![]() It’s not known whether she was still a shareholder in 2019 at the time of her alleged communication with OSC staff.Īs a part-time commissioner, Ms. In 2017, she participated in a private placement in Renforth and received 400,000 shares for 5 cents each, public records show. Zordel has also been a Renforth shareholder, public records show. In addition to Gardiner Roberts, her law firm at the time, having acted for Renforth, Ms. ![]() 20, 2019, news release, the company said the regulator wanted the public to know investors should not rely on Renforth’s existing technical reports. Renforth, a penny stock company traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange, had been told by the OSC to update technical reports for deposits at two of its properties in Quebec. The Globe is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to speak about the matter. Zordel communicated with OSC staff about Renforth in and around the time the company was found to be in default of its disclosure requirements. When The Globe followed up with more specific questions about Renforth, she did not respond.īut two sources with knowledge of the incident said that, at some point after her 2019 appointment, Ms. Zordel’s only response to The Globe, a May 26 letter, she denied having ever acting improperly on behalf of a client with OSC staff while she served as a part-time commissioner. She responded to some questions, but not others, including her alleged interventions on behalf of Renforth, the junior mining company, in 2019. Zordel questions on these matters and several other subjects. Her two dissents, one of which is 88 pages long, have been criticized by investor protection advocates. That’s because the bulk of the work she performed was spent researching and writing dissenting legal opinions in two cases she adjudicated earlier in her term. She served in her part-time commissioner role for about six weeks in 2021, and the lion’s share of her compensation was earned after she left her regular duties at OSC on Feb. Zordel was the highest paid of all of the OSC’s nine part-time commissioners, earning more than $186,000. Craig Hayman, who had been serving as the chair of the OSC board’s governance and nominating committee, also resigned to protest Ms. One of those commissioners, former OSC lead director Lorie Haber, called her appointment a “disturbing development” and “almost incomprehensible” in his resignation letter, which was obtained by The Globe. Zordel between 20 were so disappointed in her appointment as the new OSC board chair that they resigned their positions in protest. – Two of the part-time commissioners who served with Ms. Zordel was a Renforth shareholder, public records show. Zordel’s law firm, Gardiner Roberts, and, in 2017, Ms. The company, Renforth Resources Inc., was a client of Ms. Zordel’s initial appointment in 2019, she intervened with OSC staff on behalf of a penny stock mining company that was deemed to be in default of its disclosure requirements, two sources said in interviews. Zordel’s tenure with the OSC from 2019 to 2021 was contentious, a Globe and Mail investigation has found: Zordel served on the seven-member expert panel, convened by then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s government, that recommended the creation of a national securities regulator in 2009. Zordel, a long-time donor to Tories at provincial and federal levels who was also part of the fundraising team for the federal Conservative leadership campaign of then-MP Kellie Leitch in 2016. One of those 2019 appointments was given to Ms. ![]() Lysyk criticized the Ford government in 2021 for putting the OSC's operational independence at risk. Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk in 2016. Ontario Auditor-General Bonnie Lysyk criticized the Ford government in 2021 for putting the regulator’s operational independence at risk, citing the government’s decision to veto, publicly, the OSC’s plan to ban certain fees on mutual funds. The commission is also supposed to operate at arm’s length from elected officials. Zordel has spent most of her legal career advising entrepreneurs who run junior mining and energy companies, as well as growth-focused technology companies and private businesses, which tend to be riskier investments than large, established corporations. Zordel to the top position of corporate governance at the agency is part of a broader pattern of the Ford government putting an anti-regulatory stamp on the OSC. Investor protection experts say the elevation of Ms. Zordel’s appointment a few months ago, however, was that she had left the OSC a little more than a year earlier after a majority of her peers recommended against her reappointment. What was not explained in the announcement that marked Ms.
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