Your March 20 article on the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization’s (CIRO) new disgorgement distribution program accurately reported the announcement, but the challenges underlying this initiative deserve equal attention.
Closing the gap between ordering disgorgement and compensating victims is the right move. For years, CIRO could order wrongdoers to hand back proceeds of misconduct but lacked the mechanism to return those funds to affected investors.
However, the program can only distribute what it actually collects. CIRO’s own records show that over a 15-year period, it collected only about 20 cents of every dollar ordered in disgorgement. With annual disgorgement orders in recent years running well under $2 million, per-investor recoveries — after pro-rata division and administrative costs — risk being negligible.
The program’s exclusions further compound the problem. Claims for opportunity costs, interest and market-driven losses are ineligible, yet these categories often represent the bulk of actual investor losses.
Your article also noted that a similar Ontario Securities Commission mechanism launched in September 2025 has not distributed any funds in seven months. While enforcement timelines are naturally long, this is a data point that CIRO’s own program will need to answer for publicly and regularly.
The creation of this mechanism matters, but it should not end the conversation. A right without an effective remedy is not protection; it is merely a press release.