Money seized by police during a bust is displayed in Surrey, B.C., in December, 2022.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
Giuliano Zaccardelli is a retired commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Peter German is a lawyer, author and former deputy commissioner of the RCMP. He headed its financial crime program.
Budget 2025 proposed a new financial crime agency to investigate fraud and related criminality. The announcement was an acknowledgment of the exponential rise and seriousness of fraud. These crimes not only attack our country’s economic system but the financial well-being of all Canadians, especially the most vulnerable, our senior citizens.
But the threshold question is: how best to deal with this criminality? In our opinion, a new agency is not the answer.
Fraud includes a panoply of crimes, including mass marketing fraud, internet scams, corporate frauds and much more. It is closely related to money laundering, which is the back end of all organized crime. These are among the most difficult and resource-intensive crimes to investigate and prosecute. They may require search warrants, undercover operations, informants, digital forensics, electronic and physical surveillance, expert interviewers, specialist prosecutors, and even international police assistance.
To expect a new agency with approximately 150 employees to assume this mandate is both impractical and naive. When fully staffed, the agency will be fortunate if even half its employees are investigators, intended to deal with crimes across Canada. One complex investigation could consume the entire organization.
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Furthermore, a new agency takes years to develop. Canada’s financial intelligence agency, FINTRAC, is a prime example. Only recently has it begun issuing substantial fines, almost 25 years after its creation. Ironically, FINTRAC’s belated self-discovery and the announcement of a financial-crime agency are both occurring in the same year that Canada is undergoing a peer review by the Financial Action Task Force, an international organization. A failing grade, which entails being grey-listed and put under stricter economic monitoring and regulations, would be an economic hit for all of Canada.
Why create a new agency with little to no constitutional mandate when funding is desperately short, with resources presumably pulled from other departments and agencies, with equipment to purchase, and specialist investigators to be hired or seconded?
Serious criminality is often interconnected and best investigated in a holistic manner. The Balkanization of a core policing function, by establishing a separate fraud agency, is counter productive. Canada already has the RCMP, an agency with the expertise to deal with serious criminality. In the 1960s, when Canada experienced a surge in fraudulent bankruptcies, the RCMP successfully investigated those crimes, as it did later with stock market manipulations, corporate frauds and money laundering.
Due to insufficient funding over the last several years and having to reprioritize its work to other emerging criminal and national security threats, the RCMP has not been able to pursue financial crime with the vigour necessary. What is required is not a new agency but a commitment by the federal government to appropriately fund the RCMP.
Moreover, in 1966, the federal and provincial attorneys-general agreed that the RCMP should be the home of national police services which transcend a particular jurisdiction. This now includes a wide array of services available to all Canadian police forces, including the Canadian Police Information Centre, RCMP liaison officers around the world, national fingerprint and firearms registries, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, the National Cybercrime Coordination Unit, the National DNA Data Bank, crime laboratories across the country, the Canadian Police College and, of interest, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
The RCMP’s acceptance and reach across the country addresses a crucial issue: that the investigation and prosecution of fraud is otherwise the constitutional responsibility of the provinces. To claim jurisdiction over fraud through a new federal crime agency would be welcomed by some provinces, whose policing resources are stretched to the limit, but seen as jurisdictional overreach by others.
Over the past two decades, the RCMP has championed being intelligence-led, integrating with other police forces and carrying out investigations with seamless interoperability. Only a Team Canada approach will work with criminality that transcends multiple jurisdictions. Due in large part to its provincial contracts, the RCMP has a presence in every corner of the country and is respected internationally. It can leverage and integrate its resources with those of other law enforcement and regulatory agencies to respond to challenges.
Police officers investigating multi-jurisdictional fraud and money laundering cases are not calling for a new agency. Instead, they are asking for the resources to do the job. They also require relief from onerous disclosure rules, time constraints on prosecutions, lengthy precharge approval processes, and more. Simplistic proposals, such as the creation of a new agency, however well-intentioned, will not work.