For 21 years, the efforts of the Competition Bureau, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) have combined to educate Canadians in March about how to deter fraud in all its forms through the Fraud Prevention Month campaign.

As with past years, this year’s efforts are supported by presentations and materials from multiple participants, regulators, provincial and local police forces, support groups for new Canadians and seniors, and many others. 

But while past years have had some unifying theme, this year’s theme is that there is no theme. The goal remains to “equip Canadians with the knowledge, tools and strategies to recognize, reject and report fraud”. The ‘no theme’ message to members is to “allow you to centre your campaigns around themes that are linked to your individual mandates,” according to the campaign’s promotional materials. 

As in the past few campaigns, most of the efforts are virtual, and information should be shared with the common official hashtags of #FPM2025 (English) and #MPF2025 (French).

Consumers consistently identify fraud issues as the high priority for consumer protection. Consumers Council of Canada uses online questionnaires with participants in its Public Interest Network (PIN) to help identify experiences and attitudes of consumers, and help inform priority-setting. 

 A mid-December PIN questionnaire focused on a number of privacy and security issues, so the topic was top of mind when participants were asked: “Please tell us what you think are the most important consumer protection problems the Consumers Council of Canada should be working on solving.” 

Given the opportunity with the open-ended question, the most frequently named topics were all related: Sometimes stated as just fraud, sometimes more specifically as internet fraud, telephone fraud, phone scams, identity theft, privacy, hacked banking information or data security. Consumers sent a strong, consistent message. 

Participants were asked to rate their perceived level of safety on different activities compared to a year ago. Of the eight tested measures, only online banking was viewed as being more secure. All the other measures (make a purchase over the internet, answer a phone call, read an email, accept browsing cookies), showed a decline over the past 12 months.