U.S. President Donald Trump has reiterated his pledge to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods, claiming fentanyl is continuing to “pour into the country” from Canada and Mexico.
In recent weeks, Canada has taken numerous steps to address Trump’s concerns. It has announced a $1.3-billion investment in border security, new drug detection units and the appointment of a fentanyl czar.
But experts query whether traditional law enforcement measures can be effective when crime groups’ methods increasingly bypass physical borders altogether.
Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former senior intelligence officer at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, is one of those experts.
“I say thank you, Mr. Trump, because we’ve done more in 60 days about national security and to reinforce our border than we’ve done for decades,” said Juneau-Katsuya.
“But it’s not a border issue.”
High tech
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is a federal agency responsible for investigating activities that threaten national security. A 2024 report by the agency says criminal groups are increasingly avoiding physical borders to move drugs and firearms.
The report cited drones, postal smuggling, encrypted communications, cryptocurrencies and dark web trafficking as factors enabling crime groups to avoid detection.
Drones in particular have become a key tool for drug trafficking. Examples abound.
In 2022, 48 inmates were hospitalized and one died after a drone was used to deliver fentanyl into the Matsqui Institution prison in Abbotsford, B.C.
In 2022, Montreal-based drug trafficker Laxshan Mylvaganam was caught using drones to deliver $50,000 worth of drugs into a Quebec minimum-security prison. In 2023, he was caught doing so again.
In late 2024, staff at the maximum-security Atlantic Institution prison in Renous, N.B., discovered a drone had dropped more than $400,000 worth of illicit drugs into the prison.
Drones have also been used to smuggle drugs and weapons into the Drumheller Institution in Drumheller, Alta.
“Technology has really accelerated the effectiveness of organized crime,” said Neil Boyd, chair of the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform, a Canada-based organization.
Ottawa’s border security initiative includes a new Aerial Intelligence Task Force, which will use helicopters, drones and mobile surveillance towers — portable structures equipped with cameras, sensors and other monitoring equipment — to monitor borders. While helpful, these methods will do little to counter drug trades that leverage encrypted platforms, cryptocurrency and postal services.
Boyd, who was formerly a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University, says law enforcement focuses heavily on street-level traffickers, while higher-ups go undetected by using cryptocurrency and money laundering.
“A young man can be summoned from Toronto on a burner phone to come out and conduct a [contracted killing] for $5,000, [while] the people who are arranging the hit are receiving funds well in excess of multiples of the $5,000,” said Boyd. In the drug trade, targeted killings can be a response to disputes over territory, unpaid debts or informants cooperating with law enforcement.
Postal services can be another weak point.
Between April and August 2024, border service officers seized 85 kg of methamphetamine in 54 separate incidents at the Vancouver International Mail Centre. However, this surveillance was part of a larger operation targeting methamphetamine shipments destined for Australia.
Intelligence gap
Ottawa’s $1.3-billion border plan also includes a commitment to expand the government’s “intelligence collection capacity.”
Juneau-Katsuya, the former intelligence officer, says he supports this investment but sees shortcomings with it.
Gathering more data is not enough, Juneau-Katsuya says. Intelligence must be synthesized, analyzed and shared across agencies to be effective.
“You don’t collect intelligence,” he said. “You collect information, you produce intelligence.”
He likened intelligence work to assembling a puzzle without the original picture. While analysts can identify patterns, it is up to investigators to fill in the gaps. “The power of intelligence is in detecting criminal activity, understanding its methods and using that knowledge to strike directly,” he said.
“But to produce meaningful intelligence, analysts and investigators need to see the big picture and work together.”
Juneau-Katsuya believes the Canada Border Services Agency’s intelligence unit is understaffed and lacks the resources and capabilities to generate effective intelligence. “Their group is too small… [and] too restricted,” he said.
Luke Reimer, a spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency, told Canadian Affairs that the agency’s intelligence operations involve several teams. These include a program that identifies threats using automated data, an intelligence program focused on organized crime and terrorism risks, and a criminal investigations program that collaborates with public prosecutors
Reimer did not directly answer whether the intelligence unit is sufficiently resourced. But he highlighted that the agency is expanding its capacity as part of Ottawa’s broader border security plan. This plan allocates $355 million for the agency to hire more intelligence analysts and border services officers and acquire new detection technology.
Boyd, the criminologist, says he would like to see law enforcement hire more computer scientists to improve evidence gathering and leverage AI to track digital crime.
Juneau-Katsuya also warns that Ottawa’s border security plan risks failing for the same reasons past intelligence efforts against organized crime have fallen short — political inaction.
“People must understand [that] security and national security is a strategic investment in the profitability of your country,” he said.
“If your country is not capable of competing internationally because we are inflicted with organized crime, with spies, with foreign interference … you will not be taken seriously internationally, and it will affect your bottom line.”
Four pillars
Boyd says law enforcement is a key tool in combating fentanyl trafficking, but should be one of “four pillars” to drug policy — alongside prevention, treatment and harm reduction.
“I wouldn’t say enforcement is useless, but relying on it alone doesn’t work,” he said.
Nicholas Boyce, policy director at the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition, an advocacy organization focused on harm reduction and decriminalization, agrees. Boyce says excessive spending on law enforcement drains resources from vital social supports like housing and addiction treatment.
A 2023 Health Canada report showed the federal government spent $433 million on drug-related law enforcement between 2017 and 2022, while it spent just $175 million on prevention, treatment and harm-reduction initiatives combined.
“Even when we are successful at stopping a particular substance, we have not addressed demand, so new drugs come along,” said Boyce.
Dr. Alexander Caudarella, CEO of the research organization Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, says focusing on supply and border issues oversimplifies the problem and prevents progress.
“The data is clear that the issues at the U.S.-Canada border are not driving either country’s overdose epidemics,” said Caudarella.
“The issue is complex and layered, and efforts to prevent fentanyl production and trafficking can be an important tool.
“However, supply reduction alone can not solve this crisis.”
