U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Canada until it stems the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs—fentanyl in particular—has put increased focus on drug trafficking across the Canada-U.S. border. Mexico was given a similar ultimatum.
Although the volume of drug shipments crossing from Mexico into the United States is much larger compared to what crosses from Canada, there are broader aspects to be considered when it comes to organized crime and drug operations in Canada and their impact on cross-border drug trafficking.
National security experts and China analysts The Epoch Times spoke to say Canada’s more lax legal structure compared to the United States—along with China’s intention of reaching its number one adversary, the United States, via its allies—make Canada a target for transnational crime networks and drug operations impacting its southern neighbour.
“It doesn’t have to be that border services at the U.S. [bust] a big load of finished fentanyl. What is key here is that the precursors are coming into Canada and being shipped elsewhere, and the money laundering is being directed from Canada,” author and investigative journalist Sam Cooper said in an interview.
And Trump isn’t the only U.S. politician to raise these concerns—they have long been raised by other officials south of the border, Cooper says.
China’s Push
Unlike some other street drugs, fentanyl can be manufactured through a variety of different laboratory processes, each requiring specific precursor chemicals. Some sectors of China’s vast pharmaceutical industry churn out these precursors, and researchers have said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not putting a stop to the production and export of these chemicals.
According to British think tank Chatham House, the sheer number of Chinese pharmaceutical companies make the industry a regulatory quagmire; estimates put the number somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000. But it’s not just the size of the industry that allows Chinese fentanyl precursor manufacturers to remain out of reach of the law—there are also studies that show the CCP has a history of directly encouraging the manufacture and export of precursors.
A soldier keeps watch next to a red wall outside the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing in a file photo. Jason Lee/AFP via Getty Images
An analysis published on the website of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says that, since as far back as 2018, the CCP has structured its value-added tax (VAT) system to encourage “the export of at least 17 illegal narcotics that are Schedule I controlled substances and have no legitimate purpose.” Specifically, this has entailed providing “unusually high” VAT rebates for synthetic narcotics—13 percent, as opposed to the standard rates which range from 3 percent to 9 percent.
Although China caved to U.S. pressure and, at least on the surface, banned fentanyl in 2019, the problem appears to have merely changed form rather than disappearing entirely. Since the prohibition, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has noted an increase in the flow of non-schedule precursor chemicals that can be used to manufacture fentanyl.
A government document released by the Foreign Interference Commission describes fentanyl as a “challenge in Canada-China relations” and says the CBSA has “increasingly intercepted shipments in the courier and postal modes” of precursor chemicals sent from China. The document goes on to note that recent diplomatic tensions between China and Canada have led to reduced enthusiasm on the part of Chinese law enforcement to cooperate with the RCMP in tackling transnational crime.
Another document released by the commission that captures discussions between the B.C. provincial government and the federal national security and intelligence adviser mentions the importance of increasing security at the Port of Vancouver.
“On Fentanyl specifically, Canada, the United States and Mexico are working on supply reduction, including as it relates to precursor chemicals, and the prevention of commercial shipping exploitation,” the document says.
‘Highly Organized Labs’
Canada is witnessing the rapid growth of a domestic fentanyl production industry, facilitated by so-called drug superlabs and fuelled by precursor chemicals imported from China.
“China remains a source country for fentanyl, fentanyl analogues, and increasingly, precursor chemicals flowing to Canada,” says a CBSA document presented to a parliamentary committee in 2021.
Once imported, the majority of these precursor chemicals end up in superlabs located here and there across the country, but most commonly in Western Canada. “Superlabs” is the colloquial term for what the RCMP calls economic-based labs, described as “large-scale, highly organized labs generally tied to organized crime where drugs are produced for the purpose of exporting.”
Many of those labs have been busted by law enforcement, most recently in Falkland, a small unincorporated community in the B.C. Interior with a population of 946.
Firearms and illicit drugs seized at a superlab in Falkland, B.C., are displayed as David Teboul, assistant commissioner with the RCMP's Pacific region (C), holds a press conference in Surrey, B.C., on Oct. 31, 2024. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck
In late October, RCMP raids on the Falkland superlab and associated locations in Surrey, B.C., resulted in the seizure of 89 firearms, including assault rifles and submachine guns, as well as “half-a-ton of hard drugs” including 54 kilograms of fentanyl. According to police, the fentanyl and precursors seized “could have amounted to over 95,500,000 potentially lethal doses of fentanyl.”
While the Falkland operation is the largest superlab uncovered so far, law enforcement is now regularly conducting raids of such labs. In 2023 alone, Vancouver police seized 27.7 kilograms of fentanyl from a lab operating out of a house in Richmond, and RCMP seized 25 kilograms of pure fentanyl as well as fentanyl precursors from a lab created out of a storage building and shipping containers in Mission, B.C. In addition, Project Odeon in Ontario busted a lab in Smithville, not far from the Canada-U.S. border.
