Justin Trudeau’s border security commitment has bought Canada 30 days of delay from Donald Trump’s planned tariffs. The announcement expands on the $1.3 billion plan previously rolled out in December, with new measures that include:
- the appointment of a Fentanyl Czar who will engage with U.S. counterparts,
- the listing of organized crime cartels as terrorist entities,
- the formation of a Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl, and money laundering,
- a new intelligence directive on organized crime and fentanyl supported by $200 million in new capacity,
- and the mobilization of law enforcement and civilian forces to ensure 10,000 frontline personnel are active at the border.
But how much will these measures actually help secure the Canada-U.S. border? To explore, we’ve gathered a host of security and policy insiders to break down the ins and outs of the issue.
Will Canada finally take its drug issues seriously—or will it be back to business as usual?
By Blair Gibbs, an independent public policy consultant and a former advisor to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson
The Trump Administration has flagged the porous nature of the current US-Canada border, but the real problem is the failure to charge and convict more serious drug offenders, amid an addiction crisis and with police recording a surge in drug crime cases.
No country’s drug crime problem is purely a domestic matter. Globalization has fueled transnational crime and made border security much more important for the disruption of international trade in illicit substances. The Trump administration has turned their concern over illegal migration and drug crime in America’s own communities into a diplomatic weapon to force neighbouring states to improve their law enforcement response, and not without good reason.
Recently, blame has been placed on underground labs close to the U.S. border that Canada had allowed to develop, and a weak border surveillance system that has allowed criminal gangs to import precursor chemicals and export fentanyl without harassment. Domestic busts of the scale recently conducted by the ALERT squad in Edmonton are a reminder of how much fentanyl is being produced on Canada’s soil, as Trump officials have claimed. This is not illegal immigrants eating the pets.
After the U.S. election, new investments in border security were quickly announced by Ottawa—suggesting the Canadian government was already alive to the problem—but this just served to reveal how little has been done to strengthen border security in recent years. The promised $1.3 billion additional investment in border security and intelligence is over a six-year period and so is probably insufficient to make up for many years of under-investment.
The pledge of a “Fentanyl Czar” might have some traction in a federal system where it is a genuine challenge to secure provincial coordination, and for an issue like this where good data sharing and alignment of the enforcement effort would benefit from a single, non-partisan figure to improve information flow and agency join-up.
However, improved intelligence coordination and border security alone are insufficient. Even the best surveillance and interdiction measures are undermined if organized crime is not deterred domestically by sustained enforcement activity that disrupts Canadian gangs, seizes their assets, and prosecutes their members.
The latest StatsCan data for serious drug crimes suggests the law enforcement response in Canada has been lacklustre. Between 2018 and 2023, incidents of opioid trafficking (other than heroin) have almost doubled—from 933 incidents to 1,786. At the same time, incidents of opioid importation/exportation amounted to 76 incidents in 2018 rising to just 80 recorded cases in 2023. Is this a sign of a secure border, or does it reveal that a lot of the products flooding our domestic drug market are getting into Canada undetected?
Across most categories of drug offences, charges volumes are low and in some categories, charge rates have fallen significantly. Maybe the U.S. administration already knew that according to StatsCan data, no more than four people a year in any of the last six years have been charged for smuggling opioids—Canada-wide. Just 19 were charged for production offences in 2023.
Clearly, current arrest and charge rates for serious drug crimes in Canada are insufficient to serve as a meaningful deterrent. Additional federal investment—combined with what provinces like Alberta have already opted to spend themselves—are clearly positive developments, but they must be integrated into a broader strategy and that is entirely within Canada’s purview.
Do we have the ambition to properly fund our police and prosecutors to detect, arrest, and successfully convict many more drug gangs or will it be some more drones and dogs at the border to placate Trump, and then business as usual at home?
A view of the Rainbow Bridge where the border crossing between the U.S. and Canada, Niagara Falls, Ont., Nov. 22, 2023. Carlos Osorio/The Canadian Press.
Focus on fentanyl is a misguided distraction from Canada’s real border security issues
By Neil Bisson, director of the Global Intelligence Knowledge Network, former border officer with the CBSA, and a retired CSIS intelligence officer
The latest developments in the U.S.-Canada trade tensions, framed around fentanyl trafficking, are a distraction from the core issues of border security and organized crime. The narrative suggesting Canada is a major source of fentanyl entering the U.S. is both misleading and politically motivated. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. seized around 43 pounds of fentanyl from along our border in 2024. Meanwhile, along the Mexican border, they seized 21,000 pounds.
While cross-border drug smuggling exists, the focus should be on enhancing border enforcement and intelligence cooperation, not amplifying unfounded claims that risk straining diplomatic and trade relations.
