Canada’s new Financial Crimes Agency will have its work cut out for it amid growing cases of fraud and scams, experts say.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government proposed the creation of the FCA in their Spring Economic Update on Tuesday, making good on a 2021 Liberal campaign promise to create a dedicated policing agency to investigate issues such as money laundering, fraud, insider trading and organized crime.

Financial crimes are a significant issue. The Expert Panel on Money Laundering in British Columbia (B.C.) Real Estate in 2019 estimated that money laundering alone consistently amounted to about two per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product — upwards of $40 billion a year. Losses to fraud totalled more than $704 million in 2025, according to law firm Gowlings.

The Liberals are proposing that the new FCA will receive $352.7 million over five years, and then $82.1 million annually, to begin operations, and will report to the finance minister.

“I think unfortunately, lots of folks have either direct or indirect experience with these types of crimes,” said Steve Boms with the Financial Data and Technology Association of North America, in an interview with Global News.

Boms pointed to issues like romance scams or celebrity impersonations, in which fraudsters coax targets into forking over cash via social media or private messages, as well as the ever-present threat of malware.

“It’s not a uniquely Canadian problem. This is happening across the G7. And (the FCA) is really just Canada’s response to this growing problem that we’re seeing happen worldwide,” he added.

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The RCMP has long warned that resource pressures — particularly from its contract policing agreements with provinces and territories — and the need to prioritize serious national security investigations meant that financial crime investigations fell by the wayside.

The national police force spent roughly $2.34 billion on policing in provinces, territories and municipalities in 2024-25, and just $799 million on federal policing — which includes financial crimes, among other priorities — according to the most recently available parliamentary data.

In 2023, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) cited a recent analysis by the consulting firm KPMG, which noted that the RCMP has shifted resources away from “serious and organized crime and financial crimes to focus on high-risk national security threats and protective services.”

Government documents first reported by The Canadian Press suggest that the situation got to the point where the RCMP had more intelligence tips about possible financial crimes than they had resources to investigate them.

“What we’re seeing is the first new (federal) police agency, essentially, since the RCMP were established back in the 19th century … That’s a big deal by any standard and a decisive step,” said Michael Ecclestone, a partner with The AML Shop who works in anti-money laundering compliance.

Ecclestone said that the FCA responds to long-standing calls from allied countries for Canada to step up to investigate and prosecute more financial crimes, particularly against money laundering and the proceeds of crime.

“If you look at things like how many financial crimes, fraud, money laundering offences actually get prosecuted in Canada relative to other countries … Canada’s stats are fairly abysmal,” Ecclestone said in an interview with Global News.

“You can count on the fingers of one hand how many cases are successfully prosecuted here. That’s a problem.”

Not that standing up a new federal law enforcement agency is without its challenges, however.

Bill C-29, the legislation that proposes to establish the FCA, included lines about the agency getting access to services and assistance from the RCMP, which Gowlings suggests is an acknowledgement the “FCA will need to draw on existing policing resource[s].”

“The proof will be in how fast they actually start staffing, are they getting staff, how fast are they training? Not just officers, but assembling civilian staff to work as a team and put a culture in place that can actually go after a few (of these) complex crimes,” Ecclestone said.

“It takes a very skilled workforce to operate in concert, to be able to make progress and bring cases to bear in prosecution.”

Boms said there’s also the question of how the FCA will co-ordinate with other federal authorities that oversee Canada’s financial institutions or investigate things like organized crime.

“All financial crimes will ultimately be in the mandate of this agency, which kind of goes back to the need for coordination, because it’s not like those responsibilities don’t exist today to protect against these crimes,” Boms said.

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