In a shocking encounter this past week, I heard directly from a semi low-level employee at the British Columbia Securities Commission that enforcement staff are routinely told to “drum up business” – and told to bring potential cases to the forefront or risk losing their jobs.
Recently, I was on a family outing with my family in Surrey and I ran into a CURRENT employee from the BCSC. I think we mutually recognized each other and I went over and asked if they were still employed by the Commission. They indicated they were and I then asked why no one at the Commission would answer my questions sent to them in writing and those that are on this blog. They indicated I was “under their skin” and that most think I am acting very unprofessional by having this blog. They see it as untrue and that I just have a bone to pick with the Commission after what happened to me. I indicated that I was not writing this blog with that in mind but they might be right. I took pride in the fact that they told me there are several Commission employees that look at this blog daily. I have verified this claim by checking the hits made by BCSC employees and can confirm this is true.
After more small talk, I then asked how many employees were employed in the Enforcement Section – they didn’t know the answer to that but they acknowledged there were many. I asked how do so many staff work on enforcement matters when there is not really that many (as of today there are only a small few that the enforcement staff would be working on) and this is when they said something I will never forget. They said words to the effect, “the enforcement staff at the Commission will always have work because they understand that if they don’t have cases to investigate they would no longer be needed at the Commission“, and that “they are told to drum up business during slow times”. This would equate to the RCMP being told to write more tickets to motorists during slow times or risk losing their jobs.
This is incredible – let’s assume for a moment that NO ONE is committing securities violations yet you have these “reckless” staff members out there just looking to find something wrong (in their eyes). Crazy times!