Amal Attar-Guzman: If Canada had to name a fentanyl czar, America should appoint a firearms czar

President Donald Trump’s tariffs are finally in place—or are they? With tariffs looming over our collective Canadian heads and amidst the confusion caused by the at-times hourly changes in trade policy being issued from the Oval Office, the federal government is scrambling to acquiesce to the U.S. administration’s varying demands.

In particular, the Canadian government has implemented measures to further secure the border, including officially appointing a fentanyl czar, to combat illegal Canada-U.S. fentanyl smuggling. Not that it seems to have made any difference whatsoever.

While a more secure border is a meaningful policy to pursue in its own right absent this particular trade-war context, the dishonest rhetoric surrounding these demands takes for granted the premise that there is a border security issue in the first place.

When it comes to the U.S.-Mexico border, the administration has a point. The U.S. has officially designated eight drug cartels as terrorist organizations that are a threat to U.S. national security. Of these, six are from Mexico.

In the case of Canada, though, the notion is not only laughable, but it in fact gets the situation completely backward. When discussing the flow of dangerous goods across the border, it is Canada that has the more serious grievance given the dangerous and illegal American firearms that flood our city streets, as former Alberta premier Jason Kenney and others have astutely highlighted.

In 2024, out of the 932 illegal firearms seized by Canadian border officials, 839 firearms were from the U.S., accounting for 90 percent of seized illegal firearms that year. This was an increase from 581 illegal firearms coming from the U.S. in 2022, which represented just 52 percent of seized illegal firearms that year.

And those are just the guns that get seized before they are put to criminal use. In Ontario alone, approximately 70 percent of guns used in crimes come from the U.S. In Toronto, 88 percent of guns seized by the Toronto Police Service were traced back from the U.S. According to Ontario’s tracing and analysis, the majority of these firearms come from Ohio, Texas, Florida, and Georgia.

Mexico has a similar case of its own to make in this regard. During a recent press conference discussing Trump’s threats—including his musings of a potential “soft invasion” of Mexico to combat drug cartels—President Claudia Sheinbaum said that she would propose constitutional reforms to crack down on American guns being smuggled into her country.

Half a million illegal firearms come into Mexico from the U.S. on a yearly basis, causing havoc and further fueling violence in the land of the Águila Real. Despite a relative decline from past years, in 2023 alone there were more than 30,000 homicides across Mexico—approximately 70 percent of which were committed by firearms, a majority of which were purchased in the U.S., according to Mexican and U.S. officials.

Back here at home, gun violence is a terrifying and growing reality for too many Canadians, one that, as I’ve written, our government has unfortunately chosen to play politics with rather than seriously crack down on.

Now is the perfect opportunity to finally do so, and to actually target the true problem—not law-abiding Canadian hunters, Indigenous populations, collectors, and sport-shooting enthusiasts, but firearms from America that are fuelling urban crime. As tariff negotiations continue, it’s time for Canada to make a demand of our own: the U.S. should name a firearms czar to crack down on illegal guns crossing the Canada-U.S. border and into our country.

Just like how fentanyl destroys families and lives, so does gun violence. I mean, it is only fair, right?