While arm’s-length regulators at both the provincial and federal levels do the heavy lifting when it comes to regulating Canada’s financial services, it is ultimately politicians such as Ontario Finance Minister Charles Sousa and Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau, who are accountable for protecting the interests of consumers in their dealings with Canada’s banks and other financial institutions.
Introduction
In an important piece in the July 31 issue of the New Yorker Magazine on the decline in the prosecution of white collar crime in the U.S., author Patrick Radden Keefe cites a telling 2002 incident involving ex-FBI director James Comey. Keefe relies on the description of the incident contained in the journalist Jesse Eisinger’s recently published book, “The Chickenshit Club”.
Keefe writes:
When James Comey took over as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in 2002, Eisinger tells us, he summoned his young prosecutors for a pep talk. For graduates of top law schools, a job as a federal prosecutor is a brass ring, and the Southern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over Wall Street, is the most selective office of them all. Addressing this ferociously competitive cohort, Comey asked, “Who here has never had an acquittal or a hung jury?” Several go-getters, proud of their unblemished records, raised their hands.
But Comey, with his trademark altar-boy probity, had a surprise for them. “You are members of what we like to call the Chickenshit Club,” he said.
What Comey was saying, of course, was that avoiding risky prosecutions aimed at reining in Wall St. might have been seen as career enhancing under the previous U.S. Attorney responsible for keeping an eye on Wall St. but with Comey as boss, such an approach was going to be a career killer.
This post is the first of a series of Canada Fact Check investigations asking the question: does Canada have a Chickenshit Club problem when it comes to the development and enforcement of financial services regulation?
The answer for impatient readers? The next 12 – 18 months will tell and Canada Fact Check will be there to tell the inside story.
Here’s what we know now.
Finance Minister Morneau’s response to CBC investigations of hyper-aggressive bank sales practices
On March 6, the CBC’s Erica Johnston broke the first of a number of CBC stories on shady sales practices in Canada’s banking industry. The CBC reports revealed a constant pattern amongst big banks and credit unions of signing consumers up for products or services without providing all the required information, particularly about fees, costs and penalties related to the products. In many cases, bank employees were signing people up for products without even notifying them.
On March 15, in response to the CBC reports, Finance Minister Morneau turned to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) and announced that the Agency would be conducting a separate industry review to examine Canada’s financial institutions’ sales practices. The FCAC has the primary mandate to represent the interests of consumers on “systemic” policy matters effecting federally regulated financial institutions such as banks, trust companies, life insurance companies and property and casualty (auto, property, etc.) insurance companies.
The FCAC has indicated that it expects to publish its initial findings by the end of 2017. Furthermore, FCAC officials expect to conclude the review of bank sales practices in June, 2018 and will publish a final report soon after. Finally, FCAC may conduct additional specific investigations flowing from the industry review. For example, if a FCAC follow-up investigation determines that a specific violation has occurred, the Commissioner may make public the nature of the violation, which financial institution committed it, and the amount of any monetary penalty levied by the FCAC on the financial institution. Continue reading
