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The article discusses Vancouver's successful Winter Olympics bid. Several of British Columbia's sour-faced columnists and reporters at The Vancouver Sun--as well as those local papers that usually pile up at the front of small-town driveways in waterlogged clumps--tried to rain on Vancouver's successful Winter Olympics bid following the announcement in Prague on July 2, 2003. They bleated the familiar refrain: forget the Games; what about our social programs? Even a die-hard, left-leaning West Coaster, however, should know one thing: the Olympics are a social program.

The article reports on efforts to prevent white-collar crime in Canada. The stock-swindle case, Project Opulence, was cracked by a team of RCMP investigators working closely with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Ontario Securities Commission. The team effort worked so well on the Benlolo brothers' case that it was used as a model for the RCMP's new Integrated Market Enforcement Team, an elite fraud squad made up of experienced RCMP investigators, forensic accountants and securities market experts. Their mandate: to work with Canada's securities enforcement community to crack down on corporate crime and restore confidence in Canada's financial markets. RCMP Supt. Craig Hannaford's team might have only one minor arrest under its belt, but it is also investigating transactions between Toronto-based Royal Group Technologies and a St. Kitts resort controlled by chairman Vic De Zen, as well as possible criminal behavior at Nortel Networks. Across the country, in Vancouver, Insp. Bill Majcher, a 20-year veteran of the RCMP, is working the Howe Street beat for IMET. While Toronto concentrates on large-scale blue-chip corporate fraud, Majcher's unit is targeting the relatively smaller stock swindlers who have tarnished the reputation of the Vancouver equity markets. The RCMP hopes federal Bill C-13, which went into force in September, will alleviate some of the problems with search warrants. Besides giving police more power to execute search warrants, the bill includes new protection for corporate whistle-blowers and increases the maximum sentence for fraud to 14 years in prison from 10--the longest sentence that can be imposed short of life in prison. It also adds insider trading to the Criminal Code. INSET: The slow arm of the law.

The author discusses the OTC Bulletin Board stock quotation service in the United States and the proliferation of such companies in Canada. The OTCBB is a trading forum for about 3,300 issuers, most of them nascent companies with no established business--and many with no purpose other than to rip off investors. During the late 1990s, when British Columbia regulators embarked on a concerted campaign to clean up the Vancouver junior market, many scoundrel promoters sought refuge in the OTCBB. The B.C. Securities Commission reckons there are now several hundred OTCBB companies with Vancouver connections. Theoretically, OTCBB issuers that are based in Canada must run a double gauntlet of American and Canadian regulators. But the reality is that Canadian regulators tend to ignore OTC issuers because they don't trade on Canadian exchanges. And American regulators, to the extent that they bother with OTC companies, are less inclined to pursue foreign issuers, especially with Canada's abysmal record of extraditing Canadian residents who breach U.S. securities rules. Commission chairman Doug Hyndman says B.C. is working on some initiatives to deal with the problem, but isn't quite ready to talk about them. Insp. Bill Majcher, in charge of the new RCMP Integrated Market Enforcement Team in Vancouver, describes the over-the-counter stock business as a tremendous problem. The problem is not unique to Vancouver. There are also dozens of Bulletin Board stocks operating out of Toronto, for the most part unimpeded by provincial regulators. Michael Watson, the Ontario Securities Commission enforcement director whose principal constituent is the more senior Toronto Stock Exchange, admits that errant OTCBB companies are at the bottom of his priority list. Can/Am Auto Sales Inc., a Vancouver car dealer with no revenue and negligible assets, provides a good illustration of why investors, when dealing with Bulletin Board issues, can toss efficient-market pricing theories out the window.

Profiles David Jones, associate director of the University of British Columbia's (UBC) University-Industry Liaison Office (UILO), which acts as a business incubator. Jones' efforts to transform technologies with commercial potential from UBC's labs into start-up companies; Regulations which restrict equity participation by Jones and his colleagues.

Focuses on Vancouver, British Columbia scientist-businessman Guy Cramer and his claim that he can predict stock performance based on the level of positive and negative ions in the air. His assertion that positive ions promote greed and stimulate buying while negative ions create panic and stimulate selling; Accuracy of his past forecasts; Opinion of scientists that his ideas are far-fetched.