Enforcement Strategies for White-Collar Crime: Focus on Ontario

This chapter addresses recent trends in the enforcement strategies surrounding white-collar crime with a focus on the Province of Ontario. Nowhere in Canada is the enforcement of white-collar crime more critical. Ontario is Canada’s most populous province, and its capital city – Toronto – is the country’s financial capital. The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) – the Ontario equivalent of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – therefore bears a heavy responsibility. It is important to note, however, that unlike the United States, which has one national securities regulator in the SEC, Canada’s capital markets are regulated by 13 different provincial and territorial regulators. There was an effort to create a national securities regulator in 2011 but Canada’s Supreme Court, in Reference Re Securities Act (2011), ruled Section 92(13) of the Canadian Constitution Act 92(13) did not allow for a national regulator because the proposed Act impermissibly interfered with the provinces’ jurisdiction over property and civil rights.

The authors discuss the OSC’s recent activities here and consider the activities of the relatively novel Ontario Serious Fraud Office (SFO), a provincial initiative designed to address complex, white-collar crimes. Thereby, the Ontario government desired to strengthening fraud prosecution and target well-known weaknesses in criminal law enforcement regarding fraud-related crimes.

Further, this chapter addresses the first American-based monitorship awarded to a Canadian criminal law firm. The monitorship arose from a United States Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecution and resultant deferred prosecution agreement (DPA). The authors also briefly address the related issue of the long reach of the United States justice system and lastly the new Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act, which is of particular importance to Ontario given its station as Canada’s leading manufacturing province.

The Ontario Securities Commission

The oversight of Ontario’s capital markets falls to the OSC, a self-funded Crown agency. It administers and enforces the Securities Act and the Commodity Futures Act and carries out the powers, duties and functions given to it under the Securities Commission Act, 2021 and any other act, including the Business Corporations Act. The OSC professes to contribute to the health and performance of Ontario’s economy by using their rule-making and enforcement powers to help safeguard investors, deter financial misconduct and direct participants involved in capital markets in Ontario.

One apparent success in the evolution of enforcing the capital markets has been the advent of whistle-blower rewards, taking a cue from Canada’s neighbours to the south. The SEC established its whistle-blower incentive programme, including its awards programme, in 2011. The programme incentivises whistle-blowers by offering monetary rewards to individuals who come forward with high-quality original information that leads to an SEC enforcement action in which over USD1 million in sanctions is ordered. The range for awards is between 10% and 30% of the money collected. Some of these awards are, accordingly, astronomical. In 2023 alone, the SEC awarded nearly USD600 million in whistle-blower awards to 68 individual whistle-blowers, awarding USD279 million to one individual whistle-blower. The SEC reports having awarded almost USD2 billion throughout the project’s existence.

The OSC followed the SEC’s lead and established its own whistle-blower programme in 2016, “the first of its kind by a Canadian securities regulator”. Like all Canadian interpretations of American inventions, the OSC’s programme has all the trappings of the SEC’s, but not the scale. The OSC’s programme accepts tips on possible violations of Ontario securities law, offering protections for individuals who come forward as well as a reward. The reward ranges between 5% and 15% of total monetary sanctions or voluntary payments, up to a maximum reward of CAD5 million.

The OSC programme’s success has been somewhat pedestrian compared to its American counterpart. In 2022, the OSC published an update on the whistle-blower programme covering the six years since its inception. It reported that the programme had awarded CAD9 million to 11 whistle-blowers to date, collecting approximately CAD48 million in monetary sanctions and voluntary sanctions in that time. The programme also resulted in a 17% average annual increase in tips. Thus, the OSC has had some positive effects. However, the SEC’s approach suggests that bigger numbers lead to bigger results.

Beyond its whistle-blower programme, this past year has been an eventful one for the OSC. It reports that it assessed 858 cases in the enforcement division and reached more than 30,000 Ontario residents through 124 investor education outreach events. Two of its initiatives are particularly germane to trends and developments in white-collar crime. First, the OSC researched the impact of new artificial intelligence (AI) applications in a recent research report. According to the OSC, that report aimed “to raise awareness of the many ways in which AI is starting to transform our capital markets”. While AI can increase efficiency and assist in generating revenues, it also imposes certain novel risks on capital markets. As the OSC notes, “[r]isks associated with AI are distinct and require specific governance measures beyond traditional approaches”.

