Canada’s crackdown on fentanyl trafficking is starting to bear fruit.
The RCMP has seized hundreds of kilograms of fentanyl and made thousands of arrests since May 20, the national police force said in a Dec. 2 news release.
“The Sprint 2.0 … resulted in the reported seizure of a total of 386 kg of fentanyl, significant amounts of other illicit drugs and led to 8,136 reported arrests and charges,” the release says.
Sprint 2.0 refers to a multi-jurisdictional law enforcement operation involving 21 Canadian law enforcement agencies and government partners that ran from May 20 to Oct. 31.
The RCMP’s media update paints a picture of three key trends: cartel financial flows increasingly occur online and use cryptocurrency; the number of Canadian crime groups is falling, but these groups are collaborating more than ever; and export volumes of Canadian-produced fentanyl are declining.
“We’re seeing transnational organized crime groups collaborating like they never have before,” said Bonnie Ferguson, RCMP assistant commissioner, during a Dec. 2 media briefing.
“It’s transnational for a reason, and it’s taking all of these groups to work together — they’re extremely profit driven.”
Fentanyl Sprint 2.0
The Sprint 2.0 operation was coordinated through the Canadian Integrated Response to Organized Crime (CIROC), an integrated task force created in 2007 to tackle organized crime on a national scale.
In early 2025, in response to pressure from the Trump administration to reduce fentanyl trafficking, the federal government bolstered Canada’s law enforcement and border security capacity, committing $1.3 billion to border security initiatives.
Ottawa further promised $1.7 billion over four years starting in 2026 to strengthen the RCMP’s ability to combat transnational organized crime.
CIROC’s second sprint followed an initial sprint, conducted between December 2024 and January 2025, that resulted in 524 arrests and large drug and asset seizures.
A major focus of Sprint 2.0 was tracking and disrupting illegal financial flows, including through Canadian banks and cryptocurrency networks.
“There is an increased virtual and cryptocurrency use across all manners of crime,” Patricia Bennett of FINTRAC told Canadian Affairs at the media briefing.
“[O]rganized crime groups are using the dark net in marketplaces to distribute illicit funds, and they’re becoming more and more prevalent,” she added.
The operation underscores challenges previously highlighted in Canadian Affairs reporting. While U.S. banks face stiff criminal and civil penalties for facilitating cartel-linked transactions, Canadian laws make it difficult to hold financial institutions accountable for inadvertently facilitating illegal transactions.
Transnational collaboration
Officials at the briefing confirmed that the number of organized crime groups involved in the fentanyl trade in Canada has decreased.
“For the first time since the [first] sprint, we’re seeing a decline in the number of overall groups,” said Kendall Lamontagne from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, an intelligence unit within the RCMP. Lamontagne estimated the number of groups involved in the fentanyl market has fallen by about 30 per cent since the first sprint.
But while there are fewer distinct groups, the remaining groups are demonstrating unprecedented levels of transnational collaboration in the Canadian illicit drug market, officials said.
“That is why it is so important for law enforcement and other agencies in Canada to be working as, if not more, collaboratively so that we can tackle and disrupt those efforts,” said Ferguson, of the RCMP, who is also co-chair of CIROC.
Canadian exports declining
In its media briefing, the RCMP also highlighted that the volume of Canadian-produced fentanyl being exported is now minimal.
Dan Anson, director general at the Canada Border Services Agency, said cross-border seizures remain under one per cent of Canadian-produced fentanyl, reflecting mostly personal-use trafficking. Recent law enforcement efforts have pushed exports even lower.
“We’ve seen a significant decline even [in] the past six months, let alone the last year,” Anson said.
Authorities said most Canadian-produced fentanyl remains within domestic markets.
“All of the seizures we made … were domestically bound,” said Marty Karen of the Ontario Provincial Police. “They were not bound for the United States.”
In January, Canadian Affairs reported that U.S. border officials seized just 19.5 kg of fentanyl along the Canada border in 2024. But sources also told Canadian Affairs at the time that Canada is a major domestic and international supplier of precursor chemicals often used to produce fentanyl.
Anson said the goal is zero exports, and expressed cautious optimism about Sprint 2.0’s impact.
“We’re not a significant export[er],” he said. “Again, it’s … a relative success story in that at least there’s containment.”
