Your financial objective should always be to focus on how to secure your capital with adequate growth in the most tax-efficient manner.  Here are some key points to discuss with your advisor to limit losses and secure your future.

1. What products do they have for the protection of lifestyle?  (example: annuities, segregated funds).
2. Does your advisor understand your vision of retirement and your personal risk tolerance?
3. What is the accumulation strategy recommended versus just focusing on money management and managed portfolios?

For example: you want to create multiple streams of income from employee pensions, government pensions, IRAs, 401Ks, real estate investments, laddered strip-bond portfolios, and/or side incomes/part-time jobs).

1. What products can they offer to generate a consistent, stable return regardless of the day-to-day market activity?

For example: hedged products, SMA products with guaranteed base returns, REITs, bond portfolios).

1. Have they fully outlined their fee structure, embedded costs and management or trailer fees?

For example:  MER fees on MFs, front-load fees, back-end-load fees.  You will also want to check the tax-loss harvesting time periods on MFs and check the lock in time periods used to cover load fees on MFs or managed products).