Healed

Took a cab to see Dr. LeFaivre, the ortho surgeon, at the Diamond Centre. Had an X-ray of the ankle and she pronounced it healed. The nurse and resident were perterbed that I wasn't using the boot. I had been told to only wear it for 6 weeks but I guess I was supposed to keep it on until I saw them. The Dr. wasn't so concerned and said it was obviously time to stop. I don't have to go back unless I have a problem. Just take it slow and easy.

Walked down a block to the BCCA and bought travel insurance for our Christmas trip to Houston.

My financial adviser called about the documents I had received from Opus Cranberry. It looks like I've been scammed out of my investment - it was speculative and illiquid!

Premier should intervene in BCSC

David Baines. The Vancouver Sun. Vancouver, B.C.: Jun 30, 2007. pg. G.5

More insanity from the B.C. Securities Commission. On Friday, a commission panel suspended Jill MacGregor Bock -- who caused her clients hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars in investment losses -- from the B.C. securities market for a paltry three years.

While working as a mutual fund salesperson in the late 1990s, she recommended a series of risky and illiquid investments that were exempt from registration requirements, provided they were sold to so- called sophisticated investors.

Those investments included an oyster farm, a cranberry farm, a ginseng farm and an industrial hemp farming and processing business. One by one they collapsed or became hung up, causing heavy investment losses.

The commission held a hearing into Bock's conduct. Six of Bock's former clients -- most of them elderly -- told very sad stories of how they had entrusted Bock with their money, and how she betrayed them. The panel found that, with respect to four of these clients, she had sold them unsuitable investments and failed to properly advise them of the risks. Also, they didn't qualify as sophisticated investors, so she shouldn't have sold these investments to them in the first place.

Now these may sound like technical offences, but they aren't. They drive right to the heart of the duties and responsibilities of a registered securities salesperson. Also, these clients are just the tip of the iceberg: Over the past several months, dozens more have called to tell me how Bock sold them these sorts of investments, and how they have suffered as a result.

"Her conduct could hardly be less consistent with the role and responsibility of a registrant," the panel concluded. "We find it particularly troubling that, in her submissions, she has shown no real understanding of what she has done and no remorse. She is still unwilling to acknowledge her breaches."

(Bock is now registered as an insurance agent and is flogging insurance products and segregated funds. On Thursday, I reported that she was planning sales seminars at the West Point Grey Community Centre and the Arbutus Club. After learning of her regulatory problems, however, both venues cancelled, forcing her to move to the Holiday Inn on West Broadway.)

BCSC enforcement staff asked the hearing panel to suspend her for three to five years, and fine her $60,000. This was a joke. By any rational measure, she should have been barred from the market for life and assessed the maximum $250,000 fine. But no, not with this securities commission. Even five years was too much or them to contemplate. Three years and a $25,000 penalty would be just fine.

Under the terms of her suspension, she can't sell non-registered investments (such as cranberry farms) for three years. And she can't conduct investor relations for any company during this period. But she can be an officer and director of a public company, and she can trade for her own account.

She relinquished her mutual fund licence some time ago and it's unlikely she could get reinstated during her suspension. But after three years, when she has supposedly atoned for her sins, she would be free to sell ostrich farms, if she liked. She could also reapply for her securities licence, and with this commission, I am sure she would get it.

For the record, the panel was headed by full-time commissioner Robin Ford and included part-time commissioners Marc Foreman and Robert Milbourne.

Foreman and Milbourne were on the panel that overturned a TSX Venture Exchange decision and allowed cop-killer Bill Nichols to conduct investor relations for TSXV companies, even though he failed to disclose 19 of his 20 criminal convictions. BCSC chairman Doug Hyndman served as its chairman.

I want to ask Premier Gordon Campbell, who is in ultimate charge of the commission: Do you think I make these stories up? Don't you think investors have been brutalized enough? Isn't it time to intervene?