The creation of a Canadian “Fentanyl Czar” reflects an imported American concept that does little to address the root causes of drug trafficking. It gives the illusion of decisive action while diverting attention from where it’s most needed—targeting the organized crime networks responsible for both drug and firearms smuggling. If Canada were to appoint a czar, one focused on illegal firearms trafficking, would have a far greater impact on public safety.
Trump’s framing of fentanyl as a national emergency and the push to designate cartels as terrorist organizations are reactive measures. Cartels are profit-driven criminal enterprises, not ideological groups. Labeling them as terrorists may expand legal tools for targeting their operations, but it blurs the line between organized crime and terrorism, ultimately serving more as political theatre than effective policy.
A border security big win for Trump—and a win-win for us too
By Howard Anglin
Among the various attempts to find rationality, if not quite reason, in Trump’s tariff gambits, I’ve enjoyed Arnaud Bertrand’s theory that it is the rapid realignment of resources to fit the end of American hegemony and Nate Silver’s game theory-informed analogy to the bullying behaviour of the “big stack” in a poker game, but neither is wholly convincing.
I am more inclined to Jim Geraghty’s simple theory that “Trump…just wants to huff and puff and blow your house down and beat his chest. And then he sees what somebody is willing to make as a concession and that just happens to be exactly what he wanted the whole time…That’s how you get these ‘big wins.’”
This being the case, we should offer up as a “concession” a policy that I described in a co-authored article eight years ago. The idea was to expand the model of the Shiprider program, in which the RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard jointly patrol the Great Lakes to stop smuggling, to the land border. As the Government of Canada describes it, the Canada-U.S. Shiprider program:
removes the international maritime boundary as a barrier to law enforcement by enabling seamless continuity of enforcement and security operations across the border, facilitating cross-border surveillance and interdiction, and serving as both a force multiplier and, potentially, as a model for other United States/Canadian cross-border (integrated) enforcement and security initiatives.
Note that last clause, which I’ve italicised.
Eight years ago, the idea was to stop people sneaking into Canada across the land border. A “Landrider” program today would still do this, but it would also answer American concerns about traffic the other way in people and drugs, as well as traffic north in illegal handguns. Offering up the idea now would thus satisfy American demands and also give us something we want. It would be a win-win, but for purposes of diplomacy we can just let Trump announce it as a “big win.”
Can the Trudeau government actually follow through, or are they just buying time?
By Christian Leuprecht, professor at the Royal Military College and Queen’s University and senior fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute.
For Canada to get a 30-day reprieve from tariffs shows that the Trump administration has about as much confidence in the Trudeau administration’s intent and capability to follow through as the provincial premiers. While the civil service has grown by nearly 45 percent since 2015, the government’s main uniformed organizations are all short-staffed by thousands of people: the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Canada Border Services Agency. In April of this year, all three organizations got hit with significant budget cuts, and since early 2024 their civilian capacity has all been subject to the government’s broad hiring freezing.
The dearth of human resources reduces the RCMP in particular to a generalist organization that lacks border, investigation, and intelligence experts and expertise. Case in point: it’s difficult to come up with a poorer use of taxpayer dollars than the RCMP deploying the Emergency Response Team as border surge capacity. About 1,000 kilometres of border in northern Ontario is currently covered by only a handful of RCMP members operating out of a detachment in Thunder Bay. U.S. concern with the lack of resources on the Canadian side of the border is palatable.
To make the plan work, let alone in the course of a month, will require a herculean effort, with all hands on deck, laser-focused attention, and extensive political top cover. How the Trudeau government intends to deliver on its much-touted border plan is unclear: the people it claims to surge do not actually exist (a zero-sum game of allocating scarce resources at the expense of other priorities), and by virtue of having prorogued Parliament, the government cannot actually pass the necessary bill to vote for an increase in supply.
The government had four years to prepare for a possible return of Trump and contain the fentanyl epidemic that has been ravaging Canadian streets. Instead, importation of precursor chemicals, fentanyl (over)production, illicit drugs, irregular migration, human smuggling, cartels, organized crime, and associated financial and economic crime were left to proliferate and entrench.
For the Trudeau regime to atone for sins—of omission and commission—that spawned this crisis in the first place, is the tallest order this government has ever taken on. We have 30 days to find out whether it is actually committed to make up for years of lost time, or whether it is just buying time.
Fentanyl recently seized, displayed during a press conference at BC RCMP Divisional Headquarters in Surrey, B.C., Friday, Feb. 23, 2024. Tijana Martin/The Canadian Press.
