Canada Tightens Anti-Money Laundering Rules
Today, the Government of Canada announced the upcoming implementation of new regulatory amendments to strengthen Canada’s Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing (AML/ATF) framework and ensure that it is even more robust and effective in addressing threats of financial crime.
The amendments will greatly improve efforts to combat money laundering and its link to transnational crime and drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl, and complement the Government of Canada’s Border Plan as well as the recently announced creation of a Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime and maintain the integrity of our shared border. The new regulatory measures will implement:
And starting April 1, 2025, provincial and territorial civil forfeiture offices will begin to receive financial intelligence disclosures from Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), Canada’s financial intelligence unit, to support efforts to seize the assets of criminals.
Further, the Minister of Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs will update Directives associated with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation. These updates will safeguard the integrity of Canada’s financial sector and combat potential sanctions evasion.
These measures build on the government’s investments of more than $379 million over the last five years to enhance the effectiveness of Canada’s AML/ATF Regime, by strengthening compliance, financial intelligence, information sharing, and investigative capacity to support money laundering investigations and combat sanctions evasion. This is in addition to legislative and regulatory changes that provide new tools to law enforcement, add new criminal offences and strengthen penalties, and expand the Regime to new sectors at risk of money laundering.
On February 19, 2025, the government convened the first working meeting of the new Integrated Money Laundering Intelligence Partnership. This new partnership will support the permissible sharing of money laundering and organized crime intelligence between law enforcement and Canada’s big banks.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/03/government-strengthens-canadas-anti-money-laundering-framework-with-new-regulatory-amendments.html