.
They will often cite the rule of law as a reason we need to allow something to be done (like building a dam) when in reality they are simply ruling by decree. True rule of law means that all are equal under the law, including governing bodies, officials and corporations foreign or domestic.
Unfortunately despite the revelations over the last couple of years of vast corruption in the financial sector and most every other sector of commerce and industry in the nation, a new measure in the Canadian budget tabled by Finance Minister Morneau and Prime Minister Trudeau includes plans to hand more immunity from prosecution over to corporations who have been involved in the committing of Criminal Code Offences. See CBC report here, Federal Budget Bill Quietly Proposes Tool To Ease Penalties On Corporate Crime
Of course the provision is being sold as designed to protect innocent pensioners and shareholders from loss however what it really does is give high level shareholders, owners and executives a vehicle with which they can more efficiently rob people from. The company employees who commit the crime may well be punished but the corporation will still profit in the sense that it can continue to go about its business with very little in the way of punishment. Yes there are provisions to force the corporation in question to pay damages however as we have seen in many past court cases these are usually token fees and fines that do not necessarily restore justice for victims of such crimes.
One needs to look no further then the current corruption at the BC Investment Management Corporation (BCI) as we have documented numerous times.
See the link posted below to understand the type of web of deception, fraud and theft BCI gets up to.
BCI, BCSC, Serco, BC Attorney General Office, All Connected To RICO Crime?
BCI is the public servant pension fund for BC however it also has various managing partners and its global custodian is Northern Trust in Chicago.
It is a well known fact despite the complete lack of co-operation from RCMP and the courts reluctance to even try the case of a man named Mr. Jack English, certain employees of the BC Investment Management Corporation along with other civil servants, lawyers and various individuals conspired to rob Mr. English of his $200 Million dollar ocean front property. This was achieved through a campaign of terror, destruction and deception. Details can be seen here Full Story On BCI (BCIMC) And Its Crimes Against The English Family.
This case remains unresolved due to high level political interference, the BC Investment Management Corp is of course connected to the Finance Minister through its holdings as well as large financial firms such as BlackRock and CAI, a private US equity fund. See the following link for more on CAI and BCI, The Investment Funds Institute Of Canada, the BCSC, KPMG, BCIMC and Paul C. Bourque.
Now the PM and the Finance Minister want to help corporations like the BC Investment Management Corporation ensure they are immune from Criminal prosecution.
Sure maybe a few low level employees who were involved in such a case as that of Mr. English may be fired and even punished in a court of law and financial restitution could be made, however we highly doubt that fair compensation will ever be awarded nor can compensation be properly made for robbing the English family of a life during the campaign of terror waged against them.
The BCI will continue in its ways and even if this issue is resolved with some measure of justice for the English family, provisions such as the proposed new deferred prosecution tool for corporate crime will do nothing do discourage the BCI from doing the same to others in the future. (Editors note - we are aware of multiple crimes of similar or greater magnitude involving BCI, we simply do not have time to cover them at this point.)
Why do I bring all this up when it seemingly has nothing to do with the FCAC?
Again lets go back to the new laws designed to ease penalties for corporate crime.
We have on one hand possibly over a hundred thousand supposed financial 'advisors' who are faking or deceptive regarding their true credentials. Now we know that many may not even understand the implications and magnitude of what is happening, they have been simply working for a financial firm and have been given various tools and taught various courses regarding selling financial instruments on the orders of the firm. This does not make it any better however it does show us that the deception starts with the securities commissions who have allowed this to happen. This is of course one of the results that comes with a self funded self regulated regulator, it becomes a monster intent only on continuing to feed itself. This comes at the expense of all else including the rule of law and the protection of the public.
Here we have a self funded agency, the FCAC that is supposedly there for the consumers protection yet it is clear from the report fielded by FCAC officials that they are simply going to continue to deny wrongdoing in the banking sector exists. They are funded by the industry, why would they bite the hand that feeds them? Any wrongdoing that gets highlighted or brought to their attention can simply be washed away with the use of the term mis-selling.
The short blurb from Ms. Lucie Tedsco outlines the typical responses from those in power be it with a consumer advocacy agency or a financial regulator. The end result is usually the same, no wrong doing is found. It was refreshing to see several MPs who seemed to have serious concerns over the whitewashing of the FCAC report.
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It's just in terms of the report highlighting that there are no systemic mis-practices going on in sales practices by the banks, but controls—governance—need to be beefed up. Is that correct?
During the course of the review, we did identify certain risks to consumers and ways to address those risks, but we did not find any evidence of a widespread problem with mis-selling or breaches of market conduct obligations. That doesn't mean we didn't find that risks existed across all six banks, and that doesn't mean we didn't find incidences of potential market conduct violations, which, if we did find—and I understand we did find some—we are currently investigating, and they are following our normal enforcement procedure.
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What is most disturbing is that the FCAC seems to have helped its friends in the banking industry coin a new term to hide or downplay what could be or often is a blatant criminal offence.
The term mis-selling seems to have taken the place of activities such as Section 341, and 361, of the Canadian Criminal Code.
