Following the publication of the 406 page report from FATF on Canada, it makes for an interesting read  but what are the takeaways. It takes 4-5 hours to read the report once and then twice that to consider it and then more to determine what should be highlighted.

Busy MLRO’s and other financial crime fighters won’t read it all.

Here is my take on it and how it compares to other reports from other mainly FATF Member Countries like Canada.

In short, there are improvements, but Canada could do and should do better, much better. When compared to other Country reports, Risk Understanding and Financial Intelligence are strengths. National Strategy and Leadership, BO Transparency, ML Cases and Asset Recovery remain less convincing.

In terms of FATF Member country assessments, it lags behind Singapore, Malaysia and Italy, but ahead of Austria and Belgium and Turkey. It is also behind Latvia a non FATF member that has so far posted the best results.

See the details in the slides in terms of findings and KPI’s which reflect the reality on the ground.

Canada may take pride from being in the pack in terms of overall results, and narrowly avoiding enhanced follow up and with domestic political comments congratulating Canada on improving its response. Still any fair minded assessment would judge having 5 ME ratings out of 11 for a FATF Member since 1990 which has been a major architect of the AML/CTF standards proposed by FATF as less than acceptable in 2026 and only a small improvement since the last assessment in 2016.

Canada has improved. Still it has underperformed its potential and has not met the effectiveness test it helped write and expects others to achieve.

The slides are generated using AI. The content, what to include and what to leave out and the text supplied in all the sides is all mine.