Justice committee  Indeed, as a white-collar defence lawyer, you will almost inevitably have a discussion with your client about their ability to repay, their willingness to repay, and the consequences if they choose not to repay. You're absolutely correct. It is very common for judges, if they have convicted a person, to telegraph, sometimes obliquely and sometimes not obliquely, the importance of that happening.

Justice committee  One of the sad realities of jail is that is difficult to make money there to repay. In that sense, one of the difficulties with jail sentences is that they actually work against the restitutionary interests you have.

Justice committee  It's being implemented in the United States in connection with Madoff and is being done by the trustee in bankruptcy who's trying to administer the estate. He has commenced a number of lawsuits to try to recover moneys, but there have been voluntary repayments by a number of funds that benefited from Mr.

Justice committee  I'm not an expert on American bankruptcy law, but my understanding is that, as in Canadian bankruptcy law, a trustee in bankruptcy can go back and essentially set aside transactions for a period of three or five years. What I'd ask you to consider is whether we could establish, as part of the restitution process, some way by which we could essentially reallocate those losses in a more equitable way, so that some people don't end up getting all their money back with an enormous rate of return and other people get nothing.

Justice committee  There is, however, an interesting debate going on in the United States arising out of the Madoff disaster. What you see in these kinds of cases, particularly in the Ponzi scheme, is that so much of the distribution of the money that has been stolen from investors is done by the criminal himself.

Justice committee  Thank you. These are interesting, challenging, and even dangerous times, I would say, in the Canadian capital markets. Never in my 30 years of being involved in the enforcement business of securities offences have I seen as much uncertainty as we're facing today. I'd like to address just two aspects of Bill C-21.