As the past experience with the previous share issues demonstrated, dealing with the financial institutions many of which have a reputation of being unencumbered with moral or ethical values vs any of its business partners, where all assets turned over may / will be used against existing shareholders at the 1st opportunity whenever possible, e.g. lending shares / warrants promises for shorting coverage double whammy purposes may present a potential drag on the share price. The daily volumes make for an easy manipulation target, the ever repeated daily trading patterns since months systematically opening on a downtick note and closing on an uptick note would be easy to explain in a market that would not deliberately be kept highly non-transparent, biased in favor of the major market manipulators, lobbyists.

To beat these kind of partners on their own game you have to be exceptionally seasoned. In the past ECU managed to avoid these kind of partners but finding fresh capital in today's environment is getting ever tougher, hence the vital requirement to generate a positive cash flow and avoid any further dilution where the price to pay increases exponentially. The reporting of positive cash flow and doubling or tripling the mill capacity will get this stock moving strongly.

Since January 2007 the management attention to investor relations and frequency of progress report news releases has dropped noticeably, hopefully the relationships with the financial community, the press coverage, various websites and regulatory authorities receives closer attention.

Note:

Officially naked short sales are not permitted in Canada. The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (“IIROC”), UMIR Policy 2.2 Part 2 (h) provides that it is manipulative and deceptive to “enter an order for the sale of a security without, at the time of entering the order, having the reasonable expectation of settling any trade that would result from the execution of the order”. In addition, National Instrument 24-101 Part 7 states that “A registered dealer shall not execute a trade unless the dealer has established, maintains and enforces policies and procedures designed to facilitate settlement of the trade on a date that is no later than the standard settlement date for the type of security traded prescribed by an SRO or the marketplace on which the trade would be executed”.

Canada has a rule prohibiting the execution of a short sale on a downtick, except on inter-listed securities (UMIR 3.1). All securities inter-listed on US markets were exempted from the tick rule as the result of the US revocation of their tick rule on June 13, 2007.

Delisting of ECUXF would at least take care of some of the naked shorting.

IIROC monitors trading and settlement to detect violations of, investigate and enforce the above rules, however it is a toothless tiger, as collusive and ineffective as the SEC or FDIC, no significant violations have ever been detected, pursued or prosecuted.

Without a US listing Naked short selling is illegal in Canada and an uptick is required

The onus is placed on the brokers to inquire with the client if they intend to make delivery. The client answers yes and it all ends right there as all the rules have been followed at that point. The broker has no obligation to follow up or ask again.

The said naked short selling prevention rules and procedure by the brokers is a totally ineffective lip service and presents a loophole a cavalry charge goes through undetected and unreported.