Will Canada listing drug cartels as terrorists change anything?
Feds said they would make change as part of deal to hold off Trump tariffs
The federal government is looking to list Mexican cartels as terrorists under Canadian law, but experts say there are a number of other groups heavily involved in the illicit drug market.
U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to impose hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico, in part over his apparent concerns that fentanyl and other drugs are pouring into the U.S. from those two countries.
While the amount of fentanyl that has been seized at the Canada-U.S. border is minor compared to the southern U.S. border, Ottawa struck a deal with Trump earlier this week to hold off on tariffs after making some last-minute additions to its border security offer.
Part of that deal included listing Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations under the Criminal Code.
Public Safety Minister David McGuinty suggested to reporters on Friday that "all criminal cartels" are being looked at, but didn't name any.
Experts point to two likely suspects: the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).
"Those are the ones that appear to converge at the most senior levels of transnational organized crime in Canada," said Calvin Chrustie, a former RCMP superintendent in Vancouver who has investigated transnational crime networks on cross-border cases.
Trump signed an order in January directing the U.S. government to list cartels as terrorist organizations under American law. Vanda Felbab-Brown — an expert on organized crime and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution — said it makes sense Canada would make a similar move.
"Once the Trump administration has done that, there is no territorial limitation on the implications of the designation. So it's kind of natural that Canada would move in the same way," she said.
Jessica Davis, a former senior intelligence analyst with CSIS who now heads the consulting firm Insight Threat Intelligence, said it's fairly "straightforward" that cartels meet the definition of a terrorist group under Canadian law.
"That definition includes things like committing serious violence for a political purpose and most cartels do that," she said.
Felbab-Brown said Sinaloa and the CJNG have largely been focused on smuggling illicit drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine into Canada.
But RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme told CBC's Rosemary Barton Live that there are signs cartels are getting involved in production on Canadian soil.
"We do know from the intelligence picture that Mexican organized crime or cartels are involved with the fabrication. What you're seeing in Canada is you're seeing more of the precursors [chemicals used to make illicit drugs] coming into Canada," Duheme told host Rosemary Barton in an interview airing Sunday.
The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada's (CISC) most recent public report on organized crime said that cartels are getting increasingly involved in money laundering.
Canadian involvement in financial crimes was pushed into the spotlight in October when Toronto-Dominion Bank was fined more than $3.09 billion US in a historic U.S. money-laundering case. At least one of those schemes involved TD Bank employees laundering up to $670 million from selling fentanyl.
Felbab-Brown said Canada has become a bit of a hub for money laundering. But she noted that more groups than just cartels are involved.
Other criminal networks in illicit drug market
Felbab-Brown said the "big question" is whether the government will consider adding these other groups to the list.
Chrustie said when it comes to money laundering and the fentanyl trade in Canada, the "the upper echelon" of criminal organizations include cartels, Chinese triads and Iranian crime groups — and he said they are, in ways, all interconnected.
"They converge and collaborate and co-operate at the strategic and operational level of transnational organized crime in Canada. But, like any major enterprise, they have subcontractors and other components and operational cells," he said.
"I think there's probably increasing awareness that Canada provides all these networks … a high-gain, low-risk environment to operate."
Chrustie said the Chinese and Iranian groups are the ones generally responsible for smuggling precursor into Canada.
Felbab-Brown said biker gangs are the primary distributors of drugs in Canada and "some of the most violent actors." But she questioned whether Ottawa would consider adding them to the list.
The CISC report indicates that motorcycle gangs are heavily involved in the distribution of fentanyl and other drugs but says little about their involvement in smuggling and production.
What does adding crime groups to the terrorist list do?
The process of designating a terrorist group is meant to be apolitical, starting with a cross-government consultation that identifies potential groups for addition to the list.
But Davis says the process has become politicized in recent years, pointing to the addition of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after years of pressure.
"That politicization has already happened. This is just an externally imposed politicization," Davis said of the move to add cartels to the list.
McGuinty said Tuesday that listing cartels as terrorist organizations would give law enforcement agencies more powers to investigate those groups.
"It's going to be giving our law enforcement authorities more powers to track the money, follow the assets and disrupt the activities of cartels," he told reporters while visiting the Manitoba border town of Emerson.
Last month, Canada's financial intelligence agency released an operation alert saying that online betting platforms are being used to launder proceeds from fentanyl dealing and production.
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (Fintrac), said there is reason to believe people are depositing and withdrawing funds at online casinos to disguise proceeds from the traffic of fentanyl and other deadly opioids as wagers and winnings.
Davis and Chrustie said that as it currently stands, cartels are solely in the wheelhouse of law enforcement agencies from local police to the RCMP. But listing cartels as terrorist organizations would bring intelligence agencies such as CSIS into the conversation.
"The prosecutions go up, the tools increase and then it also gets the political support, priority and possibly additional funding. So it enhances the all Team Canada type of approach," he said.
But Davis said who takes the lead on cartel investigations would still be in question.
"Traditionally in Canada, this has not been the purview of the security intelligence service. That could change. That's a policy decision," she said.
Davis said it's also unclear if anything would change operationally given that Canada is adding cartels to the list to appease the U.S.
"It does unlock all of the counterterrorism powers if the government decides that they want to use those against cartels. But I'm not entirely confident that's 100 per cent going to happen, mostly because of the way this listing has come out," she said.
"This is an externally imposed listing and so it's not immediately clear that would happen."
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With files from Peter Zimonjic