TRAFFIC OUT OF CONTROL

Observations On Canada And Drug Trafficking

Forget igloos and bobsleds. Not-so-squeaky-clean Canada has a new
label to answer to: the United Nations World Drug Report 2009 shows
how the country is now a major global trafficking hub for synthetic
drugs such as Ecstasy and methamphetamine.

While it may come as a surprise to international observers, for local
law enforcers, who have uncovered more clandestine drug labs than the
country's market can hold, the label seems to fit the United States'
northern neighbour perfectly. Drug production has become such a
problem that it is now a top tactical priority for the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police.

In 2003, the government tried to stop the diversion of "precursor"
chemicals, such as ephedrine, from the legitimate chemical industry to
illicit drug producers. By that time it was too late, says Sergeant
Brent Hill, who leads the chemical diversion unit for the RCMP's
division in Ontario, Canada's most populated province.

"There's no one little neighbourhood that's responsible for the drug
trafficking stage here," Hill says. "They're everywhere."

In 2007, the UN reports, 12 per cent of "Ecstasy-group substances"
seized globally were found in Canada, the world's fourth-largest haul.
It has become the "primary source" of those drugs for North American
markets and increasingly serves other regions, too.

In recent years, synthetic drugs have swept through Canada, leaving a
trail of addicts in their wake. Meth produced by Asian crime
syndicates and outlaw motorcycle gangs is exported to the US, but also
Australia, where Canadian meth accounts for 83 per cent of their
seized imports, and Japan (62 per cent).

"Asian gangs in Canada as well as in south-east Asia are obviously
working together," says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the
UN Office on Drugs and Crime. This "is just part of the logic of
supply and demand - where the demand is and where the least
trafficking risks are".

Last October, police in Toronto announced they had dismantled an
international crime network responsible for more than CA$100m (UKP
52m) worth of drugs being shipped from the Toronto area. In April
2008, police raided what was believed to be the biggest meth operation
ever in the Greater Toronto area, then uncovered a large Ecstasy lab
in the same industrial complex. Statistics show that every 15 days for
the past six months, Ontario officials have been called to fires
involving marijuana-growing operations (grow-ops) or drug labs.

Before 2003, Europe was the leading source for Ecstasy in the US. That
trade was dismantled, but US and Canadian intelligence reports
indicate that Canada-based drug-trafficking organisations are
attempting to fill the supply void.

"These drugs are being packed up in bulk for export," Hill says. "We
do not have the base, the consumer base, to even remotely think about
consuming the illicit drugs that are being produced in this country."
Often considered "safe" by outsiders, Canada is not immune to the
problems any drug-laden country faces: guns, violence and human
trafficking.

When Hill started drug enforcement in 1990, Canada was not a major
source country for drugs. "We used to look for hard drugs in other
countries," he says. "I find it quite disturbing and absolutely
unacceptable that Canada is now a source country for criminal
enterprises operating on an international stage."