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.

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

The Supreme Court of Canada has rendered its highly anticipated decision in Sinclair-Desgagné v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), 2026 SCC 31. In a 6-3 majority decision, the Court has issued the reasons supporting its February 13, 2026 order setting aside the result of the federal election held on April 28, 2025 in the riding of Terrebonne.

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

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.

The Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled on the protection of lawyers' trust ledgers under solicitor-client privilege, addressing whether these financial records can be compelled in civil fraud proceedings. The decision examines the scope of the crime-fraud exception to privilege and whether it applies beyond criminal cases to civil matters involving allegations of fraudulent conduct and breach of court orders.

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.

The Federal Court has approved an $8.7 million class action settlement in Sweet v. His Majesty the King (2026 FC 590), resolving claims from the 2020 credential-stuffing cyberattacks on Government of Canada online accounts accessed via GCKey, including CRA My Account.