Ottawa’s newly appointed “fentanyl czar” told U.S. officials in Ottawa he has no authority to influence Canadian federal police or border agencies, according to an official with knowledge of the relevant meetings. For U.S. enforcement experts, the admission underlined what they describe as the emptiness of Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney’s high-profile pledges to crack down on transnational fentanyl production and trafficking by Chinese and Mexican syndicates — and underscored systemic failures in Canada’s response to cartels exploiting the nation’s ports, borders, and infrastructure.
Ottawa’s response this year to President Donald Trump’s threat of fentanyl interdiction tariffs — including the high-profile czar position, promises to join cross-border gang task forces, and pledges to strengthen border security — has been described by U.S. and Canadian enforcement sources as largely performative, lacking both real authority and the baseline cooperation with U.S. counterparts needed to address Canada’s vulnerabilities.
The Trudeau government named Kevin Brosseau as Canada’s first fentanyl czar in February, responding to Trump’s warning of sweeping tariffs. According to U.S. government sources, Brosseau soon met officials from the State Department, Homeland Security Investigations, and the DEA. While cordial, the meetings left American counterparts with the perception that Brosseau had no real authority and no capacity to implement improvements.
“He said, ‘Listen, I don’t tell the RCMP what to do. I listen to what RCMP, CBSA, and other police services have to say, but I have no authority to direct them or ask them to do anything,’” one U.S. source recalled.
“There’s been nothing that’s come out of that office since they established it,” the source added. “No strategic plan. I don’t even know if he’s relevant anymore. It was just another Trudeau–NDP-type program that sounded good when they announced it, but in the end it didn’t do anything.”
Brosseau’s appointment followed Trudeau’s February 3 post to X: “I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan — reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl,” Trudeau wrote. “In addition, Canada is making new commitments to appoint a Fentanyl Czar, we will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24/7 eyes on the border, launch a Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.”
Yet multiple sources told The Bureau these moves produced little substance, reinforcing a long-standing U.S. view that Ottawa talks about cooperation but does not deliver.
For U.S. officials, the core problems between Washington and Ottawa involve weak laws, porous borders, and information-sharing impediments. Canadian officials often cite the Supreme Court’s Stinchcombe ruling — which requires extensive disclosure of evidence to the defense — as a barrier to intelligence-driven cases. U.S. experts argue these rules, combined with political sensitivities, prevent Canadian agencies from targeting major transnational drug traffickers even when there is clear investigative intelligence, including wiretap material.
Meetings followed Trump’s threats and Trudeau’s announcement, a source said, including with Ontario Premier Doug Ford, on efforts to create a new CBSA-RCMP border interdiction team.
But U.S. sources said seizures credited to the effort — such as the February 2025 CBSA announcement of six seizures amounting to 56.1 grams of fentanyl, including 20 fentanyl pills and 23 grams of suspected fentanyl from two U.S. citizens crossing at the Windsor-Detroit Tunnel — were rooted in American intelligence sharing, with little or no reciprocation from Ottawa.
“It’s the same thing with the Mounties saying they’re reallocating billions to border security,” a U.S. government source said. “Well, you’re not really. You’re buying all this stuff, but you’re not impacting the border. You’re telling citizens, ‘We’re serious, we’re devoting resources,’ but you’re not changing anything.”
The fallout of this lack of coordination, and Ottawa’s credibility gap, is best illustrated in the Falkland, B.C., superlab case. As The Bureau reported Friday, according to multiple U.S. officials, Canada’s federal police refused to investigate or cooperate with the DEA on precursor shipments from China to Vancouver in 2022. More than a year later — only after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned a businessman and his Health Canada–licensed lab in British Columbia — did the RCMP open a siloed probe. Even then, the force declined to share information with the DEA.
In an interview, Derek Maltz, DEA Acting Administrator in 2025, called the case a “major disaster.” “Over the years, we’ve had historical issues with the RCMP not sharing properly, and most recently there was a major disaster that happened on that big lab in British Columbia,” Maltz said.
Maltz, like others interviewed by The Bureau, pointed to “archaic” Canadian laws. “Canada obviously has very porous borders. They have very soft-on-crime policies. That’s not me being critical, that’s just a fact,” Maltz said. “So they have to update, because these are not criminals from the ’70s and the ’60s. These criminals are killing [North Americans] at record levels.”
In the same interview, Maltz said Ottawa’s supposed efforts to take part in the cross-border task force promised by Trudeau had been problematic. “One thing that’s happening in America — which hasn’t happened in the last 20 years, in my firsthand experience — is we’re now implementing a whole-of-government approach,” Maltz said, describing Washington’s efforts to block synthetic narcotics stemming from Chinese factories and distributed by Mexican cartels. “We’re using the Homeland Security task forces. All the agencies are going to be there working together and going after these major transnational crime threats together. So again, I told the RCMP when they visited me at DEA, I said: put your best and brightest and most innovative people in the U.S. center, and then let’s start really going after it together and sharing intelligence together. But every time we’ve done that, there’s always an obstacle why it can’t be done.”
These assertions, underscoring Ottawa’s lack of substantive cooperation, directly undercut Carney’s August 1 statement on X defending Canada’s record.
“The United States has justified its most recent trade action on the basis of the cross-border flow of fentanyl, despite the fact that Canada accounts for only 1% of U.S. fentanyl imports and has been working intensively to further reduce these volumes,” Carney wrote. “Canada’s government is making historic investments in border security to arrest drug traffickers, take down transnational gangs, and end migrant smuggling. These include thousands of new law enforcement and border security officers, aerial surveillance, intelligence and security operations, and the strongest border legislation in our history. We will continue working with the United States to stop the scourge of fentanyl and save lives in both our countries.”
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