Seized firearms and illicit drugs are displayed as RCMP Chief Supt. Stephen Lee, left to right, Asst. Commissioner David Teboul, Insp. Jillian Wellard and Cpl. Arash Seyed attend a news conference at RCMP headquarters, in Surrey, B.C., on Oct. 31, 2024.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Organized crime groups are producing an increasing amount of fentanyl in Canada, with a growing proportion of those drugs being exported abroad, according to new reports from Canadian financial and criminal intelligence agencies.
The number of organized crime groups in Canada manufacturing illicit drugs such as fentanyl has nearly doubled in the past year, from 51 in 2023 to 99 in 2024, with those groups increasingly looking to export their wares, according to a report published this week by the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada.
Prior to 2020, drug traffickers typically imported fentanyl from China to North America, according to a separate report from Canada’s financial intelligence unit. In recent years, however, they have been bringing in more and more chemicals and lab equipment from China to produce fentanyl in Canada, the United States and Mexico, Thursday’s report from the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre said.
The reports were published as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods in a bid to stop what he describes as a “massive” quantity of fentanyl entering the United States from Canada and Mexico, resulting in overdose deaths.
Trump doubles down on 25% tariffs for Canada and Mexico, ordering sweeping review of trade policies
The trafficking of fentanyl is killing an estimated 80,000 people a year in North America, according to the Financial Action Task Force, an intergovernmental body that sets standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
The intelligence agencies did not specify which international markets the Canadian fentanyl producers were targeting. However, the report from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada noted that while the vast majority of organized crime groups exist to import and traffic drugs within Canada, since 2021 there has been a steady increase in the number of crime gangs expanding their operations internationally, with 35 of them exporting drugs abroad last year. Gangs primarily based in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec are forging alliances with powerful Latin American drug cartels for manufacturing and trafficking, the report stated.
Canada should be considered a source country for fentanyl and other drug shipments moving internationally by “air, marine, land routes,” according to CISC’s assessment. This suggests some of the drugs are destined for the United States, given that Canada only shares a land border with that one country.
FinTRAC arrived at its conclusions by analyzing 5,000 suspicious financial transactions that occurred between 2020 and 2023, data from other financial intelligence units and information provided by law enforcement. The agency identified a number of domestic distribution networks, originating from production facilities in the Lower Mainland in B.C. and the Greater Toronto Area.
Last October, the RCMP announced they had dismantled a Falkland, B.C., facility they claimed was “the largest and most sophisticated fentanyl and methamphetamine drug superlab in Canada.”
The anti-money-laundering watchdog’s report noted that in B.C., drugs typically move inland from distribution hubs in Vancouver, while opioids produced in the GTA flow to areas such as London, Ont., and Hamilton before being transported to Thunder Bay and Winnipeg.
The report also found that fentanyl from Mexico is entering Canada, sometimes having been smuggled alongside cocaine and methamphetamine on commercial motor vehicles, which would have had to pass through the U.S.
Seizure statistics recently published by The Globe and Mail show that hundreds of times as much fentanyl is intercepted at America’s border with Mexico than at its border with Canada.
FinTRAC has been working with its counterparts in the U.S. and Mexico to target the financial component of fentanyl trafficking.
The watchdog is also part of a public-private partnership called Project Guardian, which aims to help Canadian companies detect the laundering of proceeds from synthetic opioid trafficking. The partnership is led by the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and includes the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency, Canada Post and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
In 2023-24, FinTRAC’s disclosures to law enforcement supported more than 50 investigations, and in August, 2023, the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams acknowledged the watchdog’s contributions to the arrest of seven people in relation to a multimillion-dollar drug-trafficking operation. More than $4.5-million of drugs, including fentanyl, and nearly $1-million in cash were seized as a result of that operation, dubbed Project Carlos.
“We have shown with Project Guardian that, by following the money and leveraging the power of financial intelligence, we can effectively target, disrupt and dismantle the organized criminal networks that profit from this insidious illicit activity and threaten the safety and security of Canadians and North Americans,” FinTRAC’s director and chief executive officer Sarah Paquet said in a statement.
The CISC describes itself as the intelligence arm of the Canadian law enforcement community. The group exists under the stewardship of the RCMP but draws information from hundreds of law enforcement partner agencies across Canada to share and develop intelligence on crime priorities for police.
Ken Lamontagne, the CISC’s acting director-general, says in the new report that police and the public must understand that the threat of organized crime is increasingly transnational in scope, even as its presence is felt on a local level.
“Serious and organized crime remains a pre-eminent threat to Canada’s security, contributing to thousands of deaths annually from overdoses due to illicit drugs, as well as firearms and gang violence,” Mr. Lamontagne wrote.