Last month, the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) launched a pilot hearings assistance program. Advisors who face a disciplinary panel without a lawyer can be matched, at no cost, with volunteer counsel from Blake, Cassels & Graydon.
The National Self-Represented Litigants Project handles intake and runs the program. The help is procedural — initial appearances, prehearing conferences, the occasional motion or costs submission. Substantive advice is possible but not promised. Capacity is limited. None of it is guaranteed.
The program has value. Self-represented respondents do struggle against a process built by lawyers for lawyers. Procedural fairness is not a courtesy; it is the price of a legitimate hearing. Walking a respondent through that process, with a real lawyer at no cost, is a genuine service. CIRO deserves credit for providing this to advisors.
The question must be asked though: Why is the same service not offered to investors?
These hearings occur because an advisor or firm is alleged to have caused harm. Behind that allegation, in most cases, is a client who lost money. When that client goes looking for help, they’re provided with a list of instructions: complain to the firm, then the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI), then perhaps arbitration, then perhaps court.
The process is self-directed, start to finish. There is no intake service, no matched counsel, no one guiding the sequence. All the while, a limitation period keeps running. Miss it at any stage and the claim is dead, whatever its merit.
An advisor fills out an online form and hears from a lawyer-matching service within a week. The investor who says they were harmed starts at the bottom, escalates, waits, escalates again, alone — against the firm’s people. Arbitration fees, a lawyer’s retainer and other expenses sometimes outstrip the original loss. Meanwhile, the advisor receives free help.
CIRO made a choice
This pilot was not designed to slight investors, but it does. CIRO has chosen to help advisors navigate its process, but not investors. The decision tells investors that their path to recovery remains theirs to decode.
An argument can be made that this choice is consistent with CIRO’s jurisdiction. Discipline is CIRO’s process, so it built assistance there. Compensation is not. CIRO cannot order compensation in the ordinary sense, so it built help where it has direct control.
Compensation usually lies elsewhere — first with the firm, then OBSI, arbitration or court. OBSI is free, but its recommendations are not binding. Arbitration and court can bind, but they bring cost, complexity and legal fees.
But CIRO has involved itself in compensation. Since April, a new disgorgement distribution program lets it return money collected from disciplined advisors to the investors those advisors harmed.
It is a genuine improvement, but a limited one. CIRO pays out only if it collects the money. And the process is claims-based — the investor must apply, gather records and prove the loss. There is no intake service, no matched lawyer, no one walking them through the form. There’s nothing like what CIRO launched for advisors last month.
This new pilot program does not give CIRO the power to order compensation. It required no new legislation. The self-regulatory organization (SRO) found a partner, lined up pro bono lawyers, built an intake process and stood up a service.
Nothing is stopping CIRO from providing the same service to investors. The model already exists. Osgoode Hall’s Investor Protection Clinic offers free legal help to investors who cannot afford a lawyer. CIRO would not be inventing anything. It would be extending the same design imagination to the people its mandate exists to protect.
CIRO has correctly identified an issue — the process related to disciplinary hearings is burdensome. But that burden is carried by both advisors and aggrieved investors. The SRO has made a decision to help one and not the other.
