Canada Strengthens Border Crime Fight with Strong Borders Act, CBSA Powers, Coast Guard

(CANADA) — Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree introduced Canada’s Strong Borders Act in June 2025, proposing broader powers for border and law enforcement agencies to fight organized crime, illegal fentanyl trafficking, money laundering and tighter immigration controls.

The measure, also known as Bill C-2, remained under parliamentary debate as of April 2026, with no confirmed passage date. Its reach extends across border inspections, maritime patrols, mail searches, digital evidence, intelligence-sharing and asylum processing.

Supporters say the bill updates state powers to match cross-border criminal activity. Critics, including civil liberties groups, warn it would widen privacy risks, allow warrantless access in some cases and open the door to foreign access to data.

At the center of the legislation are new powers for the Canada Border Services Agency and other federal bodies. The bill would amend multiple laws, including the Customs Act, the Oceans Act, the Canada Post Corporation Act, the Criminal Code, the CSIS Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The package also sits within a larger border security push. Canada’s Border Plan provides $1.3 billion in total funding, including $200 million for intelligence on organized crime and fentanyl shared with U.S. partners.

One set of proposed changes would strengthen what the government describes as CBSA Enhancements at ports and commercial sites. Bill C-2 would amend the Customs Act to require owners and operators of ports, transporters and warehouse operators to provide facilities and access for CBSA inspections.

Those provisions would also allow the agency to examine, detain and inspect export goods at commercial premises. That would broaden CBSA’s operational reach beyond conventional points of exit and arrival.

The customs changes form part of the government’s argument that criminal networks use trade and transport systems to move illicit goods. By widening access to facilities and export cargo, the bill aims to give border officers more direct inspection authority where goods are handled and stored.

Another pillar of the legislation is a maritime expansion that would alter the Canadian Coast Guard’s role. Through updates to the Oceans Act, the bill would authorize Canadian Coast Guard security patrols and expand intelligence collection, analysis and sharing.

It would also strengthen maritime domain awareness, especially in Arctic waters. That part of the proposal links Coast Guard Expansion to both law enforcement and surveillance of remote maritime zones.

The Arctic emphasis reflects the bill’s broader focus on border monitoring across land, sea and data systems. Rather than treating marine patrols as separate from domestic security, Bill C-2 would place the Coast Guard more directly inside the federal security framework.

Mail handling and digital access form another contentious part of the legislation. Bill C-2 would remove barriers under the Canada Post Corporation Act for police to search mail when legally authorized, while also expanding Canada Post inspection powers.

The bill would also create the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act, or SAAIA. Under that measure, service providers would have to comply with lawful requests for data, including digital evidence from computer systems without warrants in urgent cases.

Child abuse is cited as one example of those urgent cases. For supporters, that feature addresses situations where investigators say delays can carry immediate risk.

For critics, however, those same powers raise some of the sharpest objections in the debate. Civil liberties groups have warned of privacy breaches and warrantless digital and mail searches that could enable “fishing expeditions.”

Drug enforcement provisions sit near the political core of the bill. The legislation would create accelerated scheduling for precursor chemicals by Minister of Health Marjorie Michel, giving the federal government a faster route to regulate substances tied to fentanyl production.

Bill C-2 would also update the Criminal Code and the CSIS Act to give police and intelligence agencies better access to data. Those changes tie drug enforcement to the bill’s wider intelligence and surveillance provisions.

Michel has highlighted the measure’s overdose reduction benefits. That support places health policy alongside policing in the government’s case for the legislation.

Information-sharing changes would run through several federal systems. The bill would improve RCMP sharing of sex offender data with domestic and international partners through amendments to the Sex Offender Information Registration Act.

It would also enhance Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada data sharing across different levels of government. At the same time, the proposal would expand CSIS exchanges with U.S. intelligence counterparts.

Those provisions reflect a broad premise behind the bill: that crime, migration screening and national security depend on faster movement of information between agencies and across borders. Critics have pointed to that same feature as a risk to privacy and sovereignty.

Financial crime is another large part of the package. Bill C-2 would increase penalties for money laundering, restrict large cash transactions and third-party deposits, and require more businesses to register with FINTRAC.

That anti-money laundering push sits alongside the bill’s border and drug provisions rather than apart from them. The legislation treats illicit finance as part of the same networked activity that includes organized crime and fentanyl trafficking.

The immigration changes are among the most closely watched elements of the bill. Amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act would allow Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to cancel, suspend or amend immigration documents and applications in the public interest.

The public interest grounds listed include public health and national security. The bill would also allow IRCC to pause new applications or processing.

That would give the federal government wider discretion over how immigration files move through the system. It would also mark a shift toward emergency-style powers in application management.

Bill C-2 would also introduce asylum ineligibility rules and streamline claim processing. Even so, affected individuals may still apply for pre-removal risk assessments.

Those asylum provisions place immigration control directly inside a bill framed around crime, narcotics and border security. Supporters say that alignment reflects current threats. Critics argue it broadens enforcement power too far into civil and personal domains.

The debate over Canada’s Strong Borders Act has therefore become about more than enforcement tools alone. It has also become a debate about the legal limits of state access to goods, ships, mail, data, financial transactions and immigration records.

Supporters, including police chiefs, argue the package modernizes tools against international crime. In that view, existing laws have not kept pace with organized criminal networks, cross-border fentanyl trafficking and the speed of digital communications.

Critics, including civil liberties groups, have focused on a different set of consequences. They warn of privacy breaches, expanded warrantless searches and the erosion of sovereignty through foreign data access.

Those objections span multiple parts of the bill rather than one isolated clause. Concerns over lawful access rules, Canada Post inspections, intelligence exchanges and broader agency data sharing all feed into the same argument that the measure could tilt too much power toward the state.

Even so, the government’s structure for the bill suggests it sees border security as a linked system. Customs inspections, Coast Guard patrols, police data access, intelligence sharing, financial tracking and immigration control all appear in one legislative package.

That design helps explain why phrases such as CBSA Enhancements and Coast Guard Expansion have become shorthand for much wider institutional changes. The proposed law does not focus on one border agency or one criminal offence. It rewrites authorities across several parts of the federal system.

It also connects domestic enforcement to international cooperation. The $200 million for intelligence on organized crime and fentanyl shared with U.S. partners shows that the border plan behind the legislation reaches beyond Canada’s internal agencies.

At the same time, the use of U.S. intelligence exchanges has become part of the criticism. Opponents say wider cross-border information flows could deepen concerns about foreign access to Canadian data.

Much of the parliamentary argument now turns on whether those powers are proportionate to the threats the government has identified. The bill’s supporters point to organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering. Its opponents point to privacy, civil liberties and state overreach.

As of April 2026, lawmakers had not confirmed a date for passage. That leaves Canada’s Strong Borders Act still in debate, with its fate tied to whether Parliament accepts a more expansive model of border security that reaches from Arctic patrols to asylum files, from export warehouses to digital evidence, and from cash deposits to the mail.