For example, the “dynamic adaptability and increased autonomy of AI models have the potential to contribute to procyclicality [volatility] and systemic risks in the market”. Further, a few key AI providers have the potential to quickly take over a significant share of the market and exert weighty influence relative to its overall market capitalisation. Accordingly, the OSC concludes that new governance approaches are needed to address AI’s unique risks, such as its lack of transparency, heavy reliance on different types of data, quality of data and bias in model selection.

The OSC has also assessed the risks of AI at the micro level. For example, the OSC concluded in a recent research report that AI may increase investor susceptibility to fraud and scams. Namely, it determined that “malicious actors are exploiting AI capabilities to more effectively deceive investors, orchestrate fraudulent schemes, and manipulate markets, posing significant risks to investor protection and the integrity of capital markets”. AI has also permitted these malicious actors to develop new types of scams that would have been impossible without AI, using AI technologies such as deepfakes and voice cloning. AI’s applicability to scams, both old and new, increased the risk of scams significantly. The OSC found that “participants invested 22% more in AI-enhanced scams than in conventional scams”.

All of this suggests that AI will be an enduring presence in Ontario’s capital markets, and not necessarily a favourable one. Though its full impact remains to be seen, the arrival and expanding deployment of AI is a significant development both in capital markets and in white-collar crime in general.

Relatedly, the OSC continues to grapple with another capital byproduct of the information age: cryptocurrency.Crypto-assets are perhaps more of a trend than a development, and a waning one at that. The OSC’s Crypto Asset Survey, published in late 2023, concluded that fewer Canadians own crypto-assets now than a year ago, and fewer planned to purchase crypto in the coming year. Canadians are also less likely to think that crypto will play a key role in the economy. We therefore seem to find ourselves on the other side of the crypto bubble or, at the very least, in an uncanny crypto valley.

Nevertheless, crypto’s impact continues to reverberate throughout Ontario’s capital markets, particularly because entities offering crypto continue to fail to adhere to Ontario’s Securities Law. For example, the OSC completed two enforcement matters related to crypto companies, resulting in a CAD1.5 million settlement in one case and over CAD190,000 in investor restitution and a prison sentence in the other.

Those efforts are ongoing. This year, the OSC prosecuted the founder of a company called Peblik for four counts of fraud under the Securities Act. Those charges arose from Peblik’s initial offering of a crypto token called “Peblik Token”. The OSC alleged that, between 1 January 2018 and 8 August 2019, Peblik raised approximately CAD550,000 from at least 28 investors in Ontario, despite previously stating to the OSC that no sales had been made to Ontario residents. Further, it alleged that, at Katmarian’s direction, the company represented to investors that the value of the Peblik Token was backed by Peblik’s ownership interest in a CAD4.8 billion mineral resource deposit in Canada. This statement regarding Peblik’s ownership interest, the OSC submitted, was false.

In a lengthy set of reasons, the Ontario Court of Justice found that the OSC had failed to establish these allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. The bulk of the evidence presented at trial related to the fraud charge, which is defined at Section 126.1(1)(b) of the Securities Act. The OCJ relied on the Criminal Code’s definition of fraud to interpret Section 126, including its reference to “deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means” and its mens rea requirement that the accused “knew he was undertaking deceit, falsehood or other fraudulent means which put investor interests at risk, or was reckless or wilfully blind in that regard” (Ontario Securities Commission v Katmarian, 2024). Most of the evidence sought to establish that certain of the accused’s representations to investors constituted a deceit or falsehood.

The Court concluded that some of Peblik’s public-facing materials contained false assertions, including that it exercised direct control of a CAD4.8 million mineral deposit in Canada. However, the OSC’s evidence failed to prove that the investors relied on any deceit or falsehood in investing in Peblik. It was accordingly unnecessary to determine whether these fraudulent statements originated from the accused because “the element of deprivation is missing”.

The Court’s decision in Katmarin notwithstanding, crypto does not appear to inspire confidence in Ontario’s investors. In its 2023 Crypto Asset Survey, the OSC reported that 45% of non-crypto owners cited worries about being defrauded or scammed as their primary reasons for not purchasing crypto-assets. Indeed, one third of survey recipients believed crypto-assets were not regulated at all. The Katmarin case therefore illustrates the apprehensions of many investors. Consequently, crypto’s longevity appears intimately tied to its ability to distance itself from its reputation as a risky investment.

