Firms paid full penalties while individuals cleared just 18 percent of what panels ordered
CIRO hearing panels imposed more than $15m in sanctions against firms and individuals over the past fiscal year, handing down suspensions and permanent bans in most cases brought against individuals.
Effective enforcement "deters harmful behaviour" and "reinforces confidence in the integrity of the market," said Alexandra Williams, senior vice-president, strategy, innovation and stakeholder protection at CIRO.
Over the year, she said, the enforcement team pursued "cases that address serious misconduct" so that regulated firms and individuals understand the consequences of breaking the rules.
What CIRO collects, however, remains a fraction of what it orders.
Individuals paid 18 percent of the monetary sanctions imposed on them in fiscal 2026, the report shows, up from 16 percent a year earlier but below the 23 percent recorded in fiscal 2024.
The regulator attributes much of that gap to cases involving permanent bans, which it says generally account for more than 70 percent of financial sanctions yet yield little because barred individuals often lack assets or income.
Collection on those permanent-bar cases ran at just 0.2 percent, per the report, against 68 percent for sanctions where no permanent bar applied.
Firms, by contrast, paid 100 percent of the amounts imposed, as they have in each of the past three years.
CIRO reviewed 6,692 complaints during the year, drawn from the public, whistleblowers, the Complaints and Settlement Reporting System (ComSet), securities commissions and other regulators, and internal CIRO departments.
The regulator completed 151 investigations and concluded 48 enforcement proceedings, referring 31 percent of investigated files to prosecution.
The cases CIRO advanced centred on supervision, internal controls, and the gatekeeper obligations of dealers and their approved persons.
Among firm settlements, National Bank Financial agreed to a $1m fine and $50,000 in costs after CIRO found it failed to adequately supervise a registered representative whose trading at times exceeded 200 trades per day.
Canaccord Genuity agreed to a $600,000 fine, $2.2m in disgorgement, and $50,000 in costs for failing to act as a gatekeeper when it opened accounts used to sell risky, low-priced US securities, as per the report.
Echelon Wealth Partners, now Ventum Financial, settled gatekeeping and supervision findings for a $500,000 fine and $1.7m in disgorgement, while Virtu Canada agreed to a $1.1m fine and $405,789 in disgorgement over order-exposure breaches under the Universal Market Integrity Rules.
Individual cases spanned discretionary trading and large-scale misappropriation.
The report details a permanent bar and a $1,509,879 fine against an advisor who misappropriated $460,126 from a 74-year-old client, and a separate permanent bar and $1,064,100 fine against an approved person who moved $354,700 from two elderly clients into fictitious accounts he controlled.
In one Quebec matter, an advisor who misappropriated roughly $204,000 CAD and US$15,000 from vulnerable or deceased clients received a permanent prohibition, a $100,000 fine, and $59,153 in disgorgement.
CIRO also flagged two initiatives that fall outside the reporting period.
It launched a Disgorgement Distribution Program on April 1, 2026, which the regulator said allows disgorged funds to be paid directly to investors who suffered losses from misconduct in applicable cases.
Separately, an anti-fraud effort with the CSA had disabled more than 9,119 fraudulent investment platforms and cryptocurrency scam sites involving 15,615 URLs as of April 2026.
The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization released its Enforcement Report for fiscal 2026, covering April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026.
The report includes statistics on complaint intake, investigations, and concluded proceedings.
