Industry and Technology Committee on June 11th, 2026

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay, and you don't think you have those tools today.

[Chris Lynam]

It's just—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

It's just slower in requiring judicial authorization.

[Chris Lynam]

There has been legislation that's changed in terms of turnaround times when production orders have been submitted in the financial information sphere. I just use that as an example. Cyber-fraud is a type of crime that moves very quickly. For police to go after the cybercriminals and the fraudsters, we need to receive that legally obtained data quickly so we can analyze it, find the patterns and do the attribution and what have you. I'll just use that example of how timely response to judicial authorizations is an important tool that police need.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

It's said that only 5% to 10% of actual scams or frauds are reported to the police. I'm sure you do a cost-benefit when someone reports being scammed or defrauded. Do you think it's worth your while to pursue a lot of these scams?

[Chris Lynam]

When you say “cost-benefit”, are you talking—

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

It's the amount of effort that you as the RCMP have to put into it, the investigative effort.

[Chris Lynam]

Right. We take that approach, in that there are...and it's based on a few factors, including whether there are solid investigative leads or intelligence that can be followed up on. If there are and there are partners that want to work together—domestic and international—that may become a full criminal investigation. If those sorts of leads aren't readily available, then it may be a disruptive type of activity that's undertaken.

At the same time, we're always doing prevention on the side in terms of learning from what happened and then going back and warning people about the latest scam reported to us.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Okay. Somebody reports a fraud to you. You look at it and say that you're going to put all this effort into it, all these man-hours, all the resources, and you're actually trying to get a conviction there. Then you go to the courts, and it's basically a slap on the wrist.

I'm thinking of a woman in Montreal this past March who was defrauded of thousands of dollars. The perpetrators were sentenced to 18 months of house arrest with generous carve-outs for going to the gym and things like that. Her comment was that she felt the penalty was “a joke”.

Do you, as the RCMP, also figure that there are not proper penalties for the crimes that are being committed?

[Chris Lynam]

We usually focus on that return on investment type of activity—what we think we can achieve from either a criminal prosecution or disruptive action. We focus our efforts on those types of calculations to figure out how we can achieve the most reductions of fraud or cybercrime in Canada. That's always part of our calculation. We tend to put our efforts in that area, as well as prevention, rather than what the outcomes are at the other end.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Do you sometimes find that your officers or your personnel are frustrated with the penalty versus the actual crime and the effort involved in achieving a conviction?

[Chris Lynam]

As for the role of the Canadian anti-fraud centre and the national cybercrime coordination unit, we're not the lead investigating agency. We work with all the partners and, usually, a lead agency. I can't speak to what an investigator who leads that investigation...and what happens at the end.

Our main role is to bring those entities together, enable them with intelligence and technology, and orient them in the best way possible to achieve the biggest result possible.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thanks very much, Mr. Falk.

Mr. Ma, the floor will be yours for five minutes, sir.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Lynam, for being here.

First, could you describe how the Canadian anti-fraud centre coordinates with the financial institutions, the telecommunications providers, law enforcement agencies and digital platforms in identifying and disrupting emerging frauds? In particular, is this a proactive prevention approach or a post-crime solving approach?

[Chris Lynam]

I'd say it's both, but primarily we aim to be on the proactive side. As I mentioned in my opening remarks and on one of the questions, we will come across information of a website, an email address or a cryptocurrency wallet that is facilitating fraud. We will engage with the financial institution, the telecommunication provider or what have you to say, “Look, we think this violates your terms of service and it's over to you if you're going to do something about that.”

Increasingly what we've done is try to do that at scale in almost in real time. I mentioned this Maple Disruption operation that brought all those partners together in person to do that. It created some real efficiencies in how we have to address that.

At the same time, if there is a victim or there's an investigation launched, law enforcement will work very closely with the financial institutions and with telecommunications and others as part of that investigation. The level of operational collaboration that I've seen has increased significantly in the last few years.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

What are the biggest operational barriers to coordinating anti-fraud efforts across sectors and jurisdictions? For example, is it data sharing that's been a problem, or is it jurisdictional fragmentation? Are these barriers international actors as well?

[Chris Lynam]

These barriers or challenges exist domestically and internationally to a certain extent. There are still some challenges with data sharing between public and private sectors, and what have you. A little bit is cultural as well—just asking, “Hey, am I going to take a little bit of risk to share this for the greater public good?” There's been great improvement there, though.

You mentioned cross-jurisdictional. That is absolutely a challenge. A lot of how we approach things is still very geographically based, domestically and internationally, so that's where we need really strong coordination. That's what my centres do day in, day out—they try to bring those parties together and figure out how we are going to make the best use of police resources to have the biggest reduction in terms of cybercrime and fraud.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

We briefly touched on the recovering of funds and so forth. How important is the speed of information sharing between institutions and law enforcement in preventing additional victims or recovering the funds?

[Chris Lynam]

Speed is absolutely crucial. I talked about there being a window—let's say an e-transfer or some kind of money transfer—before that gets completely settled. At the same time, there are times when certain transactions have already been settled, so they can't be recovered.

What I've seen in the last couple of years are discussions between banks and telecommunication companies on how to share that data to reduce further victimization, and then there was the stand-up of the Canadian anti-scam coalition, which we are a member of. It's a great initiative bringing all of these parties together to figure out holistic ways to either share information or tackle this problem.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you. We really appreciate your doing that.

During Fraud Prevention Month, the centre emphasized the importance of bringing hidden crime into the spotlight. Why is fraud still significantly under-reported in Canada, and how does that impact and prevent prevention efforts?

[Chris Lynam]

It's a great question.

I mentioned that we think only 5% to 10% of individuals report. There's a bunch of shame still associated with this. People think they've done something wrong. Particularly in the senior community, they worry because they've lost significant money. There's a shame piece, so we spend a lot of time trying to encourage people by saying, “You are a victim here.” That's a lot of our message. I have highly trained folks, and when they talk to people on the phone, they take that victim-centred approach. However, there's more to be done on this. Public awareness campaigns continue to try to encourage reporting.

Just to finish off, I mentioned in my remarks that we've launched a new public reporting site. We still receive calls over the phone, but with the new site, we're now receiving two and a half times the previous online reports we were before. We're making some progress on the reporting side.

[Michael Ma, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I'm very glad to hear that. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ben Carr]

Thank you, Mr. Ma.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I must reduce the time allotted for the next three questions. Mr. Ste-Marie will have one minute, Ms. Kronis will have two and a half minutes, and then, for the Liberals, Ms. Begum will have two and a half minutes.

Mr. Ste-Marie, you have the floor for one minute.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Lynam, I'd like to hear your opinion regarding civil liability. In your view, should someone who is defrauded and has reasonable grounds to believe that the platform was negligent be held jointly liable, given that we are discussing a crime here? What percentage of fraudulent ads should cause an organization to be designated a criminal organization? Thank you.