LANSDOWNE, Ontario — David McGuinty, Canada’s minister of public safety, shielded his eyes from a spray of snow kicked up by a Black Hawk helicopter as it landed outside this Canadian port of entry the morning of Feb. 12. He was flanked by security officials, including Kevin Brosseau, the country’s newly named “fentanyl czar,” as well as a phalanx of Canadian and American journalists.
They had traveled to this outpost in the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence River along the border with New York to see how Canadian forces were tightening the vast and porous international boundary — the longest in the world, nearly 4,000 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But the intended audience for the exercise seemed to be President Trump. Faced with the prospect of broad-based tariffs and inflammatory talk of annexation, Canadian officials are eager to demonstrate they take seriously the president’s concerns about the northern border and are doing what they can to respond.
“What we’re doing here today is what we’ll be doing tomorrow, what we did yesterday, which is to continue to strengthen our border,” McGuinty told the crowd. “We need to do this in part because our largest ally, our neighbor, our largest trading partner, has indicated some concerns. And so we are investing, both for Canadians and for the relationship we have with our most trusted ally.”
Canadian officials have been on edge since November, when Trump, then president-elect, began threatening to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they failed to crack down on fentanyl trafficking and illegal immigration into the United States.
Though the volume of both drugs and people crossing the northern border is relatively limited, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government nevertheless in December unveiled nearly $1 billion in additional security measures, including a fleet of drones, helicopters, and mobile surveillance towers, to monitor the border.
Evidently, that wasn’t enough. Earlier in February, Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on most Canadian and Mexican goods, save Canadian energy imports, which would be hit with a 10 percent levy. After last-minute negotiations with both countries, he issued a 30-day reprieve — but only after Trudeau promised to appoint a fentanyl czar, designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations, and launch a new joint strike force with the United States to crack down on fentanyl smuggling, organized crime, and money laundering.
Canada is the United States’ largest trading partner, with both countries importing more than $300 billion in goods from the other. Every day, tens of thousands of tractor-trailers and railcars cross the northern border, carrying everything from timber to petroleum to cars.
Standing beside McGuinty at the press conference last Wednesday, Brosseau said his appointment as czar was “a clear demonstration of how seriously Canada is taking the fentanyl crisis in this country and how important our relationship is with our American counterparts.”
Though it was his first day in a newly created job, Brosseau — a former police commander and deputy national security adviser to Trudeau — said his mandate was clear.
“I’m hoping to be able to give an intensity to the work being carried out by thousands of men and women in this country and the United States, trying to deal with the real public safety and national security crisis that is fentanyl,” which Canadian officials say contributes to four out of five opioid deaths in their country.
The scope of the problem
To the extent there’s a border problem to solve, it is centered here, in what US officials refer to as the Swanton Sector. The 295-mile section of the international boundary stretches from Lake Ontario to Maine, including the entirety of New Hampshire’s and Vermont’s borders with Canada, as well as a portion of New York’s.
Illegal crossings from Canada into the United States in the Swanton Sector spiked: Apprehensions by US border patrol rose from 2,076 in 2022 to a record 18,633 last year — an increase of nearly 800 percent over just two years. After a peak last summer, monthly apprehensions began to decline.
Though the Swanton Sector makes up just 5 percent of the international boundary, it accounted for more than 80 percent of apprehensions along the Canadian border last year by the United States — likely due to its proximity to major cities and highway networks, as well as its comparatively forgiving geography.
But critics of Trump’s aggressive stance toward Canada point out the challenges along the northern border pale in comparison to those along the southern border. Last year, more than 1 million people were apprehended near the Mexican border, according to Customs and Border Protection data — some 50 times as many as in the north.
And while a report in January from the Canadian government’s financial intelligence agency describes increasing domestic production of fentanyl — often by organized crime groups using chemicals from China— the country does not appear to be a major source of American synthetic opioids.
