A former rep who was engaged in a legal fight with the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) that almost went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada has now settled with the regulator.
The BCSC reached a settlement with Jean Andre Lamarche — a former rep who was last registered with TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. in 2013 — who admitted to engaging in the business of trading and advising securities without being registered.
According to the settlement, between January 2016 and March 2020, Lamarche provided financial planning services that strayed into trading and advising by providing investment recommendations to certain clients, and trading securities in the online brokerage accounts of certain clients.
In settling the case, Lamarche paid $46,732 to the BCSC — comprised of $21,732 in disgorgement and a $25,000 settlement payment — and he is banned from the market for 11 years.
The settlement concludes a long-running legal entanglement that began with an enforcement action in 2022, which gave rise to a series of legal challenges brought by Lamarche that, among other things, raised concerns about the constitutionality of provisions of the securities law that the BCSC relied upon to collect evidence.
Specifically, he challenged the regulator’s collection of emails from his internet service provider, and alleged that this breached his privacy rights.
The courts in B.C. declined to hear those challenges, ruling that the BCSC’s enforcement proceeding should be allowed to play out first — a fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which denied leave to appeal those rulings back in April, sending the case back to the BCSC.
Now, as part of a settlement, Lamarche has dropped those legal challenges and discontinued his civil action against the regulator.
The BCSC noted that harmed investors will be able to apply to share in the disgorgement money.
The regulator also said that Lamarche has no history of securities misconduct, and that he ceased the alleged unregistered advising after learning that the BCSC was investigating his conduct.