Large Fentanyl Labs Beginning to Appear in Canada

Republican lawmakers in recent months have called for US military strikes in Mexico targeting fentanyl traffickers and drug labs. The spread of fentanyl production to Canada suggests traffickers there are poised to benefit if Mexican suppliers get squeezed. The lightly patrolled US-Canada border spans more than 5,500 miles — the longest international boundary between two nations and has few physical barriers.

One candidate seeking the GOP presidential nomination, Vivek Ramaswamy, has proposed building a wall along the US northern border, citing the threat of fentanyl smuggling from Canada. But the appearance of the Canadian labs has generated little reaction in Washington, where the US-Mexico border remains the focus of the fentanyl debate.

The powerful, intensely addictive drug and other synthetic opioids claim more than 70,000 lives a year in the United States. A similar proportion of Canadians are dying of overdoses, about 7,000 annually. The two countries remain the only nations where fentanyl poses such a lethal threat.

CBP seized just two pounds of fentanyl along the northern border during the 2023 fiscal year, the agency’s latest statistics show.

“We are not seeing any sort of southbound flow of fentanyl into the United States from Canada,” said Robert Hammer, the top Homeland Security Investigations agent in Seattle, who said he consulted with his fellow agents in Buffalo and Detroit.

“That’s not to say it’s not happening, and not to say it may not happen in the future,” Hammer cautioned.

Hammer said he remains skeptical Canadian-made fentanyl will displace the pills flooding into the United States from Mexico. “We are down to 45 cents a pill on the wholesale side here in Seattle,” he said. “You have to be pretty damn competitive to beat 45 cents a pill to compete with the Mexican cartels that have entrenched themselves with the distribution network they have set up here in the Pacific Northwest.”

Still, authorities in the United States and Canada are investigating the robust trade links between the countries, routes that provide ample opportunities for smuggling.

Drug experts have long warned that a crackdown along the US-Mexico border could prompt criminal groups to seek alternative sources or begin producing fentanyl in the United States. Most of the labs encountered in the United States are what police agencies refer to as “pill press” operations, where traffickers make tablets out of fentanyl powder smuggled from Mexico.

The super labs that police are finding in Canada differ because they are synthesizing the drug, not merely pressing pills, using precursor chemicals sourced primarily from China.

Daniel Anson, director of intelligence and investigations at the Canada Border Services Agency, estimated that 98% of the country’s fentanyl-making materials are seized in Western Canada and originate in China. He said fewer seizures at maritime ports suggest smugglers may increasingly use mail and courier services to get precursor chemicals into Canada; the packages are generally mislabeled to hide the true contents.

“Canada is struggling with the precursor chemicals,” Anson said in an interview. He, too, believes Canada has become a fentanyl-exporting nation.

“Canada has long punched above its weight when it comes to illegal drug manufacturing,” said Stephen Schneider, a professor of criminology at Saint Mary’s University and author of “Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada.”

Globalization and the rise of China upended the illicit trade in North America. In the mid-2010s, Chinese chemical companies became the main suppliers of illicit fentanyl and other synthetic drugs, selling them online and shipping them directly to Canada and the United States in packages disguised as other items. 

After China began restricting fentanyl exports in 2019, chemical companies instead began shipping precursor chemicals used to make the opioid. Cartels cornered the lucrative, deadly trade by setting up clandestine labs in Mexico, smuggling finished fentanyl into the United States.

Jonathan P. Caulkins, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who researches the global drug trade, said it makes sense that Canadian criminal groups have created their own labs because they are easily hidden and production costs are so low.

“Canada has its own domestic market — and if you’re trying to supply the market, there’s no reason why you would want to start in Mexico and go through the United States to get to Canada because the United States has very tough law enforcement,” Caulkins said.

Derek Westwick, who runs the Royal Canadian Mounted Police unit in British Columbia responsible for stopping precursor chemicals and finding drug labs, said his team has busted 10 operations in Western Canada — in isolated rural areas and dense urban neighborhoods. “The only common thread is they’re always rental properties,” Westwick said, explaining that law enforcement generally protects leased properties from seizure.

In the Toronto area in 2020, what started as a large-scale investigation into meth labs uncovered a large-scale fentanyl pill-pressing operation. Investigators seized nearly 124,000 counterfeit pain pills and 70 kilograms of fentanyl powder.

By August, police concluded a separate investigation known as Project Odeon, which was sparked by an overdose death two years earlier in Hamilton, just outside Toronto. Investigators discovered a dismantled fentanyl lab and an active one at a rural Hamilton home. They seized 3.5 tons of chemical byproduct from fentanyl production, 800 gallons of chemicals used to make the opioid, and more than 25 kilograms of finished fentanyl.

Ontario Police Detective Inspector Lee Fulford said the lab had the capacity to churn out 20 to 30 kilograms of fentanyl weekly. “It’s alarming that much fentanyl would be hitting the streets of Toronto,” said Fulford, of the Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau.

The Canadian border agency has created a pilot program geared toward interdicting fentanyl leaving Canada toward the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. 

Sources Washington Post, Borderland Beat