Canada's Porous Border Needs the Untouchables
Border Czar a Joke
Welcome to the new smart, savvy and contrarian investors to my substack. Hope everyone had a great long weekend.
Canadians should prepare for a tough trade war with the U.S. because I doubt the Trudeau/Carney government is serious about fixing the drug problem at the border. Higher inflation, job losses, lower C$ and a still weaker economy. They have their own agenda and are most likely compromised by the China Drug Cartels. I will save that for another newsletter, but if Canada was serious on fixing the border drug problem they would fix two easy things that are huge and obvious problems.
The fentanyl export loophole
There is no border inspections or Customs for Canadians to send packages with a value of $800 or less into the U.S. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates that $54.5 billion worth of goods entered the U.S. in 2023 using the exemption.
A few pounds of fentynal could be mailed in a small package and said to be a value of less than $800 when it's street values is over $50,000.
As Sean Connery said in The Untouchables movie -“Mr. Ness, everyone knows where the booze is. It's not a matter of finding it, no one will cross the pond is all".
The Untouchables go on to make a huge raid of illegal alcohol during prohibition at the U.S. Post Office. And then as now, a lot of illegal shipments were coming from Canada.
The Trudeau government will not cross the pond and inspect these packages so Trump is crossing the pond. Part of Trump's executive order is to remove the de minimis $800 exemption on cross border goods so they would not only be subject to formal entry customs on these packages but also the 25% tariffs. This would also apply to travelers and vacationers who leave or enter the U.S. at border crossings and other points of entry like airports. Trudeau will probably implement recipricol tariffs on Canadians bringing in U.S. goods in what is called retaliation.
A practical solution would be if both sides inspected 10% to 20% of these packages and imposed tough penalties, they would catch plenty and have a deterrent. There is no talk from Trudeau on this problem, just harping retaliation with his own tariffs.
Implement border police and inspections at sea ports
The 2nd thing easy to do and plug a huge hole in the Canadian border is bring in border police at seaports, especially Vancouver that has none. A local mayor near Vancouver tried to do it and it was voted down. No doubt China Drug Lords have penetrated local governments as well as provincial and federal.
The use of large-scale drive-through X-ray systems is easy to use technology that provides inspection of large trucks and sea containers.
The U.S. has 123 large-scale drive-through X-ray systems like this shown below at ports of entry. Canada has zero.
“We have a multi-layered strategy for tackling the fentanyl and synthetic opioid issue,” said Joe Draganac, director of U.S. CBP’s Fentanyl Campaign Directorate established under CBP’s new Strategy to Combat Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Drugs.
“International collaboration is key,” he explained, citing one example. “With the air cargo, much of it is transiting through South Korea, so we really focus on working with the Korean government and how we can collaborate together to disrupt these movements.”.
Unfortunately the Trudeau government and provinces seem focused on retaliation instead of collaboration. It may be their far left thinking makes it most important to fight Trump?
In Jan . 2025 Canada annouces intention to launch and set up the first pre clearance port of entry. The US already has 8 in Canadian airports. The Trump administration has zero respect for the Trudeau government as did the Biden administration and they want action, not announcements. In a high level 2023 meeting with Canada and Anthony Blinken of the Biden administration. At that meeting Blinken, doubts that incremental measures will suffice.
He argued that only bold legislative change, coupled with a willingness to challenge entrenched legal barriers, can dispel the U.S. government’s unease over Canada’s approach. “Secretary Blinken specifically noted the lack of a RICO-style law in Canada,” West said (a mayor at the meeting). “He talked about how, in the United States, that law had been used to take down large portions of the mafia. Then he looked at us—one of America’s closest allies—and saw a very concerning weak link.”
Canada's border patrol is mostly policing it's own citizens on the amount of imports they are bringing into the country. Another reason they don't find many illicit drugs or firearms.
For 2024 Canada border patrol claimed in a news release that they seized over 25,600 kg of illegal drugs (both inbound and outbound). We also intercepted over 547,000 kg of undeclared tobacco preventing millions of dollars in revenue evasion. So they stopped about 20 times more tobacco than drugs and over 100 times more than fentanyl.
Of our total illegal drug seizures, we stopped:
4.9 kg of fentanyl, an increase of 775% from the same period in 2023, of which 4.1 kg was intercepted outbound before it could be smuggled towards the Netherlands. Canada is committed to working with international partners to address the global fentanyl crisis.
