Trump ally on Canada's fentanyl talk: Not good enough
U.S. officials urge Canada to start tackling big, systemic problems with organized crime
Alexander Panetta · CBC News · Posted: Dec 09, 2024 3:00 AM CST | Last Updated: 12 hours ago
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised U.S. president-elect Donald Trump at a dinner that Canada would step up enforcement at the border. Will it be enough to make him drop his tariff threat? That's not clear. ( @justintrudeau/X)
The Canadian government is talking about adding helicopters and drones at the border to stop fentanyl shipments so Donald Trump drops his threat of devastating economic tariffs.
But David Asher, a Trump ally, says it should be doing more. Much more. And as someone who's worked on fentanyl policy for Trump, he says Canada should be making substantive, systemic changes.
He calls it frustrating to hear Canadians downplay their country's role in the fentanyl epidemic, just because a minuscule percentage of seized contraband comes from Canada. There's more to it than that, he says.
Asher urges new laws on racketeering, money laundering and intelligence-sharing, to fight international criminal networks that he says use Canada as a back office.
A top U.S. expert on criminal financing, Asher led an anti-fentanyl task force under Trump, has occasionally testified before the U.S. Congress, and has written a fentanyl strategic memo now reportedly circulating among Trump's transition team.
It just so happens that he was talking to Canadians at a Vancouver security summit at the very moment the president-elect threatened the tariffs, just after 3 p.m. PT on Monday, Nov. 25.
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In his first television interview since winning the U.S. election, president-elect Donald Trump hardened threats to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He also vowed to end automatic birthright citizenship, follow through with mass deportations and issue pardons for anyone jailed in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Washington.
He was telling his Canadian audience about the need not just to seize pills but to wipe out criminals' bank accounts, and prosecute crooked bankers.
Asher then checked his phone while someone else spoke and saw the social media post that has upended politics across the continent: A threatened 25 per cent tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico, unless the countries curb fentanyl trafficking and migration at the U.S. border.
The audience seemed shocked and somewhat dismayed at the news, he said.
"They kept asking, 'Why should Canada care about this fentanyl issue?'" said Asher, a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.
For starters, he said, Canada should care because fentanyl is killing many thousands of Canadians and hundreds of thousands of Americans.
But furthermore, Canada is a more important player in the fentanyl trade than it acknowledges, he said — and its role is growing.
Trump has made jokes, including posting this AI-produced image on social media. He's made threats, involving tariffs. What he hasn't done is name specific policies, so it's unclear if he's seeking major or minor changes from Canada on fentanyl. (Truth Social)
'We've been informing the Canadian government of this for years'"The money laundering that makes drug trafficking work is largely run out of Canada," he said, specifically mentioning Vancouver and Toronto.
"Canada has been a reluctant and a not particularly effective partner in this.
"We've been informing the Canadian government of this for years. We've had very little co-operation, frankly. And it's time, I think, with Donald Trump's threat of a tariff, that your prime minister and others take action."
Canadian officials who met Trump's team at Mar-a-Lago certainly emerged with the impression that the president-elect indeed cares about fentanyl.
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Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc provides insider insight into the Mar-a-Lago dinner between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. president-elect Donald Trump as Canada seeks to counter the proposed 25 per cent tariff threat.
What the Canadians didn't know — and still don't know — is what Trump actually wants; he never got specific about whether he's seeking more security at the actual border, or the systemic changes Asher favours.
Asher makes clear that he can't answer for Trump and doesn't speak for him. He said he did know some sort of border statement was coming from the president-elect, as he's close to numerous members of the incoming administration.
But he wasn't aware the statement would include a tariff threat, nor was he aware that the timing would coincide with his Canadian event.
"There was a big silence in the room," said David Luna, who was at the Vancouver conference, referring to the moment Asher announced the tariff threat. He previously led efforts against narcotics, money laundering and organized crime at the U.S. State Department.
"[The reaction was], 'This is for real.'"
Paper: Canada a money-laundering hubLuna co-wrote a report calling Canada a hub for some of the world's largest criminal networks, from Mexico, China, Iran and Russia, which he says use the country as a safe haven for money laundering, and also as a source of encrypted phone technology.
Criminal gangs' use of Canadian-based encrypted communications was thrust into the spotlight, when the CEO of an encrypted-phone company in Washington Statewas arrested, resulting in the prosecution and conviction of the head of the RCMP's intelligence co-ordination centre.
