Particle.news
Download on the App Store
4 ARTICLES
·
last mo.

Ottawa Tables Bill to Launch Financial Crimes Agency With $353 Million Start-Up Plan

The bill signals a bid to fix gaps in policing complex financial crime.

Dark clouds pass by the Parliament buildings in Ottawa on Thursday, May 19, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
The government introduced legislation to create the new specialized federal law enforcement agency to investigate "serious and complex financial crimes, such as money laundering, serious fraud, and major capital market crimes, and to recover the proceeds of crime."

Overview

  • The Financial Crimes Agency, set out in a bill tabled Monday, would wield police powers to investigate money laundering, serious fraud, capital‑markets offences and the recovery of criminal proceeds.
  • The plan commits about $352.7–$353 million over five years and roughly $82 million each year after that to build and run the new force.
  • The framework assigns investigations to the agency while giving the federal attorney general carriage of prosecutions, including the power to assert jurisdiction over provincial cases arising from FCA files.
  • The agency would operate distinct from the RCMP yet draw on Mountie services through formal arrangements and early access to RCMP personnel.
  • Next steps include parliamentary review and naming a commissioner to recruit and train a specialized workforce, a test as FINTRAC flagged $44 billion in suspicious transactions in 2023–24 and reported fraud losses reached more than $704 million in 2025.