Bill C-271 Infrastructure Metals Act
C-271 An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Scrap Metal Trafficking and Essential Infrastructure Protection)
Short Title: Protecting Canada's Essential Infrastructure Metals Act
Bill Type: Private Member’s Bill
Bill Sponsor: Connie Cody (Cambridge)
What is this Bill trying to do?
Copper wire stripped from railway signals. Aluminum pulled from electrical substations. Bronze fittings cut from water systems. Scrap metal theft from critical infrastructure is a growing problem in Canada and the people who buy and resell that stolen metal face minimal legal consequences. This Bill creates two new offenses: trafficking in scrap metal you know was stolen and a separate offense for scrap metal dealers who are willfully blind to where their inventory came from. It also creates a new mischief offense specifically for damaging a physical component of essential infrastructure.
The Bill explicitly covers export from Canada in the definition of "traffic" — so cross-border selling is captured. Do you wonder about the stats? What's known anecdotally and from industry reporting:
- China and Southeast Asia are the primary export destinations for stolen Canadian scrap metal — copper especially
- Port of Vancouver has been flagged repeatedly as a major exit point for stolen metal exports
- The value gap is significant — stolen copper can be exported, melted and recast with no traceable origin, making it nearly impossible to recover
- RCMP and CBSA have both identified cross-border scrap metal trafficking as an enforcement gap — the volume is real but prosecution data is thin because it's rarely charged as a distinct offense under current Law
The honest answer is that hard Canadian statistics on stolen metal exports specifically are not well documented publicly — it gets buried in general commodity export data. That's actually part of the problem the Bill is trying to address.
Status: Outside the Order of Precedence — introduced March 13, 2026. This Bill hasn't passed yet.
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WHO GAINS POWER
- Crown prosecutors gain new specific charges for scrap metal trafficking — currently these cases are prosecuted under general property crime provisions
- Courts gain mandatory aggravating circumstance considerations when infrastructure is involved — sentencing must account for public safety impact
- Municipalities, utilities and infrastructure operators gain stronger legal tools against the downstream market that makes theft profitable
WHO LOSES POWER
- Scrap metal dealers lose the ability to claim ignorance — the Bill creates liability for being "reckless or wilfully blind" to whether metal was stolen
- ⚠️ "Reckless or wilfully blind" is a legal standard that will be contested — what due diligence a dealer must perform before buying is not defined in the Bill. CRA and courts will set that bar through prosecution and Case Law
- Repeat offenders face escalating fines and the same maximum imprisonment term — the Bill increases financial penalties on second offense but does not increase the maximum prison term
WHO GAINS MONEY
- Infrastructure operators avoid replacement costs if the new offenses deter theft — copper wire, railway signals and electrical components are expensive to replace and the damage to service can be catastrophic
- Legitimate scrap metal dealers gain a cleaner market if criminal competitors face real consequences
- Insurance companies may see reduced infrastructure theft claims if the Bill has a deterrent effect
WHO LOSES MONEY
- Scrap metal traffickers face fines up to $25,000 on repeat indictable offences plus imprisonment
- Dealers convicted under the wilful blindness provision face fines up to $10,000 and up to two years less a day
- ⚠️ Small and independent scrap dealers bear the compliance burden — larger operations have systems to verify provenance; smaller dealers may not and the wilful blindness standard creates real liability exposure for legitimate businesses operating informally
THE CATCH
- ⚠️ "Scrap metal" is defined narrowly — copper, aluminum, brass, bronze, steel and iron only. Catalytic converters, which are a major theft target, contain platinum, palladium and rhodium — none of which are covered by this Bill
- ⚠️ The trafficking offence requires knowledge that the metal was stolen — proving knowledge beyond a reasonable doubt is difficult. The dealer offense uses the lower "reckless or wilfully blind" standard but the primary trafficking offense does not
- ⚠️ No record-keeping requirement is created — the Bill does not require scrap dealers to log purchases, verify seller identity or retain receipts. Without a paper trail, proving wilful blindness is harder for prosecutors
- The mischief offense for essential infrastructure damage applies when the offender knows the component is critical to the infrastructure's function — that knowledge element will be contested in cases involving opportunistic theft
- ⚠️ "Essential infrastructure" is defined by reference to subsection 52.1(2) of the Criminal Code — that definition covers a broad range of systems but the connection between a specific stolen component and infrastructure function must be established in each case
- The Bill is currently outside the Order of Precedence — it has no scheduled debate time and may not advance this Parliament