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International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime pp 627–647Cite as

“This Time We Really Mean It!”

Cracking Down on Stock Market Fraud

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Abstract

On February 12, 2004, the federal government in Canada passed Bill C-13, amending the Criminal Code to increase penalties for insider trading, augment the investigative resources of the Crown, and strengthen whistleblower protection.1 In December, 2003, a high-level report told the federal government it must create a new national regulatory body and a single regulatory code, thereby ending 100 years of decentralized provincially-based stock market regulation.2 Both initiatives were responses to high-profile corporate scandals, particularly Worldcom and Enron in the United States, which followed the 1999 collapse of the technology stock market bubble. The new measures exemplify what media and officialdom trumpet as the state’s crackdown on corporate crime. Two decades of government-sponsored deregulation and downsizing, of denying the ubiquity and severity of corporate crime, and forgetting the lessons of the past have now ended. Laissez-faire “see-no-evil, speak-no-evil” attitudes to business, and the deregulatory policies they inspired, are no more. Governments today are expanding corporate criminal liability, extending it to CEOs and Boards of Directors.3 In the Unites States voices bemoaning “overregulation” are strong: Chambers of Commerce suggest governments are on “witch hunts that imperil the American dream”; conservative politicians decry draconian new regulations that will destroy the New York Stock Exchange The New York Times, February 10, 2002: 3-1, Globe & Mail, June 1, 2002: F8).

Canada’s First Mining Scandal? Between 1576–78, Martin Frobisher made 3 extended trips to Canada, convinced that he had found gold on Baffin Island. However, recent analyses reveal that the gold- containing assays were fraudulently “salted” by crooked chemists in London. (Globe & Mail, July 6, 2004: AI)

“For more than 20years, the [American] federal government has given companies fairly free rein, allowing them to operate with less and less regulation. … Suddenly, … the race to regulate is on.” (The New York Times, February 10, 2002, Section 3, Page 1)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Laureen Snider (Professor of Sociology)

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  1. Laureen Snider
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, Law and Society School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, 92697-7080, USA

    Henry N. Pontell  & Gilbert Geis  & 

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Snider, L. (2007). “This Time We Really Mean It!”. In: Pontell, H.N., Geis, G. (eds) International Handbook of White-Collar and Corporate Crime. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34111-8_32

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