- Border integrity — who Canada admits and whether departures are tracked.
- Stolen-vehicle export — stolen vehicles leaving the country through Canadian ports.
Two reputable international indices measure different things, and Canada looks different on each. The Basel AML Index scores a country's structural vulnerability to money laundering and terrorist financing: the quality of its legal framework, supervision, and transparency. The Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) measures how much room a jurisdiction's laws leave for hiding ownership and assets, weighted by the size of its financial centre. Canada is unremarkable on the first and conspicuous on the second. The second is the one that maps onto the "snow washing" problem of anonymous shell companies laundering illicit funds through a clean-looking jurisdiction.
The Basel AML Index scores 177 jurisdictions from 0 (lowest risk) to 10 (highest). On this measure Canada is not an outlier: at 4.61 it sits below the global average of 5.28 and below four of its six G7 partners. Higher-income countries with large financial centres (including the United States) tend to carry more risk here, driven mainly by financial-transparency gaps. Canada's score rose from 4.47 in the 2024 edition to 4.61 in 2025. The Basel Institute reports that for the US and Canada, scores for AML frameworks and public transparency were unchanged while several other indicators shifted towards higher risk. It also reviews its methodology every year, which it says may affect comparability across editions.
The Financial Secrecy Index ranks the jurisdictions most complicit in helping people hide money from the rule of law, combining a secrecy score with the scale of the financial services a country supplies to non-residents. Here Canada places 18th of 141, in the same top-20 tier as recognised secrecy centres, and two places worse than the United Kingdom. A jurisdiction can rank highly either because its laws are very secretive or because it is a very large financial centre (which is why the United States tops the list); Canada's standing reflects a mix of moderate corporate-transparency gaps and a sizeable financial sector.
| Rank | Jurisdiction | Rank | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇺🇸 United States | 11 | 🇹🇼 Taiwan |
| 2 | 🇨🇭 Switzerland | 12 | 🇨🇳 China |
| 3 | 🇸🇬 Singapore | 13 | 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates |
| 4 | 🇭🇰 Hong Kong | 14 | 🇮🇪 Ireland |
| 5 | 🇱🇺 Luxembourg | 15 | 🇵🇦 Panama |
| 6 | 🇩🇪 Germany | 16 | 🇻🇬 British Virgin Islands |
| 7 | 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 17 | 🇨🇾 Cyprus |
| 8 | 🇰🇷 South Korea | 18 | 🇨🇦 Canada |
| 9 | 🇬🇬 Guernsey | 19 | 🇰🇾 Cayman Islands |
| 10 | 🇯🇵 Japan | 20 | 🇬🇧 United Kingdom |
"Snow washing" is the practice of routing illicit funds through Canadian corporations precisely because Canada's stable, reputable image lends them legitimacy. The enabling weakness has been the historic ability to register companies without disclosing beneficial ownership: who ultimately owns and controls them. Two government-commissioned British Columbia inquiries (the Maloney and German reports, and later the Cullen Commission, 2022) documented large-scale laundering through real estate, casinos, and luxury goods, concentrated in B.C.
The most-cited figure for the scale of the problem is the $45–113 billion laundered in Canada each year, attributed to Criminal Intelligence Service Canada. It is a wide range and a domestic enforcement estimate rather than an internationally comparable statistic. Read it as an order-of-magnitude indication, not a precise benchmark (see methodology).
Policy has begun to close the gap. Bill C-42 established a public beneficial-ownership registry for federally incorporated companies (in force 2024), and the federal anti-money-laundering regime continues to be assessed against Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards. Whether these measures move Canada's FSI standing will show up in future editions of the index. Provincial corporate registries, which sit outside the federal registry, remain a recognised gap.
At 4.61 of 10 on the Basel AML Index 2025, Canada is below the 5.28 global average and 5th of the G7 on risk, behind Germany, the US, Italy, and Japan. The "global hub" framing overstates what this metric shows.
On the Financial Secrecy Index 2025, Canada ranks 18th of 141, inside the top 20, two places worse than the UK. This is the metric that captures "snow washing," and it is where Canada's clean reputation and its record diverge.
