Crypto Regulations in Ontario vs Quebec: What Changes

The shared baseline both provinces apply

Securities law in Canada is provincial. The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) administers the Securities Act (Ontario). In Quebec, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) administers the Securities Act and the Derivatives Act (Québec). Both regulators sit inside the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), and since 2021 the CSA has treated a platform that holds client crypto assets as a dealer in securities or derivatives.

The following rules apply identically in both provinces:

• Platforms register as restricted dealers or as investment dealers with membership in CIRO. In August 2024 the CSA and CIRO asked platforms to prioritize investment dealer applications.
• Platforms still under review operate under a pre-registration undertaking (PRU), tightened by CSA Staff Notice 21-332 in February 2023.
• Margin, credit and any other leverage for Canadian clients are prohibited.
• Stablecoins are available only where the issuer has filed an undertaking under CSA Staff Notice 21-333 (5 October 2023).
• Every platform registers with FINTRAC as a money services business under the federal anti-money laundering act.
• The federal Stablecoin Act received Royal Assent on 26 March 2026. Draft regulations were published on 24 October 2026, comments close on 23 December 2026, and Ottawa targets fall 2027 for implementation.

Everything below sits where provincial discretion survived this harmonized layer.

The C$30,000 line: purchase limits

The investment limit lives in the terms and conditions attached to each platform's registration decision. Clients resident in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec are carved out, and so are "permitted clients". Saskatchewan joined the exempt group by General Order 25-505 of 16 April 2025. Ontario stayed in. So did the Atlantic provinces and the territories.

The limits work out as follows on a rolling 12-month basis:

The cap is net. Purchases use it up, sales of crypto for dollars restore it, and deposits or withdrawals of coins leave it untouched, according to Wealthsimple's provincial rules page. A Toronto client who buys C$30,000 of SOL in March is locked out of further altcoin purchases until sales or the calendar free up room. Bitcoin stays open the whole time.

Quebec's exemption is not a blank cheque. Platforms still assess account appropriateness for every client, and Bitbuy assigns a "Basic" tier with a C$5,000 limit that applies even in exempt provinces. Ontario's side, meanwhile, gets checked. In OSC Staff Notice 33-757 of 10 December 2024, the OSC reviewed six Ontario-based restricted dealers and reported no breaches of the investment limits. It did publish best practices on what platforms should do once a client hits one.

What each register shows

Both regulators publish lists, and they do not move in step. We compared the OSC crypto businesses page with the AMF register on 5 November 2026.

The AMF lists 11 registered platforms and 8 under a PRU, among them Crypto.com, Gemini and Uphold. A PRU is not registration, and the AMF says so on the same page. The mismatches above do not mean Kraken is unlawful in Quebec. They mean a reader in Montreal checks the AMF register and a reader in Ottawa checks the OSC, because neither list is a copy of the other.

Cash, ATMs and the second Quebec licence

This is where Quebec builds a layer Ontario never had. Under the Money-Services Businesses Act, a business needs a licence from Revenu Québec, which took the regime over from the AMF in September 2021. Revenu Québec applies it to crypto in three ways:

• Operating a cryptoasset ATM requires its own licence class.
• A platform that lets users buy and sell crypto and move legal tender needs a funds transfer licence.
• A platform that takes dollar deposits and resells crypto for a different currency also needs a currency exchange licence.

Every person tied to the business goes through a Sûreté du Québec security check. In Ontario, the federal FINTRAC registration is the whole of it.

The ATM question stopped being academic in 2026. Canada has just under 4,000 crypto ATMs, and more than a quarter of them stand in the Montreal area, per Coin ATM Radar data cited by Decrypt. The Spring Economic Update of 28 April 2026 proposed banning them. Then came Bill S-8, tabled on 3 November 2026, and its summary narrows the target to unlawful machines while preserving provincially licensed and regulated ones. Read literally, that wording favours the one province with a licensing system. If the bill passes as drafted, Quebec operators could keep a legal route that no Ontario licence provides. Parliament has not voted yet.

Enforcement against offshore platforms

The OSC moved first. On 25 May 2021 it filed the first Canadian enforcement case against a crypto platform, Poloniex. In June 2022 KuCoin paid C$2 million and was permanently banned from Ontario's capital markets, while Bybit settled and agreed to wind down Ontario operations if registration talks failed.

The AMF chose a blunter instrument. The Quebec financial markets tribunal fined XT.com operators C$2 million in September 2023 and imposed the same amount on CoinEx and its founder on 14 November 2023. On 23 April 2025 the AMF obtained permanent injunctions from the Superior Court of Québec ordering Canada's main telecom companies to block both sites. The blocking ran between 12 and 26 August 2025. Ontario has no comparable network-level block on record.

Federal enforcement covers both provinces equally. FINTRAC fined Binance C$6,002,000 in May 2024 and revoked 47 crypto money services business registrations in the first months of 2026.

Language, power and tax

Three further differences sit outside securities law. Each reaches a different group of people.

French-language service

Since 1 June 2022, the Charter of the French Language requires businesses offering services in Quebec to inform and serve clients in French. Contracts concluded on a platform for trading securities or derivatives appear among the exemptions from the French-first rule for adhesion contracts. The service obligation stays regardless. Ontario imposes no language duty on platforms.

Electricity for miners

Quebec's cheap hydro power drew miners in 2017 and 2018, and Hydro-Québec answered by halting new allocations in 2018 and creating a separate tariff for cryptographic use. The squeeze continued this year. On 19 February 2026 the utility proposed raising that rate to an average of 19.5 cents per kWh, with a three-year transition for current customers. On 26 October 2026 the Quebec Superior Court struck down two government decrees backing the plan. Hydro-Québec kept its request anyway, and the Régie de l'énergie hearings resume in December. Ontario has no tariff class reserved for crypto mining.

Tax filing

CRA rules on crypto apply in both provinces. Gains are taxed as capital gains at the one-half inclusion rate or as business income, depending on how the activity is carried out. An Ontario resident files one T1 return, and the provincial tax is calculated on it. A Quebec resident also files the TP-1 with Revenu Québec and reports the same dispositions there. Registered accounts work the same way in both provinces. TFSA and RRSP holders get crypto exposure through listed ETFs, since spot coins on a trading platform are not qualified investments.