The Serious Fraud Office

In 2023, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published a piece entitled “Ontario has a fraud problem”. The article referred to instances of CBC’s investigative reporting showing that fewer reports of fraud were making it through the criminal justice system, and even those ending in conviction were not necessarily helping victims or deterring fraudsters.

To address these issues, Ontario enacted the SFO based on UK’s anti-fraud agency of the same name. The government pinned its hope on the SFO’s novel structure: “teaming up investigators and prosecutors and dedicating them to financial crimes that are too sprawling for any one municipal police force to handle”. This structure was designed with the intention to bridge the gap between investigators and prosecutors, in order to keep cases from languishing for years such that judges were forced to stay them for undue delay. The SFO was also designed to “hit fraudsters in the place they value most”, employing specialists in seizing the proceeds of crime.

The statistics, however, appear to suggest that rumours of the SFO’s efficiency and effectiveness may have been somewhat exaggerated. As of March 2023, the SFO had investigated only 12 cases, laying charges in four. It is difficult to determine precisely how many cases they have investigated given that the SFO does not appear to have a website, let alone publish an annual report.

They have not, however, been completely idle. In September 2024, the SFO charged two individuals and issued Canada-wide arrest warrants for three others in a “door-to-door sales fraud operation” that affected more than 200 victims throughout the province. The case, which the SFO began investigating in February 2022, related to allegations that these individuals would deceive vulnerable adults in order to enter into home service or renovation agreements at exorbitant prices, and used these fraudulent agreements to register security interests without the knowledge of the parties to the agreement.

That said, two successful convictions in six years seems to fall short of the SFO’s objectives of a “robust and efficient” fraud-fighting force. For now, it appears that Ontario’s problems in prosecuting fraud persists.

Perhaps a cue can be taken from the United States and the OSC, and their “if-you-can’t-beat-them, join-them” attitude. The SFO must seriously consider offering whistle-blower rewards with the aim of gathering credible information on serious white-collar crimes at an earlier stage than these crimes tend to be detected. If planned properly, such an approach should lead to a self-funding system that detects and deters white-collar schemes intended to defraud the public.

Ontario’s connection to a 2024 United States DOJ monitorship

In 2018, Parliament amended the Criminal Code to allow prosecutors to negotiate remediation agreements with organisations alleged to have committed criminal offences (Criminal Code, RSC 1985, Chapter C-46, Section 715.32(1)). These agreements, known elsewhere as DPAs, are “legal contracts between prosecutors and offending parties whereby charges are laid, stayed and subsequently dropped if the terms of the agreement are met”. And, though they are the product of negotiated consensus between the Crown and an accused, they are subject to the approval of the court (Criminal Code, Section 715.37(2)).

Remediation agreements seek to “hold an organization accountable, to correct the corporate culture and to remedy the harm caused by the offences while avoiding negative consequences to innocent third parties”. In particular, Section 715.31(c) of the Criminal Code states that one of the main objectives of the remediation agreement regime is “to contribute to respect for the law by imposing an obligation on the organization to put in place corrective measures and promote a compliance culture”.

One significant tool in implementing “corrective measures” and promoting “a compliance culture” is to engage an independent monitor, typically a law firm, responsible for overseeing the organisation’s remediation. The Public Prosecution Service of Canada notes “independent monitoring of the corporation to satisfy the prosecutor and the court that measures are put in place to prevent the corporation from re-offending” can be an important feature of remediation agreements “where appropriate”. The Criminal Code requires that a remediation agreement include “an indication of the obligation for the organization to report to the prosecutor on the implementation of the agreement and an indication of the manner in which the report is to be made and any other terms respecting reporting” (Criminal Code, Section 715.34(1)(i)).

