Fentanyl seizures are up at the U.S. northern border — but Canada is still a very small player

CBC

5 hours ago

The latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows an uptick in the amount of fentanyl seized near the American northern border with Canada — but the quantities intercepted remain a tiny fraction of what's coming from Mexico.
The figures show U.S. border guards hauled in a relatively miniscule amount of the deadly drug in the first few months of the 2024-25 fiscal year — often reporting 0.5 kilograms or less seized — before a jump in April and May, when officials captured six and 14 kilograms, respectively, near the Canadian boundary.
Those busts mean more fentanyl has been seized along the northern border so far this year than in all of 2023-24. Between October 2024 and May, the U.S. has captured 26 kilograms compared to the 19.5 kilograms taken over the 12 previous months.
At the U.S. southwestern border with Mexico, by comparison, officials have so far seized some 3,700 kilograms of fentanyl this fiscal year — enough product to potentially kill hundreds of thousands of drug users and easily dwarfing what officials uncovered coming from Canada.
A CBP spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The border data does not offer specifics on how or where the fentanyl was seized, or why there was a notable uptick near the northern boundary in the last two months. What is known is that there were seven "seizure events" in April and five in May.
In an interview with CBC News, Canada's fentanyl czar, Kevin Brosseau, said he's concerned about the Americans taking in more of the drug, saying a single gram captured anywhere near the border is too much.
Brosseau said it's possible that, with U.S. President Donald Trump's focus on the southern border, some criminal elements may be turning to Canada.
"If additional pressure is put on one side, they'll look to go somewhere else," Brosseau said of the cartels that move these drugs.
"We've got to be inhospitable," he said, promising to continue an aggressive approach to intercepting drugs and those that traffic them. Prime Minister Mark Carney's government recently introduced legislation that would help do just that.
"We're really focused on closing them off," Brosseau said of drug-toting criminals. "Anything going south from Canada ought to be stopped."
While troubled by the slight uptick in fentanyl seizures, Brosseau said he took some comfort from a new report by the Manhattan Institute, a U.S.-based think-tank, that shows Canada has not been the main supplier of fentanyl to the States — far from it.
From 2013 to 2024, 99 per cent of pills and 97 per cent of powder-form fentanyl captured in large seizures at U.S. land borders came from Mexico, researchers found — with "large" being defined as over a kilogram of powder or more than 1,000 pills, quantities indicative of wholesale trafficking.
"The greater source of this problem for the U.S. is Mexico and this is one more study that confirms that," Brosseau said.
"It replicates what we've been saying from the get-go," he said.
The report found the pattern of Mexico being an outsized source of fentanyl for the U.S. has held up in recent years — despite Trump's claims that the drug is "pouring in" from Canada and justifies punitive tariffs. Carney is locked in negotiations to get Trump's fentanyl-related border tariffs, and the other ones, lifted by month's end.
In 2023-24, U.S. counties on the border with Mexico, which make up 2.35 per cent of the American population, accounted for about 40 per cent of large fentanyl seizures, researchers found.
The counties along the border with Canada, meanwhile, which hold 3.1 per cent of the U.S. population, accounted for less than 2.5 per cent of large seizures.
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In an interview with CBC News, Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College in Pittsburgh and a co-author of that research report, said "the stuff we seize at the northern border is a very small share" of the U.S. supply.
"Does any fentanyl cross from Canada to the United States? Sure. Some amount of drugs crosses the border between any two countries in the world. The real question is where is the bulk of it coming from? And it's not from Canada," he said.
While Trump and his officials point to an uptick in fentanyl seizures at the northern border, Caulkins said there's a "gigantic increase in the percentage because it is starting from an extremely low base."
In 2023-24, for example, CBP captured less than a kilogram, before taking in about 19.5 kilograms the next year. That works out to a roughly 1,850 per cent increase — an eye-popping figure that obscures how little is really being seized.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem raised those percentage increases during a recent visit to Michigan, where she said former prime minister Justin Trudeau was a "train wreck" and Trump and his team "are not letting down our guard."
While the trafficking figures are comparatively small, that doesn't mean Canada is a fentanyl-free zone, Caulkins said.
After all, more than 52,000 apparent opioid toxicity deaths were reported between January 2016 and December 2024 in Canada, according to federal data. In 2024, 74 per cent of those deaths involved fentanyl.
Late last year, police in B.C. busted a so-called drug "super lab" that authorities believe was producing fentanyl for both the domestic and U.S. markets. Federal investigators seized 54 kilograms of fentanyl.
"For both Canada and the United States, the scale of death is just astonishing. I don't want to make it sound like the implication of this is, 'Hey, just relax," Caulkins said.
"But the movement between our two borders is really not the important story. We are alike in suffering from this fentanyl problem that neither of us are causing."
Caulkins said Canada and the U.S. would be well served by working even more closely together to try and crack down on fentanyl, saying an antagonistic approach is counterproductive.
"If you really care about controlling your border, the most important thing to do is work in a co-operative way with the country that's on the other side," he said.
That's what Brosseau is trying to do.
Brosseau said that in his five months on the job, he's helped foster more intelligence-sharing between the two countries, which has helped lead to more seizures here.
Just last month, Ontario Provincial Police reported recent law enforcement work resulted in the seizure of some 43.5 kilograms of fentanyl, equivalent to roughly 435,000 potentially lethal street-level doses.
"Seemingly every week there's another significant bust. I think that speaks to the fact that there's a greater intensity to the effort," Brosseau said.
And the czar said he speaks every working day to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, which reports directly to Trump, and the Americans there have shown "deep appreciation and recognition" of Canada's efforts to get a handle on fentanyl.
"Canada is on it. We're doing our part to be a good neighbour," he said.