Canada’s premiers say the country needs stronger tools to fight organized crime.
B.C. Premier David Eby has even called for Ottawa to look south for inspiration.
“I’ll be blunt,” Eby told reporters at a July 17 press conference. “Currently in Canada, I do not believe that we have the full capacities we need to attack organized crime.
“I do think it is something that we should try,” he added, referencing American organized crime laws, formally known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO Act).
Experts say a Canadian RICO law could have benefits, but would not be a panacea.
“It can make it easier to get that conviction,” said Michelle Gallant, a University of Manitoba law professor who studies money laundering and civil forfeiture.
“And once you’ve got that, it can make it easier to get their stuff. So that’s the benefit of RICO.”
Laws on the books
In a July 22 meeting in Charlottetown, the premiers said organized criminal activity and extortion were ongoing concerns across the country.
They called for urgent federal action to develop “additional tools and legislative frameworks.”
Their call came after U.S. authorities charged 37 people — including three Canadians — with crimes including extortion, drug trafficking and violence that is allegedly connected to India-based criminal networks.
Federal intelligence officials have also described organized crime as a major public safety threat.
In 2025, the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada determined nearly 500 organized crime groups are operating in Canada, including eight that pose high-level national threats. It also identified more than 560 street gangs.
However, prosecuting criminal organizations can be a challenge.
The people who profit most from crime are often insulated by intermediaries, says Gallant, of the University of Manitoba.
“Most chief beneficiaries of any form of profitable crime are not tightly tied to the underlying crime,” she said in an email. “They are at a distance … This makes convictions tough.”
In the United States, the Nixon administration enacted the RICO Act in 1970 to better enable prosecutors to go after senior leaders in organized crime groups, particularly the Mafia.
“[Under RICO], it’s easier in many ways to attach criminal liability to the big players,” said Gallant.
Over time, RICO has been used to target a wide range of criminal organizations, including drug and sex traffickers and street gangs. It has also been used against white-collar criminals and to recover damages from the Catholic Church.
What makes the law unique is it enables prosecutors to argue that related crimes form part of a single enterprise. Prosecutors need only show that at least two related crimes have occurred within a 10-year period and that they amount to continuing criminal activity.
A conviction can lead to broad asset forfeiture, and enable private parties to sue for three times their losses.
“ [In the civil cases], you don’t have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Gallant. “You just have to prove all of these elements on a balance of probabilities, and you’ll get treble damages. So you’ll get not only your losses, but three times that.”
Canadian law already makes it a crime to participate in a criminal organization, commit offences for its benefit or direct others to do so.
But it can be difficult to convict senior figures for crimes carried out by lower-level participants.
Canadian Affairs asked the Public Prosecution Service of Canada how many individuals had been prosecuted or convicted for organized crime in Canada in the past five years. The agency said it does not maintain data in a format that would allow it to “readily identify and quantify” prosecutions and convictions under specific criminal law provisions.
Obstacles remain
However, sources note that a RICO law would not address every obstacle to targeting organized crime in Canada.
In many cases, organized crime cases require expertise in accounting, banking and cross-border finance. Cases involve multidisciplinary teams and take considerable time.
Neil Boyd, a professor emeritus of criminology at Simon Fraser University, says significant evidentiary obligations and strict prosecution timelines are key challenges.
These obligations are the result of two consequential Supreme Court decisions.
A 1991 decision known as Stinchcombe requires the Crown to disclose all relevant, non-privileged information to the defence. And a 2016 decision known as Jordan established that serious criminal cases must generally be heard within 30 months.
Stinchcombe was applauded, says Boyd, because it established a “mandate of fairness.” But in a digital age, the volume of digital evidence that must be turned over can make cases extraordinarily time consuming.
“A homicide trial that might have taken four weeks could now take 10 or 15 months,” he said.
A RICO law would also not address the challenge of prosecuting crimes that cross national borders, which is frequently the case in organized crime.
For Gallant, investment is central to any serious response to organized crime: “Anything of this sort, it requires a lot, a lot of investment, period.”
The Carney government has taken some steps in this direction. In April, it introduced a bill to establish a federal Financial Crimes Agency. Ottawa has proposed more than $350-million over five years for the agency and over $46-million for federal prosecutors. The bill is at the committee stage in the House of Commons.
‘Comprehensive framework’
Canadian Affairs asked the Department of Justice whether it was considering legislation modelled after the RICO Act. A department spokesperson declined to answer that question, and instead pointed to Canada’s existing offences, investigative powers, sentencing rules and forfeiture provisions.
“Taken together, these measures provide a comprehensive framework to respond to organized crime activity,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
An RCMP spokesperson said in an emailed statement it would be inappropriate for it to comment on the effectiveness of “current or proposed legislation.”
Boyd says that, even if a RICO law made it easier to pursue a network’s leaders, a Canadian version would also have to be carefully defined to avoid guilt by association and to comply with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“Whether RICO would work in terms of our Charter of Rights and the way in which it’s … constructed … that’s, I think, a tougher question to answer,” he said.