Canada’s leadership vacuum and the Fentanyl Czar concession
By Kelly Sundberg, professor and criminologist at Mount Royal University, former CBSA Officer, and founding president of the SAFE Design Council
Canada is in a leadership crisis at a time when national security demands strength. With Chrystia Freeland’s resignation, Justin Trudeau’s forced exit, the prorogation of Parliament, and an uninspiring Liberal leadership race, our federal government is adrift. Stand-in ministers are merely holding the line, while the looming federal election—with Pierre Poilievre in the clear lead—dominates political focus. Meanwhile, RCMP-CBSA power struggles and desperate border security moves—like purchasing U.S.-banned drones—highlight the dysfunction.
Unlike Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum met Trump head-on—deploying 10,000 troops and negotiating on her terms—Canada’s 30-day reprieve came with more desperately concocted concessions that will likely achieve little beyond buying time to ward off 25 percent U.S. tariffs. More likely, Trump granted Canada the extension to match Mexico’s response.
The difference? Mexico led; Canada reacted.
Let’s not be distracted from the reality that this crisis stems from serious government neglect. Since 2015, Canada has eroded its migration and border security policies. Our last border security strategy—over seven years old—has clearly failed to achieve meaningful outcomes, including addressing the fentanyl crisis. Fentanyl continues to flood across our borders, killing thousands each year. Yet rather than tackling trafficking networks or targeting supply chains, the government offers hollow gestures like a so-called Fentanyl Czar—another bureaucratic placeholder with no real strategic vision. Why not a Border Czar to address fentanyl and other cross-border threats comprehensively? Now, security theatre props up government press releases while real threats persist.
Trump’s beliefs drive his actions, irrespective of facts. Swaying him is futile. Canada must demonstrate national strength—not through symbolic gestures, but by restoring sovereignty, reinforcing immigration integrity, and securing our borders. Woefully, Canada will undoubtedly be back at the negotiating table in a month—once again reacting rather than leading.
The Fentanyl Czar could be effective—if the right person is chosen
By Garry Clement, a 34-year veteran of the RCMP with experience working undercover in organized crime
Canada’s proposal to enhance border security and assign a drug czar in response to American pressure reflects Donald Trump’s continued emphasis on the opioid crisis and his “tough on crime” stance. The fact Canada has been cited by the U.S. State Department as a country of concern over the past several years and has evidenced an inability to target transnational organized crime has given strong ammunition to Trump.
Fentanyl is or should be seen as a national emergency for both our countries, who have each been grappling with the alarming rise in fentanyl-related deaths. The creation of a “czar” to oversee the response to drug trafficking and related crimes could serve as a serious response—provided the right person is selected.
The trade war rhetoric has served to have our political leaders, after many years of sitting on the sidelines, take definitive action, as some of the blame for the flow of fentanyl is being laid on the trade imbalance and weak enforcement mechanisms on both sides of the border. Allegations of clandestine fentanyl manufacturing factories, possibly aided by criminal organizations operating out of both countries, further complicate the matter.
Both the U.S. and Canada have been under pressure to tighten security measures, but the broader geopolitical and trade tensions could create roadblocks in cooperation.
People at the Canada/US border crossing at Emerson, Man., Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022. TJohn Woods/The Canadian Press.
Trump’s tariffs would make border security officials’ jobs harder
By Barry Risk, a former uniformed officer, superintendent, chief, and a senior intelligence officer for Canada Customs
Recently what happens at our international border with our southern neighbour has come to the attention of most Canadians, and like most travellers who cross a border, they are instant experts on how you should process people and goods. In reality, it is a complicated business. The management of a border is one of the most complex government processes there is. CBSA enforces some 100 acts, regulations, and agreements. A constantly changing environment, both physically and politically, only further complicates matters, which is why these tariff threats are so counterproductive.
President Trump’s knowledge of tariffs would likely fill a thimble, and he totally ignores the history between our two countries. The first free trade agreement occurred in 1842 before we were even a country. The next great agreement was the Auto Pact, which allowed the free movement of vehicles and parts across the border and became the model for NAFTA. The removal of tariffs by this agreement has had a great positive impact on our economy and also on how the border is managed.
The public should know that CBSA is responsible for the border, but only at official crossings. Those acts I mentioned only provide authority at those ports of entry. Between these is federal responsibility and that falls under the purview of the RCMP. This division of responsibilities has led to much confusion.
President Trump’s threat of 25 percent tariffs, if enacted, will, beyond all the obvious negative consequences, bring multiple problems to the actual managing of the border, much beyond the assumption that it would be the simple collection of duties. Buckle up, folks—you are in for a rough ride.