3,955 kg of cocaine, an increase of 168% from the same period in 2023
37 kg of heroin
21,457 kg of other drugs, narcotics and precursor chemicals
237 kg of other opioids (including opium, methadone, morphine and morphine base)
New Fentanyl Czar a Joke
The federal government has announced that former RCMP deputy commissioner and national security adviser to the prime minister Kevin Brosseau will serve as the new fentanyl czar, a position that was created as part of a deal to stave off U.S. tariffs.
This guy definitely has the qualifications but he comes from Trudeau's inner circle. Canadians might take this guy as a serious appointment but the Trump administration will probably just see him as part of Trudeau's inner circle and part of his damaging open border policy. Just a joke.
Remember last November Trudeau announced they would reduce immigration and non permanent residents, and I commented lets see what actually happens. Surprise, surprise a new report from financial services firm Desjardins found the numbers still increasing.
Desjardins estimated the number of new temporary resident permit holders decreased by 25 percent compared to the previous year in the last quarter of 2024. However, the overall total increased by nearly 40,000, resulting in approximately 100,000 more than the estimates provided by either Desjardins or the federal government. Annual permanent resident admissions likely increased by approximately 16,500 in 2024, the report authors wrote.
Trudeau has zero credibility around the world and certainly in the U.S. Nobody believes what he says except a lot of naive Canadians.
In one of Sam Cooper's recent reports at The Bureau he quoted one RCMP expert - “People have to be able to see and understand how bad it is. We are not even considered a serious partner, vis-à-vis Trump, at this point. Fentanyl coming from Canada to the USA isn’t something Trump is just throwing out there. He’s getting this information from top American law enforcement officials who know exactly how far Canada has fallen. And as a police officer who risked my life countless times alongside other brave men and women, I find it embarrassing that we’ve let our country get to this state.”
Conclusion
Trudeau told reporters on Feb. 12 that though just 1 percent of the fentanyl crossing into the United States comes from Canada, “we have a lot of work to do to show [the United States] that even if this is a very small problem, we are reducing it even further.” It does not help his narrative when U.S. Border in Seattle announces on Valentines Day they seized fentanyl at the border coming from Canada.
Trudeau must know better or maybe he believes his own BS? Either way the narrative that will be pushed is that fentanyl at the border is not much of a problem, it is Trump's unfair tariffs and we must fight back. Trudeau/Carney will implement their own retaliatory tariffs as the only solution and expand a trade war. Remember tariffs are just like a tax for government. Liberals love to tax and spend. This way they can cut, or down play their very unpopular carbon tax and can make up with new tax revenues from tariffs and blame it all on Trump.
It is amazing on this tariff fight narrative, rah rah Canada and raise your flag that Trudeau and the Liberals have taken a big jump up in the polls. I thought more Canadians learned a lesson from all the false government and public health propaganda on Covid, the shots and Covid response but sadly not enough.
Canada is headed for much tougher times simply at the expense of corrupt government wanting to push their own agenda. Canadians will be sorry they went along with this, but sadly it will be realized too late.
The U.S. with a ten times bigger economy and one that is much stronger can handle 25% tariffs way better than Canadians can with a relatively small economy and one that is already in the dumpster. It's a sad day as many Canadians are getting duped again. I will end with one more police expert quote out of Sam Cooper's report noted above.
“The border as it’s run now is—Homeland Security, they have no respect for CBSA, none,” the expert said. “CBSA were seen as tax collectors for picking on families coming across the border with two bottles of wine and not actually doing police seizures of proper amounts of drugs coming through the border. It was a longstanding joke that they were basically collecting taxes for a mom and dad driving back with two packs of cigarettes and too many six-packs of beer, while behind it, there’s a truck coming with 200, 300, 500 kilos of cocaine. It was just ridiculous. And that’s how Homeland Security and DEA saw our CBSA.”
Sadly this thing is going to play out a lot like the Covid fiasco and have severe effects on Canadian markets and economy. Because of this profound effect I will continue to cover the fiasco with the best factual and real data I can find. Trump's tariffs and disruptive immigration policy will also affect their markets and economy too.
Sam Cooper is an expert in this field long before it came to the limelight in the past couple months. He has connections and rapport with all the experts and those in the know because of his past investigations. I have started to reread his book again.
We will continue to do well with our precious metals investments as they are a hedge to falling fiat currencies and uncertainties in a global tariff and likely trade war. This is not only Canada but South America, Asia and Europe, it is just Canada has the most to lose because of our preferential treatment over the decades. I am afraid our government will screw this up for their own benefit.