SANCTIONS LISTS AND WATCHLISTS EXPLAINED · GUIDEUPDATED 2026-09-04
Sanctions Lists and Watchlists Explained
Canada's consolidated list is the autonomous one, and the word matters
5,690 SEMA and JVCFOA listings from Global Affairs Canada, what the UN Act and Criminal Code lists leave out, and the identifiers Canada omits.
Canada publishes a Consolidated Canadian Autonomous Sanctions List, and every screening failure we have seen against it starts with somebody reading past the middle word. The list covers designations made under the Special Economic Measures Act and the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act — Canada's own measures. It does not cover the regulations Canada makes under the United Nations Act to implement Security Council decisions, and it does not cover the terrorist entities listed under the Criminal Code, which Public Safety Canada maintains on a separate page. Global Affairs Canada publishes the file as XML, PDF and HTML with no fee and no key, and states plainly that the compilation is administrative: the consolidated list is not a regulation and does not have force of law, so the schedules to the regulations govern. The XML we downloaded on 4 September 2026 held 5,690 records, the most recent listed on 13 August 2026. What it does not hold is almost as instructive: no nationality field, no passport or identity-document field, and no address for anybody. You get a name, a regime, a schedule item, a listing date, and — for 2,598 records — a date of birth.
What this workflow covers
SCOPE- 5,690 records in sema-lmes.xml on 4 September 2026, with listing dates from 4 September 2008 to 13 August 2026.
- Every record carries Country-Pays (the regime), Item-NumeroDarticle and DateOfListing. Beyond that: 5,361 have a schedule reference, 3,373 a surname, 3,195 aliases, 2,598 a date of birth or ship build date, 2,176 an entity or ship name and 731 an IMO number.
- Russia dominates with 3,325 records, followed by Ukraine 553, Iran 485, Belarus 320, Syria 261 and Myanmar 241. The JVCFOA regime accounts for 80.
- Thematic regimes sit in the same country field rather than in a separate column: 'Hamas Terrorist Attacks' (39) and 'Extremist Settler Violence' (31) are values of Country-Pays, which surprises anyone parsing that field as a jurisdiction.
- Formats: XML at /world-monde/assets/office_docs/.../sanctions/sema-lmes.xml (about 1.7 MB), a 13.3 MB PDF, and a filterable HTML table on the Global Affairs page. No delta file, no schedule, and a page notice warning that the posted version may not be current; the practical change mechanism is to diff two XML downloads on the Country plus Schedule plus Item key.
- What the list omits is the operational problem: no nationality, no passport number, no national identifier and no address on any record. Against a common Russian or Ukrainian surname, a date of birth is often the only discriminator you get.
- Ship entries are the exception to the sparseness — 731 IMO numbers make vessel matching reliable, which is more than the EU consolidated list offers.
- Bad matches follow from that thin schema, from Cyrillic names transliterated one way in Ottawa and another in Brussels, and from the bilingual Country-Pays values, where 'Belarus / Belarus' and 'Haiti / Haiti' carry French accents on the second half and break naive string filters.
- On a match, the dealings prohibition comes from the regulation and not from this file, so the next step is to open the schedule the record cites rather than to act on the consolidated version. Canada is one of the main jurisdictions on our coverage register, and the Public Safety terrorist entities list is registered alongside it as a separate source.
Key statistics
DATA- Records in sema-lmes.xml, 4 September 2026
- 5,690, most recent listing 13 August 2026
- Counted from the Global Affairs Canada consolidated XML
- Largest regimes by record count
- Russia 3,325, Ukraine 553, Iran 485, Belarus 320
- Counted from the Global Affairs Canada consolidated XML
- Records carrying an IMO number
- 731
- Counted from the Global Affairs Canada consolidated XML
Compliance glossary
TERMS- SEMA
- The Special Economic Measures Act, the statute under which Canada makes autonomous sanctions regulations naming persons and entities in schedules to those regulations.
- JVCFOA
- The Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, Canada's Magnitsky-style statute for designating foreign officials responsible for gross human rights violations or significant corruption.
- Autonomous sanctions
- Measures a state imposes on its own initiative rather than to implement a UN Security Council decision. Canada's consolidated list contains only these.
- Schedule item number
- The position of a listing within the schedule to a Canadian sanctions regulation. It is the field to cite when evidencing a match, because the schedule, not the consolidated list, has legal force.
Authoritative references
SOURCES- 01Consolidated Canadian Autonomous Sanctions List
Global Affairs Canada
- 02Types of sanctions
Global Affairs Canada
- 03Currently listed terrorist entities
Public Safety Canada
- 04Special Economic Measures Act
Department of Justice Canada
Frequently asked questions
Q&A- Does the Canadian consolidated list include UN sanctions?
- No. It covers autonomous designations under SEMA and the JVCFOA only. Canada implements Security Council measures through separate regulations under the United Nations Act, and those listings are not in this file. A programme that screens the consolidated list and calls Canada done is missing the UN Act population.
- Where are Canada's listed terrorist entities?
- On a Public Safety Canada page, not on the Global Affairs consolidated list. The Criminal Code listing process is separate from the sanctions regulations, targets organisations rather than sanctioned persons, and carries different legal consequences. Screening both is normal practice for Canadian financial institutions.
- Is the consolidated list legally binding?
- Global Affairs Canada says it is not. The page states that inclusion is for administrative purposes, that the list is not a regulation and does not have force of law, and that you must consult the regulations to determine whether a party is actually sanctioned. In practice you screen against the list and verify against the schedule.
- Why do so few Canadian entries have identifying details?
- Because the schedules themselves are sparse. Canada lists a name, sometimes a date of birth, and the schedule item number; there is no field in the published data for nationality, passport or address. That places more weight on your review step than most other national lists do, and it is a reason to keep the statement of reasons from the originating regulation alongside the record.
- How do I download the Canadian sanctions list?
- The XML file sema-lmes.xml on the Global Affairs Canada consolidated list page is the machine-readable version, around 1.7 MB, with a PDF and an HTML table beside it. There is no API and no change feed, so download on a schedule, keep the dated copies, and diff them.
- Do Canadian sanctions apply to my company if we are not in Canada?
- SEMA prohibitions bind persons in Canada and Canadians outside Canada, so a Canadian subsidiary, a Canadian director or a Canadian-dollar payment routed through Canada can bring you in scope. That is a legal assessment rather than a screening setting, but it is why non-Canadian firms with Canadian touchpoints screen the list.
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