The United States Attorney’s Office has offered some guidance on instances where independent monitoring may prove “appropriate” in their memorandum regarding “Monitor Selection for Corporate Criminal Enforcement”. The memo states that independent monitors can be an effective resource in assessing a company’s compliance with the terms of a corporate criminal resolution, and in reducing the risk of repeat misconduct and compliance lapses identified during a corporate criminal investigation. In general, a United States Attorney’s Office “should favor the imposition of a monitor where there is a demonstrated need for, and clear benefit to be derived from, a monitorship. Where a company’s compliance program and controls are untested, ineffective, inadequately resourced, or not fully implemented at the time of a resolution, prosecutors should consider imposing a monitorship” (see “Monitor Selection For Corporate Criminal Enforcement” of the United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of California, at Section 1).

The recourse to remedial agreements in the Canadian legal landscape is extremely limited. Since 2018, only two companies have operated under court-approved remediation agreements. Interestingly, both called for recourse to an independent monitor. The first remediation agreement involved charges of forgery, fraud and conspiracy against SNC-Lavalin Inc and SNC-Lavalin International Inc. In that case, the parties agreed that the agreement should provide for financial obligations on the part of the organisations and monitoring by an independent monitor appointed to ensure the application and, if necessary, the improvement of the existing integrity programme. In its analysis of the remediation agreement, the Court evidently viewed the appointment of an independent monitor quite positively.

The only other remediation agreement to date came in R. c. Ultra Electronics Forensic Technology Inc (UEFTI). There, the Quebec Superior Court described the remediation agreements regime as allowing “an organization to exceptionally avoid the disgrace of a possible criminal conviction in return for the implementation of a number of remedial measures, including acknowledging wrongdoings, collaborating with State authorities, indemnifying victims, paying a penalty and implementing measures to avoid the commission of further offences. The result of this process is a permanent stay of proceedings regarding the indicted crimes, meaning that the organization will never be convicted for these offences”.

Notably, the remediation agreement required UEFTI “[t]o abide by the terms of an anti-bribery and corruption program under the supervision of an external auditor” (R. v Ultra Electronics Forensic Technology Inc (UEFTI), 2023). Specifically, the agreement tasked the auditor with “conduct[ing] testing and report[ing] to the PPSC on the operational effectiveness of UEFTI’s Anti-Bribery and Corruption Program”.

Remediation agreements remain a significant consideration for Canadian entities, despite the paucity of such agreements in Canada. Of note, the Attorney General for the Eastern District of New York entered into a DPA with AYLO HOLDINGS S.A.R.L., formerly MindGeek S.a.r.l. MindGeek owned and operated numerous pornographic websites, including Pornhub.com. It was organised and existed under the laws of Luxembourg, but also had offices with employees in Montreal and Los Angeles.

In part, the agreement required the company’s imposition of an independent monitor, selected according to the process set out in the DOJ’s “Monitor Selection Memorandum” (United States of America v AYLO Holdings S.A.R.L.). The Agreement called for monitoring candidates with, inter alia, demonstrated expertise with respect to the screening and monitoring of illegal content for communication service providers or online platforms, and experience designing or reviewing corporate compliance policies, procedures and internal controls for communication services providers or online platforms. The monitor’s primary responsibilities included assessing and monitoring AYLO’s compliance with the terms of the DPA for an initial period of 36 months.

Candidates were subject to approval by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and the Office of the Deputy General at the DOJ. On 9 August 2024, the Office of the United States Attorney, Eastern District of New York, announced that AYLO had formally retained Scott Hutchison and Danielle Robitaille of Henein Hutchison Robitaille LLP to serve as independent compliance monitors. This appears to be the first time that Canadian counsel have been appointed monitors of a United States DPA.

Extrajudicial application of United States sanctions

The ripple effects of the United States’ deferred prosecution regime in Canada lead directly to another major trend in white-collar crime: the extraterritorial application of foreign sanctions regimes. This is hardly novel. Canada’s sanctions regime has long lagged behind those of its major economic allies, especially the United States. It is therefore unsurprising that the United States’ sanctions regime continues to encroach into Canada’s regulatory sphere, leading necessarily to the increased exposure of Canadian entities to the United States’ sanctions. The United States’ DOJ has acknowledged this trend and suggested that it reflects the “global expansion of US and foreign companies and the growing interdependency of our economy and those of nations around the world”.

