You work hard. You sacrifice to save. You risk your money in the market over your working lifetime and you trust your bank to treat you fairly. But your bank strips away half of your lifetime investment returns in fees. Without realizing it, millions of Canadians are in precisely this position. How does the industry pull this off? The big Canadian banks—and by extension our entire financial industry—occupy a position of paternalistic authority that too many individual investors respect unquestioningly.