Senior Mountie Cameron Ortis was found guilty of hoarding and leaking state secrets. Asher refers bitterly to this case; he notes that his colleagues — and all Five Eyes countries — had regularly shared intelligence with Ortis.
Cameron Jay Ortis, a former RCMP intelligence official charged with breaching Canada's secrets law, arrives for his trial at the courthouse in Ottawa, on Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)
One of the world's top drug traffickers is also a Canadian citizen: Tse Chi Lop, who was arrested during a European layover in a multinational police operation in 2021.
Then there's the TD Bank case. The bank faces $3 billion US in penalties after employees in the U.S. were willing accomplices to Chinese and Mexican gangs using it to launder drug money — including fentanyl money.
Asher listed several friends who are assigned to top roles in Trump's Justice Department, saying he hopes they pursue criminal charges against executives at that bank and other institutions.
WATCH | TD Bank's fine was largest under U.S. Bank Secrecy Act:
TD Bank pleads guilty, fined $3 billion in historic U.S. money-laundering case
Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank has agreed to pay fines totalling about $3.09 billion US after pleading guilty to multiple U.S. money-laundering charges. U.S. officials say drug traffickers bribed TD employees to launder up to $670M from selling fentanyl.
Some senior executives at the bank were aware of the scheme, and the current U.S. attorney general, Merrick Garland, has said that, atop the two employees already charged, more prosecutions could follow.
One former Canadian officer said it's depressingly hard to prosecute such cases in Canada, despite well-documented evidence of money laundering.
"That's what the Americans are looking at," said Calvin Chrustie, a former RCMP superintendent in Vancouver who has investigated transnational crime networks.
"They're not looking at the guy crossing the border with a backpack."
Because to be fair, if they were simply counting contraband deliveries, Canada would indeed be a negligible player.
Canada accounts for a mere 0.2 per cent of the fentanyl seized by the U.S. at its land borders in the last fiscal year: a mere 19.5 kilograms at the northern border,versus 9,571 kilograms on the southern side.
Canadian officials have been making this point repeatedly. Sources say Trudeau pointed it out to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and Canadian officials have noted this in media interviews.
Several experts speaking at a Washington conference on fentanyl last week said they're absolutely right.
But there's an asterisk: "Canada does have, however, serious problems with organized crime," Vanda Felbab-Brown told CBC News. She hosted an event on the North American fentanyl crisis at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday.
An aerial view of the site in Falkland, B.C., which police say was home to the largest and most sophisticated illicit drug production operation ever seen in Canada. (RCMP)
What new laws?Even there, Asher said, Canadians may be downplaying the country's growing role in the actual production and export of fentanyl.
A briefing note by Health Canada, obtained by CBC News, said criminal groups now have an excess supply and may be starting to sell it overseas.
This is before a massive bust of a so-called superlab in B.C. this fall. Authorities said they found enough fentanyl and ingredients there to produce over 95 million doses. That, Asher noted, is the equivalent of almost three times the population of Canada, and speaks to a growing export operation.
WATCH | Superlab drugs and materials worth nearly half a billion dollars:
RCMP bust drug ‘superlab,’ seize $485M in fentanyl and meth
B.C. RCMP say officers have taken down Canada’s ‘largest, most sophisticated drug superlab.’ Police seized drugs and drug materials worth almost half a billion dollars.
So what does he hope to see in Canada?
A racketeering law that's a bit closer the U.S.'s RICO statute. Sanctions for banks involved in money laundering similar to Section 311 of the U.S. Patriot Act, which Asher said he was involved in drafting. Better use of intelligence in Canadian criminal cases — an old, complicated issue.
And he's calling for the revocation of student visas, including in the U.S., for any international student depositing dirty money in a bank, something he's said happens.
"I am not a blame-Canada guy. Canada's a great country. I'm a big fan of Canadian law enforcement. The RCMP has been a great partner," he said.
"[But] we continuously have run into roadblocks when we work together. They know so much. And they confess they can do so little, given the legal limitations."
It's fixable, he says. He's certain that if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were to pass more aggressive border legislation, it'd help the country's relations with Trump.
"I don't think President Trump harbours ill will toward Canada. I think he just feels that the deal is unfair."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Panetta
Alexander Panetta is a Washington-based correspondent for CBC News who has covered American politics and Canada-U.S. issues since 2013. He previously worked in Ottawa, Quebec City and internationally, reporting on politics, conflict, disaster and the Montreal Expos. |