The laws of the United States presumptively apply only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States (Morrison v Nat'l Austl Bank Ltd, 2010). Like in Canada (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada v Canadian Assn of Internet Providers, 2004), a United States law applies extraterritorially only where Congress has given “an affirmative suggestion” of extraterritorial application “in the statutory text” (Small v United States, 2005). “When a statute gives no clear indication of extraterritorial application, it has none”. If no such indication is apparent, a United States’ statute may still apply to a foreign entity “if the conduct relevant to the statute’s focus occurred in the United States” (RJR Nabisco Inc v European Cmty, 2016).

Thus, in United States v Sidorenko, the district court dismissed an indictment against an employee of the International Civil Aviation Organization, headquartered in Canada. The wire fraud and domestic bribery statutes at issue did not evidence a clear indication of extraterritoriality, and the only nexus to the United States was the partial funding the organisation received from the United States.

Still, the “growing interdependency of our economy and those of nations around the world” can imbue foreign sanctions regimes with serious domestic influence. Perhaps the most infamous Canadian example is the detention and interrogation of Meng Wanzhou, then-chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunication conglomerate Huawei, in December 2018. Canada detained Meng pursuant to a United States request under the Treaty on Extradition between the government of Canada and the government of the United States of America, for prosecution on allegations of fraud in the Eastern District of New York.

The United States purported to assume jurisdiction over Meng on the grounds that she had attempted to hide Huawei’s control of a Hong Kong company named Skycom in order to conduct business with – and export United States computer equipment to – Iran. At the time, the United States designated Iran as a sanctioned jurisdiction, and – according to Christina Parajon Skinner in the Harvard Journal on Legislation – the transactions from Huawei to Iran through Skycom violated the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations. Some have doubted the validity of this reasoning, emphasising that potential political motivations may have underpinned the United States’ request that Canada extradite Meng (United States v Meng Wanzhou, 2021). China’s almost-simultaneous detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and its almost-simultaneous release of the “two Michaels” on Meng’s release in late September 2021, seems to bolster the argument that Meng’s case was the stuff of foreign policy rather than the law of white-collar crime.

Wider questions of diplomacy notwithstanding, Meng challenged the United States’ claim for extradition before the Supreme Court of British Columbia on the basis that the “double criminality” requirement for extradition could not be met (United States v Meng, 2020). That is, the conduct in which Meng was alleged to have engaged would not have amounted to fraud had that conduct taken place in Canada, undermining the legal basis for her extradition. She centred her argument on the fact that the request rested on an allegation of breaching sanctions against Iran. At the time, “Canada ha[d] no such sanctions”.

The Court disagreed. It emphasised that Canadian law requires only that the conduct in the foreign jurisdiction could amount to an offence under domestic law: “it is not necessary that the foreign offence have an exactly corresponding Canadian offence”. The Minister had identified fraud as the underlying offence, which – according to the Supreme Court of Canada – requires only dishonest conduct with a corresponding deprivation.

In assessing the “essence” of the underlying conduct, the Court suggested that a domestic prosecution for fraud could properly “take place in Canada on the basis of false statements made in Canada that put a US bank at economic risk for violating US sanctions”. The United States sanctions explained the source of that economic risk, and the fact that there was no such sanction in Canada did not change the essence of the conduct into something unknown to the Canadian law of fraud. Accordingly, the allegation against Meng met the requirement of double criminality. One commentator has used this case as an example to demonstrate that “the efficacy of one nation’s domestic sanctions require extraterritorial enforcement”.

Of course, Meng Wanzhou’s case was resolved without a ruling in Canada on the merits of the extradition request. Meng was allowed to leave Canada on 24 September 2021. The outstanding United States allegations were resolved by way of a DPA of the same date, which required Meng to make certain admissions that the DOJ hoped may assist it in its case against Huawei. The agreement was simultaneously accepted by a United States District Court.

Despite its ultimate political resolution, Meng’s case is demonstrative of the consequences of foreign economic sanctions on the domestic landscape, especially sanctions originating in the United States. As one commentator notes, “[d]ue to its enormous economic power, the US has found economic sanctions to be an effective means to force other states to comply with US demands”. However, according to Patrick C R Terry in the Chinese Journal of International Law, the rise of other major economic powers “has caused the US to undertake major efforts in enforcing US sanction laws extraterritorially”. The detention of Meng Wanzhou is a case in point. As Skinner writes, “[t]he efficacy of U.S. sanctions also depends on a shared set of norms between allied sovereign governments”. The AYLO case demonstrates that the United States continues to do so.