What we are seeing and what has been outlined in BCIMC, BCSC, Serco, The BC Attorney General Office, All Connected To RICO Crime? Also on The Investment Funds Institute Of Canada, the BCSC, KPMG, BCIMC and Paul C. Bourque as well as numerous other posts on this blog, and by many other individuals over the last couple of years is a systematic robbery of the wealth of both the US and Canada by a cabal of bankers and their lackeys. The terrorism, the division, the circus that is the mainstream media that surrounds it all is the side show, divide and conquer is the M/O.
A excellent article in the Guardian outlines what is also really happening right here in Canada, many are still unaware just how deep the tentacles of the beast run here in this northern nation.
See snippet below on the 'City Of London' and how it operates as a haven for financial corruption that spreads the length the British Empire in her glory days and beyond. It has evolved and today along with entities like the Bank of International Settlements, World Bank others it controls the finances of most of the planet. The collection of corporations housed here are often behind the concepts, organizations, and efforts to divide and conquer by funding war, terror, division and religious extremism etc. in order to keep the public pre-occupied and in terror so that they will accept what the true puppet masters have in store next. The continued destruction of your rights, the law, and the planet, all for power and money. This is not free market capitalism, this is out right robbery on a grand scale. See below.
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The City of London, operating with the help of British overseas territories and crown dependencies, is the world’s leading tax haven, controlling 24% of all offshore financial services. It offers global capital an elaborate secrecy regime, assisting not just tax evaders but also smugglers, sanctions- busters and money-launderers. As the French investigating magistrate Eva Joly has complained, the City “has never transmitted even the smallest piece of usable evidence to a foreign magistrate”. The UK, Switzerland, Singapore, Luxembourg and Germany are all ranked by Transparency International as among the least corrupt nations in the world. They are also listed by the Tax Justice Network as among the worst secrecy regimes and tax havens. For some reason, though, that doesn’t count.
The Private Finance Initiative has been used by our governments to deceive us about the extent of their borrowing while channelling public money into the hands of corporations. Shrouded in secrecy, stuffed with hidden sweeteners, it has landed hospitals and schools with unpayable debts, while hiding public services from public scrutiny.
State spies have been engaged in mass surveillance. And the police, adopting the identities of dead children, lying in court to assist false convictions and fathering children by activists before disappearing, have infiltrated and sought to destroy peaceful campaign groups. Police forces have protected prolific paedophiles, including Jimmy Savile, and – it is now alleged – a ring of senior politicians who are also suspected of the murder of children. Savile was shielded too by the NHS and the BBC, which has sacked most of the those who sought to expose him while promoting people who tried to perpetuate the cover-up.
Source - Corruption Rife in Britian
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Again this all may seem a far cry from our original topic of the FCAC and its recent report on the Standing Committee on Finance however I will soon make my point on the absurdity of this all before posting the actual transcript from the report to the Standing Committee on Finance.
Canada and the United States of America are both being systematically robbed of their wealth and destroyed in the manner of Greece and Italy so that a few global private benefactors are able to buy up everything they can while government agencies and organizations go bankrupt and are siphoned of cash.
The agencies of these nations that were formerly supposed to protect and serve have been hijacked and have been used against the very people who fund their existence through a needless burden of debt and tax that should not have to be what it is. Nations have the right to create sovereign money and not have to pay interest to a private cabal of bankers who create that money out of thin air. Since Canada became party to the Basel Accords it has given up this privilege and thus is no longer able to properly finance the infrastructure, healthcare, education, social programs justice, and law enforcement systems it needs to. See www.comer.org for more.
The myth is that Canada is a safe place to invest and free of corruption could not be further from the truth, we did not escape the 2008 economic crisis unscathed. The Centre for Policy Alternatives outlines the basics of a bail out of Canadian banks during that time of well over $100 Billion.
Without retaking control of our finances here in Canada we may soon see economic crisis that mirror Greece, Italy, Brazil and many others who are also being robbed and destroyed by a global cabal of banksters.
Going back to the FCAC again it is simply another tool being used by a cabal of bankers, lawyers and other individuals in both the corporate and government world to hide siphoning of wealth from hard working Canadians and into the pockets of a few wealthy CEOs, bankers and their minions.
The recent findings of the FCAC are simply a continuation of the same old modus operandi, they are just words. These words are designed to confuse, deceive and obfuscate the areas of financial contracts, law and the sales practices of financial instruments. Where is the concern or action regarding fake advisor labels and deceptive sales tactics on behalf of the FCAC? There is none, the FCAC is just a sham like the BC Securities Commission.
We are very doubtful any of the investigations that have been alluded to by the FCAC into what could be crimes will ever have findings of real wrongdoing, if they do it will be minimized and brushed aside quietly as seems to be the way of dealing with financial fraud and many other crimes in Canada.
The regulators will never help, not with the current model and personal in charge, nor will the new national regulator be an improvement. They are all designed to hide crime and help financial firms and corporate entities rob the public without them even knowing it.
See how the new national regulator has plans to set up a regulatory regime that will have the power to jail people who tell the truth in regards to the financial markets if the truth negatively impacts the value of the markets. The regulators plan on having the power to prop up a dead horse indefinitely.
See New Canadian Regulators Remove 'Integrity' From Framework, Replace With 'Material Adverse Effects'.
As for the FCAC, thankfully there are still a few MPs with the integrity and courage to question what is really going on. See the full transcript from the FCAC report to the Standing Committee on Finance here at,
https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/FINA/meeting-159/evidence.
More to come..
