Department of Finance Canada announced regulatory amendments to strengthen Canada's anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorist-financing framework.
The amendments extend AML/ATF obligations to factoring companies, cheque-cashing businesses, and financing and leasing companies. Finance Canada described this as closing a regulatory gap in financial services that criminals can exploit.
Starting April 1, 2025, provincial and territorial civil forfeiture offices were to begin receiving financial intelligence disclosures from FINTRAC.
Those disclosures are intended to support efforts to seize criminal assets. FINTRAC is Canada's financial intelligence unit and receives reports from regulated businesses under the Proceeds of Crime framework.
The amendments build on more than $379 million in federal investments over five years to improve Canada's AML/ATF regime through compliance, financial intelligence, information sharing, and investigative capacity.
The regulatory issue is compliance rather than tax rates. Businesses brought into the AML/ATF regime may face registration, reporting, record-keeping, client-identification, and compliance-program obligations.
The broader policy issue is financial crime. Stronger AML rules can affect how money moves through lending, leasing, cheque-cashing, and receivables-financing channels, especially where those channels can be used to hide ownership or proceeds of crime.