Although Canadian authorities often accuse Mexicans of trafficking fentanyl from their country to the United States, the arrest of these two Canadians with the shipment seems to indicate otherwise.
Ottawa/Mexico City, November 12 (However).– The Ontario Police seized a spectacular amount of fentanylthe largest in its history, in a raid in the province of Windsor. At the end of September, they reported, they recovered 46 kilograms after executing search warrants at different homes and vehicles in the southwestern border city of Ontario.
“He fentanyl seized was enough for approximately 460 thousand doses for sale on the street, an amount capable of ending the life of a moderately sized city,” said the Police in a statement. One of the alleged drug traffickers is 25 years old and from Windsor. The other is 29 years old and is from Vancouver, British Columbia.
Canadian authorities, and in particular Doug Ford, Prime Minister of Ontario since June 29, 2018, often accuse Mexicans of trafficking fentanyl from their country to the United States (US), something they have never been able to demonstrate with figures. This shipment seems to confirm their misinformation.
The two Canadians arrested with this shipment face a long list of drug-related charges and are due to appear in court again on December 8 in Windsor.
Last November, in the midst of the political crisis over Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs, the Premier of Ontario considered it an “insult” that the then President-elect of the United States compared his country to Mexico. “That’s the most insulting thing I’ve ever heard from our (American) friends.” He was absolutely right. In reality, Canada was then and is today the global capital of fentanyl, a substance that produces, distributes and consumes. The Telegraphone of the oldest newspapers in England, then reviewed how decriminalization turned Vancouver, the main city in the province of British Columbia, “into the fentanyl capital of the world.”
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revealed in its most recent report how in 2022 Canada recorded 7,500 opioid deaths (or 19.6 per 100,000 inhabitants), almost three times more than in 2016, when national monitoring of these deaths began. The Economist published on June 27 how in 2012, fentanyl was involved in only five percent of overdose deaths. In 2023, that figure was 85 percent.
“The annual body count has increased tenfold in the same period. A record 2,511 people died from overdoses in 2023 across the province of British Columbia, most of them in and around Vancouver, its largest city,” he said.
“British Columbia’s fatal overdose rate is more than double Canada’s overall rate, and six times the figure in England and Wales (although still lower than the hardest-hit parts of the United States). Overdoses are now the leading cause of death for British Columbians aged 10 to 59, claiming more lives each year than murders, suicides, accidents and natural diseases combined,” the British publication reported.
British Columbia became the first province in Canada to decriminalize the use of hard drugs as part of its efforts to address a deadly opioid crisis. However, in the face of criticism of the program, last May the request submitted by the government of the province of British Columbia to once again criminalize the use of illicit drugs in public spaces was approved.
When Trump won the Presidency, Canadian authorities located giant fentanyl drug laboratories in different parts of the country, especially in rural areas. On October 31, 2024, they found “the largest in history” in British Columbia. And then they announced another equally huge one in Vancouver.
Canada has serious fentanyl consumption problems too, like the United States. But these historic findings came when Trump threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs if Canada and Mexico did not control the flows of drugs and migrants to the United States.