According to Customs and Border Protection data, US officials seized just 49 pounds of fentanyl along the Canadian border last year, compared with 20,600 pounds along the Mexican border.
Drugs and people are, indeed, illegally crossing the northern border, according to Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University — noting the illicit traffic goes in both directions.
But “the reaction is completely out of proportion with the scale of the challenges,” Trautman said.
Whatever benefits might be realized from enhanced border security may come at the cost of a relationship that has benefited the economies and security of both nations for a century and a half, Trautman said.
“The damage is being done, not only in that the US is strong-arming and bullying Canada, but that we’re not going about this at all in a collaborative way,” she said. “Now that the border has been politicized, it’s going to be really hard to walk that back.”
‘Border theatre’
After the Black Hawk landed at the Lansdowne Port of Entry, Canadian customs and border officials whisked McGuinty and Brosseau through the facility, showing off seized weapons and vehicles and tools to intercept smuggled goods. Roughly a dozen journalists, including a crew from Fox News, followed closely behind.
The facility sits on an island in the St. Lawrence River, which forms the international boundary for close to 90 miles. Due to the treacherous nature of the water crossing, most illegal migration in the Swanton Sector takes place further east, from Malone, N.Y., through Vermont, where foot travel is possible, albeit dangerous in winter.
Craig Kennedy, the Lansdowne chief of operations for the Canadian border services agency, showed the minister and fentanyl czar a black Honda CRV his officers had seized after its operator exhibited suspicious behavior. Inside, they’d found a secret compartment hiding a small quantity of fentanyl and a gas mask.
The car and the drugs, Kennedy noted, had been traveling north — from the United States to Canada. The station also regularly intercepts American firearms, which Canadian officials say fuel crime in the country.
Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur has previously characterized Canada’s billion-dollar border security investment as “some border theatre to stop an almost non-existent cross-border problem.”
Daniel Béland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at Montreal’s McGill University, also views his country’s new posture skeptically.
“It’s not for a Canadian audience,” he said. “It’s for Donald Trump and the people in the White House.”
Even the title “fentanyl czar” was telling, according to Béland. “It’s not the language we normally use in Canada,” he said. “It’s used to appease Trump — to speak a language he understands.”
A Canadian journalist asked McGuinty why the government had embraced such a distinctly American moniker. He responded, “The focus here is on demonstrating the level of seriousness that we’re now putting forward through this appointment.”
The 51st state?
Though Trump has tied tariff threats against Canada and Mexico to drug smuggling and illegal migration, Béland said it has become increasingly clear the border is not the real issue.
Indeed, just before attending the Super Bowl on Feb. 9, Trump announced he would impose 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, including those from Canada and Mexico, starting in March. He followed that up on Feb. 13 with “reciprocal tariffs” on countries around the world, upending the international trade landscape.
The moves suggest that when the 30-day pause in broad-based tariffs on Canada and Mexico expires on March 4, Trump may announce he hasn’t seen sufficient progress on fentanyl and migration.
In an interview with the Globe at the Lansdowne port of entry, McGuinty said additional tariffs would be a mistake — and Canada would respond in kind.
“Look, who wins when both economies apply tariffs on each other’s economy?” McGuinty asked. “Because there will be a reaction. There will be a Canadian reaction to tariffs — as sure as day follows night. It’ll be targeted. It’ll be judicious. It’ll be commensurate. But there will be a reaction.”
He appeared particularly offended by Trump’s repeated suggestion Canada might become the 51st US state — a notion that, at first, Canadian officials shrugged off but which now appears to have rattled them.
“Look, I think the only response to that is to be perfectly clear: Canada is a sovereign state and independent country, and it will remain a sovereign state and independent country,” the minister said. “That’s just not up for discussion.”
Asked if he felt betrayed by America’s recent belligerence toward its closest ally, McGuinty said he was more surprised.
“We’re much stronger together,” he said. “Be careful. Be careful not to lose that strength. It’s choppy out there, and we need to stick together.”