Pump and Dump: How Marc Bédard Profited While Taxpayers Lost

Follow the Money

In the 1976 film, All the President’s Men, Deep Throat advised the reporters to “follow the money” if they wanted to find government corruption.

Here’s a Canadian story. You decide if it is incompetence or corruption.

Lion Electric’s Shocking Downfall: A $49.5 Million Taxpayer Loss

Lion Electric (LEV.TO), the electric vehicle manufacturer based in Quebec, is filing for bankruptcy protection. In August 2021, the Strategic Innovation Fund of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada allocated a staggering $49.5 million to subsidize the company, when its stock was trading just below $15.

Fast forward to today, and the electric bus manufacturer is likely worth nothing. Taxpayers’ money has vanished into thin air.

Whether or not you agree with the Government of Canada’s approach to spraying taxpayer funds at all these ‘energy transition’ investment commitments, there are some things they need to understand in their ‘investment’ process.

One of these things would be a ‘lockup agreement’.

In Lion’s case, investors (including taxpayers) lose all their money.

Interesting, but not for Marc Bédard, the CEO-Founder of Lion.

Here’s Marc Bedard’s trading, shortly after the Government of Canada’s ‘investment’ of taxpayer dollars:

These are insider trading filings of Marc Bedard – one of which occurs the day after the Canadian taxpayer investment, with the rest about three months later.

Marc Bedard liquidated over $19 million of his shares in the company. He got rich. The taxpayers’ investment is now worth nothing.

In the finance industry, this is known as ‘pump and dump’; Marc Bedard got the ‘pump’ from the taxpayer gift and then ‘dumped’ millions of dollars of shares onto others, pocketing a substantial amount of cash.

Marc Bedard has a better relationship with the stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars than the taxpayer themselves. This pattern is repetitive. Follow the money! Where do your tax dollars actually end up?

It’s not just incompetence. This is wealth transfer – from taxpayers to connected insiders. Sadly, not an isolated story, but one that is starkly evident.

UPDATE: January 2, 2025

Thanks to crowdsourcing information, my readers have added some interesting details:

– the shares sold by M. Bedard totalled $33 million. See chart below detailing his “insider trading” between August 2021 and August 2023 (thanks to Jenny ManyDots).

– the largest shareholder of Lion Electric was the Desmarais Family Residual Trust, with 34% of shares (thanks to Andy Lee for info). The Desmarais family is amongst Canada’s wealthiest, and they have close ties to the Liberal Party and senior Liberal insiders including Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin.

– Another major shareholder in Lion is Michel Ringuet with 1.1 million shares. M. Ringuet is on the Board of Lion, and also on the investment committee at Cycle Capital Management. The founder and Managing Partner of Cycle, Andrée-Lise Méthot, is a close associate of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault from his ten years as a Strategic Advisor and as a current shareholder at Cycle Capital.

– Ms. Méthot was named to the board of the Canada Infrastructure Bank, which plans to spend $1.5 billion of tax dollars on electric buses, many of which coincidentally were to be made by Lion.

– Ms. Méthot also sat on the disgraced board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada which gave millions of tax dollars in ineligible grants to board members’ own companies, allegedly including up to $200 million to Capital Cycle.

You need a spreadsheet to sort out how taxpayer funds are circling around Liberal insider circles, but believe me, you couldn’t just make this stuff up.