Canada: White Collar Crime, Anti-Corruption & Fraud

The word “sham” gets used loosely in tax disputes — taxpayers and the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) both throw it around when a transaction looks aggressive or artificial. But in Canadian tax law, sham is a precise legal doctrine with a narrow scope.

Ontario's Ministry of the Attorney General is considering amendments to introduce unexplained wealth orders (UWOs), a new investigative tool that would compel individuals to explain the origin of their property when there's a significant mismatch between known lawful income and apparent wealth. The proposed regime would shift the burden of proof to respondents and could be used to support civil forfeiture proceedings targeting proceeds of unlawful activity.

Canadian courts are increasingly asked to allocate fraud losses between innocent parties—victims and their financial institutions. The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal's decision in Honeybadger Enterprises Ltd. v. Bue provides crucial clarity on common law principles governing liability allocation, establishing that parties whose conduct involves affirmative acts facilitating fraud will bear the loss, while financial institutions owe no duty to police transactions or warn customers absent contractual obli

CRA phishing scams and CRA impersonation fraud continue to increase across Canada, particularly during tax-filing season and periods involving government benefit payments.

Fraudulent communications targeting intellectual property rights holders are becoming increasingly sophisticated, often impersonating legitimate professionals or government offices. Understanding how these schemes operate and recognizing warning signs can help protect your valuable IP assets from exploitation.

The Ontario Capital Markets Tribunal has applied a two-part public interest test from a shareholder dispute case to an enforcement proceeding for the first time, finding that a proprietary day trading firm's failure to maintain adequate supervision systems violated public interest standards.

On June 27, 2026, Canada’s Department of Finance published proposed regulations amending the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations under the Bank Act, aimed at combatting consumer-targeted fraud...

The federal government has published proposed Regulations Amending the Financial Consumer Protection Framework Regulations (the “Regulations”) under the Bank Act (the “Act”) for consultation...

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (“OPC”) recently released a significant report concerning widespread unauthorized access to taxpayer information held by the CRA.