Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne arrives at a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in October. Mr. Champagne says a new agency will be established to investigate sophisticated schemes that are often linked to organized crime.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The 2025 federal budget will include plans for a new financial crimes agency that will target money laundering and online fraud, the government announced Monday.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne outlined the initiative on Parliament Hill as part of a series of announcements the government is making ahead of the Nov. 4 budget.
Canadians lost $643-million to fraud in 2024, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
Opinion: Canada lags allies in providing financial-crime guidance to banks, other businesses
The new office will investigate sophisticated schemes that are often linked to organized crime.
The new centre will be part of a broader federal anti-fraud strategy that will include legislation updating the Bank Act.
The legislative amendments would require banks to have policies and procedures in place to detect and prevent consumer-targeted fraud; obtain clear consent from bank account holders before enabling services like e-transfers and to collect data on financial fraud and report it to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada.
Mr. Champagne said the new agency is inspired by similar investigation teams in Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.
“You need something different. You need something which is best in class in the world,” he said when asked if the new agency would duplicate work that is already taking place by existing federal organizations.
“You need the type of agents that would have the investigative power, the skills needed and the ability to really go after organized crime, money laundering, transnational crime,” he said.
Monday’s announcement did not include a specific cost for the new agency. A government document said it will be funded by “leveraging investments in federal law enforcement capacity.”
Ottawa will also be launching consultations on a voluntary Economic Abuse Code of Conduct for financial institutions.
The news release does not describe how the new financial crimes agency would interact with existing national organizations that focus on financial crime.
There is currently a Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre that is described on its website as “a national police service that gathers intelligence on fraud across Canada and assists Police of Jurisdiction with enforcement and prevention efforts.”
There is also a federal body called FINTRAC, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.
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The organization describes itself as “Canada’s financial intelligence unit and anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing supervisor.”
Meanwhile, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions regulates and supervises more than 400 financial institutions in Canada.
That organization has a legal requirement under the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act “to supervise financial institutions in order to determine whether they have adequate policies and procedures to protect themselves against threats to their integrity or security, including foreign interference.”