Through the new strategy, the Liberals will explore new policies and actions that require firms across the technology, telecommunications and financial sectors to step up to combat financial fraud.
Minister of Finance and National Revenue Francois-Philippe Champagne speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025.
Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
By Estella Ren Business Reporter
The federal government is set to launch Canada’s first-ever national anti-fraud strategy and build a new financial crime agency to crack down on financial crimes, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced Monday.
Ottawa will introduce amendments to the Bank Act requiring financial institutions to put in place safeguards against fraud and obtain account holders’ consent before “enabling account capabilities which fraudsters can use to steal consumers’ money,” according to a press release from the Department of Finance.
The news, part of a series of announcements ahead of the federal budget set to be tabled on Nov. 4, follows a roundtable in Washington last week where Champagne said he met with his counterparts from G7 countries, the FBI, and the CEO of the Canadian Bankers Association to discuss strategies for combating financial fraud.
The Liberal government says the coming federal budget will include a national anti-fraud strategy. The planned measures include legislation directing banks to have new policies and procedures in place to detect and prevent fraud. (Oct. 20, 2025)
The Canadian Press
“I want Canada to be best in class. That’s why we’ve been consulting with (other countries),” said Champagne at a news conference in Ottawa. “My aim is to go after organized crime, is to go after those who scam and defraud Canadians.”
Cybersecurity experts told the Star that the government’s move is “an encouraging step,” but real change won’t happen until there is effective coordination across sectors such as the financial industry, telecommunications, and law enforcement in combating fraud.
Champagne said the anti-fraud strategy will also explore policies that push firms across the technology, telecommunications and financial sectors to step up their efforts against financial fraud. He added that the government intends to table legislation to create a new financial crime agency by Spring 2026, “modeled after the best in the world.”
The agency will serve as the lead enforcement body for combating financial crimes — including fraud and money laundering — and for recovering criminal proceeds.
“If you look at the financial crime unit in the United Kingdom, or if you look at the FBI units that are doing that, you need specialized people,” said Champagne, explaining why the government needs to build a new agency outside of the existing federal body that combats financial fraud, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.
“We will be attracting the best. We’ll take people from different parts of the government of Canada,” he said.
The Liberals will also work with stakeholders and banks to develop a voluntary Economic Abuse Code of Conduct for the prevention of economic abuse where a person loses control of their money to someone else. The code will lay out clear expectations for how banks should “identify, prevent and respond to economic abuse,” Champagne said.
As of September 30, more than 23,000 people in Canada reported losses totaling $544 million due to fraud, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
“It’s certainly been a long awaited step, but it’s an encouraging step,” said Cybersecurity expert Claudiu Popa. “The government’s anti-fraud plan, such as it is, finally treats financial crime as a national economic threat, not just as a consumer issue or a nuisance, as it’s been seen in the past.”
Popa said the real test will be to build a collaborative layer between banks, telecom companies and regulators to share fraud intelligence in real time so such crimes can be detected and prevented.
Unless this coordination is built, “having a new agency risks becoming yet another layer of bureaucracy,” Popa said.
Popa added policies only succeed when they improve users’ actual experience, for example individuals receiving smarter alerts when there’s a high-risk money transfer.
“I do believe that we needed to create a new agency, streamline operations,” said Ritesh Kotak, a security and technology analyst. “But we definitely need more details on how the government plans on executing this.”
Kotak said that due to the lack of collaboration among financial institutions and law enforcement, the onus currently falls on individuals to report fraud to banks, the police, and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, and he hopes this situation will be improved.
“Not let the victim go ahead and try to figure out which, try to figure out a long, drawn out process which actually ends up re-victimizing them,” he said.
