Greetings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee.
My name is John Mecher—that rhymes with teacher—and I was with the RCMP for over 32 years. During that time, I spent approximately 10 years investigating fraud, mostly in the greater Toronto area. I've investigated various frauds, including the infamous CRA scam. After I retired in 2019, I continued my work in a volunteer capacity to create fraud awareness.
Although I'm open to discussing many aspects of fraud, including organizational and governmental missed opportunities, I've chosen to focus on a foundational component of fraud prevention. Specifically, I will speak to the difference between “fraud awareness” and what I call “meaningful fraud awareness”.
First, it's always good to reiterate the losses, which continue to escalate year after year and are currently at an all-time high. As per the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, last year those losses rang in at over $383 million. Worse yet, that amount, as per the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, only represents 5% of the actual losses.
What we're looking at in Canada is that fraud has become a multi-billion-dollar enterprise for fraudsters all around the world. Those same fraudsters tend to prey on people I describe as traditional fraud victims, such as seniors, newcomers, refugees and the intellectually challenged. Although I can offer several egregious examples of fraudsters targeting members of those communities, I must remind everyone that just about anyone, given the right set of circumstances, can fall for a scam.
It's also necessary to remember that the victim impact often goes beyond simply a financial hit. In some cases, the victim's life savings are wiped out, and that's often never recovered. Sadly, victims also face layers of emotional impacts, ranging from embarrassment to depression, and in extreme cases, unfortunately, many victims end up taking their own lives.
Specific to phone fraud, even though these scams have been around for decades, we have yet to implement measures that have been able to reduce their ease of access to our phone systems. Statistics from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reinforce that point, as the phone has been and continues to be the preferred method of solicitation for fraud.
Furthermore, with a view to the CRA scam that arrived in Canada in 2014, along with subsequent variants, I remain unconvinced that there is any sense of urgency in creating a barrier to the exploitation of our phone systems. To that end, we also need to be aware that we can't rely on enforcement—albeit necessary—or the courts as a meaningful deterrent for fraudsters. Unfortunately, we're not left with many options to protect our fraud-vulnerable communities.
All that said, fraud awareness is the solution, and that needs to be employed. However, it needs to be employed in a meaningful, relentless and focused manner, but that is something that does not always happen. If the status quo approach to fraud awareness worked, we would not be seeing losses growing on a yearly basis. At the same time, although many people in Canada do great work on this front, we need to do much more, and we need to do it now.
Although fraud awareness can involve websites and social media, if potential victims are unaware of those platforms, it's pointless to believe that a series of tweets or online posts can create meaningful fraud awareness. From my perspective, the golden rule of meaningful fraud awareness must be driven by our ability to get the message to those who need to hear it the most. In failing to do that, we will continue to see further victimization.
Lastly, I'm willing to work with any parliamentarian in a non-partisan manner, just as I did with Mr. Masse on the Western Union file, which was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for victims of fraud to recoup losses.
Thank you.