New Liberal bill to allow police to search mail, reverse promised ban on crypto ATMs - National Post

Copy URL Facebook Linked In X (Twitter) Loading account options Sign In Manage Account Close account menu Sign Out A cryptocurrency automated teller machine (ATM) in San Francisco, California, U.S. (David Paul Morris / Bloomberg) By Christopher Nardi November 4, 2026 at 1:43 p.m. Last Updated: November 4, 2026 at 8:18 p.m. OTTAWA — The Liberals tabled an unexpected new law enforcement bill on Tuesday which would allow police to search and retain mail and secretly provide individuals’ personal information to financial institutions to prevent money laundering or terrorism financing.

The new proposed powers are contained in Bill S-8, which the Liberals tabled in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. The bulk of the changes in the bill aim to beef up the federal anti-money laundering and terrorism financing act.

The legislation would allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to secretly share information linked to money laundering to regulated businesses, ban cash payments or donations of $10,000 or more and give the finance minister veto power over which money services businesses get approved by watchdog agency FINTRAC.

Bill S-8 largely resuscitates a contentious failed proposal from the Liberals in 2025 to allow police to search Canadians’ mail. It also confirms the Liberals are backtracking on an earlier commitment to ban cryptocurrency ATMs in Canada, instead proposing to subject them to FINTRAC oversight and reporting.

“Fraud and money laundering are serious crimes that harm Canadians, undermine confidence in our financial system and help fund organized crime,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a news release.

“This bill will make it harder for criminal networks to operate and will better protect Canadians.”

A key aim of S-8 is to allow both FINTRAC and the federal government to further crack down on criminal abuses committed by money service businesses (MSB), such as currency exchanges, digital payment companies or virtual currency dealers.

The federal government said last year that criminals are increasingly using money service businesses to “launder money, finance terrorism, evade sanctions, and defraud Canadians.”

In S-8, Ottawa proposes to allow the finance minister to direct FINTRAC to deny or revoke an MSB’s registration or even temporarily pause the registration of all or certain types of MSBs for national security reasons.

The legislation would also make it harder for an individual with a criminal record to own an MSB and would expand FINTRAC’s ability to refuse or revoke such a business’s registration.

Other proposals in Bill S-8 are certain to give civil liberty and privacy advocates pause.

For example, the legislation offers law enforcement, intelligence agencies and unidentified government departments the ability to secretly share an individual’s personal information with regulated businesses.

That can be done if the discloser “considers” that the shared information will help combat money laundering, terrorist activity financing or sanctions evasion.

The legislation does not appear to set a legal threshold for the secret sharing of personal information or require court approval.

“It’s fair to say that there should be a little bit easier information sharing between law enforcement, prescribed government departments, agencies and reporting entities,” said Jessica Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence and a specialist on terrorism and illicit financing.

“There should be pretty good limits on that, though,” she added. “As the bill is written right now, I’m not confident that there are the right restrictions on that.”

The revived proposal to allow police broader power to seize and search mail transiting through Canadians will also likely prove to be controversial. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals first attempted a similar reform in their first ever legislation last spring, Bill C-2.

Currently, police can only obtain a warrant to seize and search parcels and mail envelopes weighing over 500 grams.

But under the new proposed regime, police could search and seize “anything in the course of post” if they have “lawful authority” do to so under laws such as the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act or the Cannabis Act.

Speaking to National Post, Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said that Indigenous communities in rural or northern areas have pushed him for the change to stem the tide of drugs into their territory.

He also clarified that police would require a court-approved warrant to open any mail.

“This is not an ad hoc search or searches without legal authorization. This is with legal authorization,” he noted.

Unlike Bill C-2, this legislation does not extend the mail search and seizure power to postal inspectors.

In the bill, the Liberals also backtrack on a promise made in the 2025 budget to ban cryptocurrency ATMs. That’s despite the government’s own analysis that the machines are a “primary method for scammers to extract cash from victims and for criminals.”

Seniors in particular are vulnerable to scammers and extortioners pushing them to use a crypto ATM to send them money that becomes virtually untraceable for police.

Instead, the bill proposes that crypto ATM operators be compelled to register with FINTRAC (the federal financial crimes watchdog) and track and report every transaction completed by the machine to the agency.

Furthermore, it would cap the maximum value of crypto transactions within 24 hours at an ATM by a single individual at $1,000.

Ryan Turnbull, the parliamentary secretary to the finance minister, told National Post that the “slight change” in policy was taken after noting that some other countries that had implemented such a ban then had to backtrack.

“We fully expect that some of these crypto ATMs, many of them, will not be able to comply with that standard. So effectively, we will ban them,” he said, adding that the government could still move to a full ban if necessary in the future.

The government’s decision to backtrack on the crypto ATM ban is an unwelcome change to Davis, who says the new proposed system is a more complicated way to hopefully achieve the same outcome.

“They’re trying to put all of these additional measures onto cryptocurrency ATMs… to achieve the same thing that a ban would achieve, but then also increasing the costs to FINTRAC and maintaining the compliance burden for FINTRAC,” Davis said.

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