The Crocus Investment Fund

Three months ago, Kevin Lamoureux and I made public our intention to slow down the Doer government's legislative agenda if the Premier did not do what is needed and call a public inquiry into the Crocus Investment Fund fiasco.

As you have probably heard by now, the Premier has refused to do the right thing and we have made good on our pledge. We are working with the Conservatives to send a message to the Premier that he must call an independent public inquiry.

We are doing this for two reasons:

1) There remain many unanswered questions around the Crocus Investment Fund. Some 33,000 Manitobans have lost millions of taxpayer-supported dollars as a result of what happened. This issue is not only about Crocus shareholders; it's about Manitoba taxpayers and confidence in our government. We need a public inquiry to find out why things went so very wrong at Crocus and to ensure that mistakes like these do not happen again.

2) Kevin and I believe it is important to keep this type of pressure on the government as one way of achieving the best possible outcome for individual shareholders of the Crocus Investment Fund. We have been in steady contact with many Crocus investors and have attended shareholder meetings (such as the March 8 meeting at the Victoria Inn) so we can work with shareholders to help achieve the best possible outcome for them.