Targeting US
Cooper says U.S. authorities are concerned that China is targeting the United States with fentanyl via different channels as part of its “hybrid warfare” to destabilize the country.
“What I understand from U.S. government sources and congressional investigations now is they see Mexico and Canada as weak spots with regards to laws and vulnerability to organize crime networks for years now,” says Cooper, who wrote the 2021 book “Wilful Blindness: How a network of narcos, tycoons and CCP agents infiltrated the West.” He now runs the news organization The Bureau.
“They see fentanyl as not only a source of profit for Chinese triads that are directly related to senior Chinese Communist Party officials and directly related to international money laundering networks that they believe the Chinese Communist Party uses, and for profits to the PRC [People’s Republic of China], but [they see fentanyl] also for strategic objectives,” Cooper said.
Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former Asia-Pacific bureau chief for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told The Epoch Times in a past interview that as a strategic partner of the United States, Canada is an important target for China.
“We’re the access door to Europe, or America, and this is well understood by the Chinese,” he said.
Scott McGregor, a former Canadian Armed Forces intelligence operator who also served as an intelligence adviser to the RCMP, says Canada lacks an effective national security strategy to address transnational crime.
“The majority of the intelligence files leading to arrests, such as the major transnational narcoterrorist cases, are from our neighbour [the United States],” McGregor said in a past interview.
Canadian and American flags are pictured at the Peace Arch Historical State Park at the Canada-U.S. border in Blaine, Washington, on Aug. 9, 2021. Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images
“Seizures of Canada-sourced fentanyl in places like the U.S. and Australia suggest that domestic production is likely exceeding domestic demand, and that Canada is now a source (and transit) country for fentanyl to some markets,” the note reads.
Just how much of the fentanyl produced by Canada’s burgeoning domestic industry is intercepted on its way to the United States? According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 10.26 pounds were seized in 2022, 1.55 pounds in 2023, and 34.82 pounds in 2024. This pales in comparison to the staggering volume intercepted at the U.S. southwest border with Mexico, which stood at 26,693 pounds in 2023.
While the volume of fentanyl flowing south from Canada is far lower than the volume flowing north from Mexico, the issue of the extent of the flow of precursor chemicals needs closer examination. The Epoch Times asked the CBSA to provide any related data but didn’t hear back by publication time.
Cooper says reports that look only at the law enforcement drug seizures at the Canada-U.S. border miss the bigger picture.
“Canada is a hot spot for Chinese triads that I don’t think anyone is denying have a strong presence in Canada,” he said. “Vancouver and Toronto are actual command centres for these triads that are laundering all of the Mexican cartels’ money.”
In his book “Wilful Blindness,” Cooper documents how precursor chemicals shipped from China get processed into pills in “basement labs” in Vancouver and then get shipped to the United States, Australia, and even Asia.
Another aspect is the difficulty of accurately assessing the scope of a cross-border drug trade when the border in question is 8,900 kilometres long with strikingly varied terrain.
A report from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy notes several features of the border that transnational gangs are known to make use of. Waterways allow gangs to make quick jaunts across in boats and to “take advantage of the narrow width of many river areas along the border to escape apprehension when detected by United States law enforcement authorities.” The same waterways can be traversed in snowmobiles in the winter.
A Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) patch is seen on a CBSA officer’s uniform in Tsawwassen, B.C., in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck
The report said the presence of U.S. tribal jurisdictions along (or in some cases, on both sides of) the northern border allows traffickers to exploit the fact that tribal members can “move easily between the United States and Canada.” Similarly, the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve straddling Quebec, Ontario, and New York has long been utilized by organized crime outfits to smuggle people and contraband across the border.
As of 2020, there were just 2,019 U.S. border agents stationed along the nearly 9,000 kilometres of the country’s northern border, compared to 16,878 on the southwest border.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc has said Canada was already looking into adding more security resources to the border, partly due to drug trafficking concerns, before Trump’s threat of 25 percent tariffs if Canada and Mexico don’t address cross-border drug trafficking and illegal immigration, announced Nov. 25 on social media.
“We were in the process of adding resources as we received intelligence information about certain threats, principally in terms of drug trafficking, before Mr. Trump’s [tariffs threat],” LebLanc told CTV’s Power Play program on Dec. 2.
He added that the other reason for looking into deploying more resources was concern that more migrants may be heading to the Canada-U.S. border from the United States once Trump is sworn in as president, since he has said he will deport illegal immigrants.
Canada has so far said it will procure additional drones and helicopters for border patrol and is also looking into boosting border personnel.
Riley Donovan is a journalist based in British Columbia.