The enabling weakness is corporate opacity. Bill C-42's federal beneficial-ownership registry (2024) targets exactly this, but provincial registries remain outside it. Future FSI editions will test that gap.
The $45–113B annual estimate is a wide domestic range, not an international benchmark. The defensible international comparison is the index standing, not the dollar figure, which should be cited with care.
Canada's Basel AML risk score of 4.61 is below the 5.28 global average and below four of its six G7 partners, but it ranks 18th of 141 on the Financial Secrecy Index.
- Compared with
- The G7, on the Basel AML Index 2025 overall risk score, with Australia and New Zealand also charted for Five Eyes context.
- Where Canada sits
- On the Basel AML Index 2025, Canada scores 4.61 of 10, 5th of the G7 counted from the highest risk. On the Financial Secrecy Index 2025 it ranks 18th of 141, inside the top 20 enablers of secrecy.
- Which way it is moving
- Up. Canada's Basel risk score rose from 4.47 in 2024 to 4.61 in 2025, which is a deterioration, though the Basel Institute says methodology reviews may affect comparability. The page gives no trend for the secrecy index.
- What the verdict follows
- Position in the G7 on the risk index. The secrecy lens reads worse, and the verdict follows the risk index because it is the page's first international lens. One place better would be Strong.
- Data basis
- Basel AML Index 2025, 14th Public Edition (8 December 2025), and Tax Justice Network Financial Secrecy Index version 8.0 (updated 3 June 2025). Page last reviewed September 2026.
Primary sources
- Basel AML Index / Basel Institute on Governance, Basel AML Index 2025: 14th Public Edition (8 December 2025), available from the Basel AML Index downloads page. The public ranking scores 177 jurisdictions 0–10 on money-laundering and related financial-crime risk across five weighted domains: quality of the AML/CFT/CPF framework (50%), corruption and fraud risks (17.5%), financial transparency and standards (17.5%), public transparency and accountability (5%), and political and legal risks (10%). 2024 scores quoted for comparison are from the 13th Public Edition.
- Tax Justice Network — Financial Secrecy Index (version 8.0, updated 3 June 2025). Ranks 141 jurisdictions by FSI value, combining a 0–100 secrecy score (over 100 questions across 20 indicators) with each jurisdiction's global scale weight.
- Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index 2024. Canada scored 75/100 in 2024, down from the mid-80s in the early 2010s; reporting on the decline has repeatedly cited snow-washing. Used here as context, not a laundering metric.
- Criminal Intelligence Service Canada — the source of the widely-quoted $45–113 billion annual laundering estimate. Cited via secondary reporting; flagged for primary verification (see below).
- Commission of Inquiry into Money Laundering in British Columbia (Cullen Commission, final report 2022) — primary Canadian evidence on real-estate, casino, and luxury-goods laundering.
Methodology & comparability notes
- Two indices, two questions. Basel AML Index = structural risk/vulnerability; FSI = secrecy supply weighted by financial-centre size. They are not substitutes and a country can score very differently on each, as Canada does. Neither measures the dollar volume actually laundered.
- Basel direction. Higher score = higher risk; a higher rank number (e.g. 125 of 177) means lower risk. Canada at 4.61 is below the 5.28 global average.
- FSI direction. Rank 1 = biggest enabler of secrecy. The United States ranks 1st largely because of the scale of its financial centre, not because it is the most secretive jurisdiction. Scale weight matters. Canada's 18th reflects both moderate corporate-transparency gaps and a sizeable financial sector.
- Vintages differ. Basel figures are the 2025 Public Edition; FSI figures are the June 2025 update; CPI is 2024. Stated on each chart; not spliced into a single series.
- The $45–113B estimate is a domestic enforcement range, not an internationally comparable measure. It is included for context with explicit caveats and should not be used as a cross-country benchmark.
- Companion workbook. The Basel comparator set, the FSI top-20, and the context figures live in Securing_Money-Laundering_Data.xlsx.
