Canada's Stablecoin Act grants Bank of Canada oversight

Canada now has its first federal legal framework for stablecoins on the books, though the rules that will actually govern issuers are still being written; follow our crypto regulation coverage for the developments that change the framework.

What Bill C-15 does

The Stablecoin Act was folded into Bill C-15, an omnibus federal bill introduced in the House of Commons on November 18, 2025 and granted Royal Assent on March 26, 2026. It establishes Canada’s first comprehensive federal regime for issuers of fiat-backed stablecoins, tokens designed to hold a stable value by being pegged to a currency like the Canadian or US dollar.

Under the Act, stablecoin issuers must register with the Bank of Canada, maintain a full 1:1 reserve of highly liquid assets held with a qualified custodian, adopt and publicly disclose compliance and risk-management policies, and meet ongoing reporting and verification requirements. The legislation also explicitly bars issuers from paying interest to stablecoin holders, a design choice meant to keep stablecoins distinct from deposit-taking or investment products. Non-prudentially regulated issuers, meaning stablecoin issuers that aren’t already federally regulated banks, must apply to be listed on a public registry the Bank of Canada is required to maintain before they can issue stablecoins in Canada at all.

The no-interest rule is one of the more consequential design choices in the Act, and it draws a line that other jurisdictions have drawn differently or left ambiguous. A stablecoin that pays holders a yield starts to resemble a bank deposit or a money-market fund, products that come with their own, much heavier regulatory frameworks covering deposit insurance, capital requirements and investor protection. By barring interest payments outright, the Act keeps Canadian-regulated stablecoins in a narrower lane, a digital instrument meant purely for holding and transacting value at a stable price, rather than an investment product competing directly with regulated banking products for savers’ money. That also means any yield-bearing stablecoin product marketed to Canadians would need to either fall under a different regulatory regime entirely or restructure to strip out the interest component to qualify under this framework.

The 1:1 reserve requirement, held with a qualified custodian rather than simply asserted by the issuer, is the mechanism meant to ensure a token always redeemable for one Canadian or US dollar is actually backed by a dollar’s worth of safe, liquid assets sitting somewhere a regulator can verify. That structure is designed to prevent the specific failure mode that has caused stablecoin collapses elsewhere: an issuer investing reserve funds into riskier or less liquid assets to earn a return, leaving it unable to honour redemptions at par if enough holders try to cash out simultaneously.

The Bank of Canada becomes the supervisor

The Act designates the Bank of Canada as the primary authority responsible for supervising stablecoin issuers, monitoring developments in the market and enforcing compliance with the new rules. That is a meaningful expansion of the central bank’s mandate, which has historically centered on monetary policy and the safety of the core payments system rather than direct oversight of individual financial products.

It is a logical extension, though, given the Bank’s existing role overseeing Canada’s core payment systems and its position as the institution ultimately responsible for the integrity of the Canadian dollar. A privately issued token claiming to be redeemable one-for-one for Canadian dollars touches directly on the Bank’s traditional mandate even though the token itself is issued by a private company rather than the central bank. Placing supervision with the Bank of Canada rather than, for instance, a securities regulator or a newly created agency also signals that Ottawa is treating stablecoins primarily as a payments and monetary question rather than an investment product question, a framing that shapes which rules apply and how enforcement will likely be prioritized once the regime is fully operative.

Passed, but not yet in force

Royal Assent means the Stablecoin Act is now law, but it is not yet operative. The Department of Finance has only begun developing the detailed regulations needed to implement it, and that work is expected to take roughly 12 to 18 months from early 2026, with the framework anticipated to come fully into force sometime in 2027. Until then, stablecoin issuers and platforms serving Canadians continue to operate under Canada’s existing securities and money-service-business rules rather than the new regime.

That gap between a bill receiving Royal Assent and its rules actually taking effect is a routine feature of Canadian federal lawmaking rather than anything unusual to this particular Act. Legislation frequently establishes a framework in broad strokes, definitions, powers, prohibitions, while leaving the specific operational details, technical thresholds, forms, filing deadlines, exact capital and liquidity requirements, to regulations developed separately by the responsible department and published later. That two-step process allows the detailed rules to be refined through consultation with industry and other stakeholders without requiring Parliament to pass new legislation for every technical adjustment. For stablecoin issuers, it means the coming 12 to 18 months are less about compliance and more about anticipation, watching the Department of Finance’s draft regulations as they are published and shaping internal readiness around requirements that are not yet finalized.

Where USDC and USDT fit in

The framework arrives as global stablecoin volumes climb: USDC currently leads by annual transaction volume at roughly $18.3 trillion, ahead of USDT’s $13.3 trillion. Circle has already become the first international stablecoin issuer to meet Canada’s existing listing requirements for USDC on Canadian trading platforms, ahead of the Stablecoin Act’s own registry taking effect. For Canadian investors, that means today’s access to USDC and USDT largely still runs through provincial securities rules and individual platform listing decisions, while the new federal registry, and whatever additional restrictions come with it, remains a 2027 story.

That distinction between provincial and federal oversight is worth keeping straight, because it explains why Circle could meet Canadian listing requirements before the Stablecoin Act itself is in force. Provincial securities regulators, coordinated through the Canadian Securities Administrators, have for several years imposed their own conditions on which stablecoins Canadian-regulated trading platforms may list, generally requiring some combination of reserve attestations, redemption guarantees and issuer disclosures as a condition of platform registration. The Stablecoin Act adds a federal layer specifically focused on issuers themselves, applying whether or not a given stablecoin is ever listed on a Canadian trading platform, and it is the federal registry, not provincial listing approval, that will ultimately determine which issuers are legally permitted to issue stablecoins to Canadians once the Act comes fully into force. USDC and USDT, as US dollar-pegged tokens issued outside Canada, will both need to be assessed against whatever the federal registry ultimately requires of foreign issuers, which is one of the more consequential open questions the 2027 regulations still need to answer.