Fighting against forced labour and child labour

However, this year has not been all continuing trends. Of significance, 2024 saw the first wave of annual reports released under the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act. That Act, which received royal assent on 11 May 2023 and came into force on 1 January 2024, refers to forced labour and child labour as forms of “modern slavery”. The preamble notes that “Parliament considers it essential to contribute to fighting [this] modern slavery”, and Section 3 states that Canada will do so through the imposition of reporting obligations on government institutions producing, purchasing or distributing goods in Canada or elsewhere, and on entities producing goods in Canada or elsewhere or importing goods produced outside Canada.

The 2024 Annual Reports are the product of those reporting obligations. In particular, Section 6(1) requires “the head of every government institution” to “report to the Minister on the steps the government institution has taken during its previous financial year to prevent and reduce the risk that forced labour or child labour is used at any step of the production of goods produced, purchased or distributed by the government institution”. Section 11 of the Act imposes an identical obligation on entities producing, selling or distributing goods in Canada or elsewhere; on importing into Canada any goods produced outside Canada; and on any entity controlling an entity engaged in those activities. Reporting entities that fail to comply with the Act are guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to a fine of not more than CAD250,000. The Act also creates liability for directors and officers.

The annual reports from Public Safety Canada and the Canada Energy Regulator (CER), both readily available online, offer some indication of the types of measures the Act contemplates. For example, the Public Safety Report notes that, since 2021, Public Services and Procurement Canada has implemented anti-forced labour clauses in all goods contracts to allow for the termination of contracts where there is credible information that the goods have been produced in whole or in part by forced labour. It has also launched a national public awareness campaign to create awareness of forced labour and sex trafficking. Similarly, the CER reports that it has “integrated” the Code of Conduct for Procurement of Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) in all purchasing activities over CAD25,000, including the anti-forced labour clause. Notably, both departments report having no measures in place to assess the risk of forced labour and child labour in their supply chains.

Several well-known entities, whether Canadian or operating in Canada, have also published their own modern slavery reports, including Amazon, General Mills Canada and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). Interestingly, all three of these entities referred to the standards implemented to address risks in their supply chains. Indeed, the National Post reports that about 38% of reporting companies acknowledged there was some risk of forced labour.

The uniform inclusion of policies designed to identify and address these risks is likely due to what General Mills describes as “large, complex, and global” supplier bases. General Mills itself deals “with thousands of suppliers in more than 25 countries”. In other words, modern corporations rely on supply chains that may be too vertically complex for the corporation to know the provenance of specific components of the goods they offer, let alone whether these goods raise a risk of forced labour and child labour.

Supply chain visibility will be of particular concern to Ontario, Canada’s leading manufacturer. Ontario generates 38.6% of Canada’s national GDP and is home to approximately 50% of all employees in tech, financial services and other knowledge-intensive industries. The greater Toronto area’s geographical and socio-economic proximity to the United States makes it an important global economic hub, and a key link in many international supply chains. The greater Toronto area itself produces more than half of Canada’s manufactured goods, and most non-Canadian companies looking to establish a Canadian foothold look to Ontario first. All three examples described above – Amazon, General Mills Canada and the RBC – have their Canadian base of operations in Ontario. The same is true of many other internationally reaching corporate giants, such as PepsiCo, Walmart, and Nike.

Further, all three examples included above have responded by, in essence, directing that risk to their suppliers: suppliers must either comply with the standards, policies or codes of conduct their purchasers have implemented or risk losing extremely lucrative clients. Thus far, prosecutions for failures to report have not been seen. Time will tell whether this up-chain delegation of responsibility will be enough to address the noble objectives outlined in the Act, and whether there is any prosecutorial appetite or resources to enforce this new regime.

Conclusion

In closing, it is clear that Ontario will be the standard by which the effectiveness of white-collar criminal prosecutions is judged when assessing Canada’s approach to white-collar crime. This brief survey suggests that while positive steps are being taken to address white-collar crime, much of the activity in this space continues to raise more questions than answers. Only time will tell whether the steps being taken towards more effective prosecution of white-collar crime in Ontario will take root and flourish or continue to trudge along.