Canada is overhauling the way it fights financial crime. For years, the country’s enforcement framework has been spread thinly across federal agencies and provincial bodies, with no single authority capable of pursuing the most sophisticated money laundering, fraud, and sanctions cases end to end.
According to Alessa, Bill C-29, the Financial Crimes Agency Act, tabled in the House of Commons on 27 April 2026, sets out to fix that by establishing a new standalone federal body with broad investigative powers, peace officer authority, and an explicit remit covering digital assets and cross-border financial flows.
Alessa recently detailed how Canada is introducing a law to establish the Financial Crimes Agency.
For compliance professionals at Canadian banks, FinTechs, and money services businesses, this is not an incremental update. It represents a structural shift in the enforcement environment that will demand attention now, not once royal assent is secured.
The enforcement gap Bill C-29 is designed to close
Canada has faced persistent criticism over its relatively low rates of prosecution and asset recovery in complex financial crime cases. The 2019 Cullen Commission in British Columbia laid bare how difficult it was for authorities to coordinate across jurisdictions when money moved through enough layers and borders.
The federal government’s response has been gradual: a series of legislative amendments, the launch of the Integrated Money Laundering Intelligence Partnership in 2025, and significant amendments to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA) under Bill C-12, which received royal assent on 26 March 2026. That earlier bill increased penalties, extended information-sharing powers to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), and tightened reporting obligations across fourteen statutes.
Bill C-29 is the most consequential step in that sequence. Rather than bolting new powers onto existing bodies, it creates the Financial Crimes Agency (FCA) from scratch, an agency built specifically to investigate financial crime at scale.
What the legislation proposes
The FCA’s mandate is focused on serious and complex financial crimes, with the commissioner empowered to set precise criteria for what meets that threshold. The definition of financial crime is deliberately broad: it covers any federal offence involving financial assets, including digital assets, money laundering, proceeds of crime, and conduct that threatens the security or integrity of Canada’s economy, its financial system, or any domestic financial market.
Governance sits under the minister of finance, who may issue public directions to the commissioner on matters of strategic policy. The commissioner, appointed by the Governor in Council for up to five years and renewable to a ten-year maximum, holds the rank of a deputy head and carries the status of a peace officer across Canada.
Critically, this is not an administrative agency in the mould of FINTRAC. The commissioner may designate staff as either investigations officers — public officers under the Criminal Code — or as police officers with full peace officer powers. That distinction matters enormously. It gives the FCA genuine enforcement teeth, not simply an analytical role.
Investigative reach and coordination
Investigations may be launched on the commissioner’s own initiative or in collaboration with any law enforcement body inside or outside Canada. The legislation requires the FCA commissioner and the RCMP commissioner to enter a formal arrangement for the RCMP to provide services while the new agency builds capacity. The attorney general of Canada also holds concurrent authority over proceedings involving transnational offences, cases spanning more than one province, or matters touching the national interest, without displacing provincial attorneys general where federal grounds are not met.
The FCA will additionally be empowered to enter into contracts and information-sharing agreements with foreign counterparts, a provision that reflects the reality that the financial crimes it is designed to pursue rarely stop at a border.
What this means for compliance teams
The practical implications for regulated institutions are significant and flow directly from the bill’s provisions.
Correspondent and counterparty due diligence will face greater scrutiny. The FCA’s mandate over cross-border flows and digital assets means institutions with international payment exposure should expect more intensive attention to the quality of FINTRAC reporting and onboarding documentation.
Transaction monitoring programmes must now meet a higher evidentiary standard. When investigations escalate to a dedicated law enforcement agency, the defensibility of alerts, dispositions, and audit trails becomes critical. Systems that generate clear, investigation-ready documentation will prove their value in ways that pure alert volumes never could.
AML and fraud functions are converging in the regulatory field of view. The FCA’s mandate spans money laundering, fraud, and sanctions — the same combination that integrated FRAML frameworks address operationally. Institutions treating these as separate programmes face a structural disadvantage when enforcement examines the full pattern of criminal activity rather than its components in isolation.
Digital asset exposure now requires explicit controls. The bill’s inclusion of digital assets within the statutory definition of financial crime is a direct signal. Institutions that have not yet mapped their digital asset risk or built screening and monitoring controls around it should treat this legislation as an immediate prompt to act.
The window for preparation is narrowing
Canada’s financial crime enforcement environment is becoming more coordinated and more consequential. The FCA does not replace FINTRAC’s reporting and analytical role; it adds an investigative layer with real enforcement authority sitting above it.
The distance between regulatory expectation and enforcement action is narrowing. Institutions that have deferred investment in their AML compliance infrastructure should treat the tabling of Bill C-29 as the signal that the window for preparation is closing. A well-designed programme, one that produces defensible decisions at every stage from onboarding through transaction monitoring to case closure, is what stands up to scrutiny when a dedicated federal agency comes looking.
Read the full Alessa post here.
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