Canada can do more to address the fentanyl crisis

It was a field day for the Canadian freight industry on Monday. Every truck in the country, stuffed to the gills with product, was racing the clock to the border. The few drivers still available commanded ridiculous prices — up to $12,000 higher than normal. At the stroke of midnight, the 25 percent blanket tariff kicked in. Trucks that had yet to make it across the border hit the brakes and turned around. The party was over; the coaches became pumpkins again, it was time for Cinderella to go home.

The whole week before, business owners, brokers and shippers were asking each other: “Have you seen anything official on this? Anything from the Canadian government?” They hadn’t. All they were going on was rumors in the press — yes, tariffs will go ahead, no they won’t, it’s delayed, it’s only on specific products — and then finally Trump’s own statement that “There is no room left for  negotiation with Canada and Mexico.” On Monday, the Canadian media was oddly quiet as the value-producing portion of the country went into a tailspin. Where was Trudeau? Busy in England, writing checks for Volodymyr Zelensky.

Canadians are struggling with the urge for transparency from our government. First we learn from foreigners — Trump, to be precise — that the fentanyl situation in our country is such that the United States views us as a significant threat to its security. It turns out that, unbeknownst to most Canadians, our country is playing host to some of the biggest fentanyl producers in the world (a “superlab” seized in British Columbia last October contained enough doses to kill every human in Canada twice over). The situation is pretty bad: shut down one lab, another pops up. The ingredients for fentanyl are not outlawed and are entering our ports in massive quantities. Our police force has been begging for more resources and apparently not getting them.

Tariffs aside, law-abiding Canadians don’t want fentanyl or cartels in our country: poisoning our young people, destroying our communities and threatening our security.

The Liberal government took some action after the first (postponed) blanket tariff announcement in early February. It purchased new equipment for the border, promised personnel reinforcements, a border czar to work with the US and a joint strike force to assist in taking our illegal drug operations on Canadian soil. This promise was enough to obtain a thirty-day delay on said tariffs. Canadians were relieved, thinking that both our economy and the criminal gangs destroying our country would be taken care of.

Then the government changed tack, filling the air with a haze of fake patriotism — fake, because most Canadians well know that the Liberal Party views Canada’s history as a thing of shame and Canada itself as a nation without identity. We experienced “Flag Day” from the government that kept the Canadian flag on Parliament at half-mast for five months; we marveled at the “Team Canada” approach to tariffs that tried to force Alberta to destroy its own economy with retaliation. And we lived through a smear campaign against Trump, intended to make Canadians believe that his administration’s demands on fentanyl and border security were in bad faith.

Are the Liberals hoping Canadians will be driven by fear to keep them in power, even as Trudeau steps down and allows the unelected Mark Carney to ascend? 

It is shameful for the Liberal Party to toy with Canada’s security, health and economy in this way. Liberal ministers, and now Justin Trudeau, are telling Canadians, with a straight face, they do not know what more Trump wants of us. In a business, a negotiator who said that he did not know what his counterpart wanted would speedily find himself replaced. 

The Liberals are supposed to be working for Canadians. Yet for some reason they’re unfireable. Trudeau ostensibly resigned, but his party has gamed the system and prorogued Parliament to avoid an election. In a few days, the Liberals will likely cut a deal with an opposing party that will allow them to cling to power.

Trudeau, who should be packing his boxes for his departure on March 12, is instead on national television calling Trump’s decision “dumb.” Better yet, claiming that the US president has no interest in fentanyl, and instead wants to destroy the Canadian economy in order to annex the country. Even if that were true, what a dopey thing to claim in front of the cameras at a sensitive moment! With diplomacy like this, is it any wonder the government “doesn’t know” what the US administration wants?

Canadians have heard a lot about the supposedly tiny quantities of fentanyl seized at the border. Why aren’t we hearing instead about shipments of fentanyl ingredients stopped at our ports, raw material impounded, charges laid? Or more lab busts, or which kingpins are running the gangs poisoning our teenagers and destroying our country, both in its internal security and its exterior relations? Why aren’t Canadian officials scrambling to explain?

The economy is important to us. Bailouts can’t fix the fallout from punitive tariffs from America. Livelihoods will be lost, businesses will go under, a lot of misery will ensue. This may not matter to Trudeau or Carney, but it does matter to normal Canadians.

If in spite of everything, we must sacrifice our economy and our national security on the altar of what’s good for the Liberal Party, could it please be over a slightly more noble cause than the preservation of the fentanyl industry?