LIVING IN SMUGGLERS' PARADISE

SAINT-ANICET, Que. - They thought they were settling into a quiet
life along the shores of the St. Lawrence east of Ottawa. Instead,
they're living in fear as tobacco and drug smugglers do whatever it
takes to make sure nothing stops them from getting their illicit
goods across the border. Authorities admit they can't stop the
smugglers by themselves, and are asking people to fight back. Ian
MacLeod Reports.

Three hours from Parliament Hill via the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve,
this pastoral corner of Quebec is descending into a version of
northwest Pakistan, with tribal outlaws and mobsters controlling much
of this remote borderland in defiance of the central authority.

If you think that is melodramatic, consider this:

On a recent visit by federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to
listen to the fears of property owners about tobacco and drug
smugglers hijacking the St. Lawrence River farming and cottage
communities of southwest Quebec, the talk turned to shotguns,
self-defence and possibly closing the international border crossing
upriver at Cornwall altogether.

"We're changing the laws on self-defence and your right to protect
your property," Toews told the gathering. "I'm not advocating that
people use (guns) but if there's a legitimate ."

The small group of summer cottagers, farmers and others gathered
around him nodded approvingly.

One, a highly-respected professional from Montreal who fears
retribution if named, told Toews how river smugglers burned down one
of his vacant cottages last winter.

Two suspected smugglers are still living in a cottage on his land.
When he called police one day to report a suspicious car parked
there, he was told: " 'You don't want to know who that is'.

"I've told them I want them out of there. I haven't sent them a
lawyer's letter as yet to tell them that their lease is terminated
(because) I'm afraid of the potential retribution."

Another time, a smuggler bloodied from an apparent gunshot wound
barged into the home of one of the cottager's relatives seeking sanctuary.

Some property owners have been offered instant cash for their land or
their silence.

A dairy farmer recounts how a neighbouring farmer close to the
Canada-U.S. border refused to allow his land to be used for the
clandestine pipeline and had his barn seriously vandalized. Diesel
fuel was poured into the gasoline-powered farm equipment of another.

Others find marijuana plants in their fields.

"They just take over the land," said the farmer, who also asked his
name be withheld.

The scope of the smuggling is impossible to accurately quantify,
though experts agree it generates hundreds of millions annually in
black-market profits. One Cornwall-area tobacco smuggling kingpin
arrested in 2006 was earning $250,000 a week, police said.

Dozens of organized crime groups big and small, from outlaw bikers
and Italian mobsters to Vietnamese and Chinese gangs, use the same
routes and infrastructure to move narcotics and illegal immigrants
south into the U.S.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates 13 metric tonnes
of high-grade Canadian hydroponic marijuana - a week - was funnelled
through Akwesasne in 2009.

In all, more than $1 billion worth of the drug is believed to have
moved through Akwesasne between 1999 and 2009, much of it destined
for New York City, though authorities have tracked the eastern
Canadian marijuana to 31 other states.

Authorities say Canadian smugglers then buy or trade their premium
pot for Mexican cocaine in California or guns or tobacco and smuggle
it back through Akwesasne and onto the streets of Montreal, Toronto
and other cities.

The southward flow of Quebec and Ontario marijuana is now so acute,
the U.S. federal government recently declared the four upper counties
of New York state that border the St. Lawrence and southwest Quebec
as high crime zones eligible for increased police funding and
counternarcotics measures.

In the Quebec sector, RCMP and Surete du Quebec officers went
door-to-door this spring to thousands of homes and cottages, asking
residents to report suspicious activities. At each, they left a
plastic bag of anti-smuggling pamphlets and brochures, including tips
to identify and classify suspicious marine traffic and low-flying small planes.

But like the great river on which it flourishes, the flow of
contraband remains incessant.

Summer nights are filled with the roar of super-charged marine
engines capable of sprinting 45 kilometres from the eastern edge of
Akwesasne to Valleyfield in 11 minutes.

In winter, "once the sun goes down here on the river after the water
is frozen, you'll have 70, 80, 90 Ski-Doos running between 7 p.m. and
midnight. It's basically a highway," the burnt-out cottager told Toews.

With local RCMP and the Surete already stretched thin, "we don't have
any more protection than somebody on the frontier of Pakistan," he
said. "There's an undercurrent of real violent people who will do
anything they can to protect this multimillion-slash-billion dollar
industry. In many ways, they run this sector."

Toews tried to reassure him and the others.

"The prime minister has made it clear that he wants this border issue
dealt with because it impacts on the broader security perimeter
around North America," he said.

"He's personally aware of the situation."

In an interview, Toews said senior Canadian and U.S. homeland
security officials are exploring a joint customs post at Massena, New
York, at the eastern entrance to Akwesasne/St. Regis.

"There's only two alternatives, we either shut down the border there
completely (at Cornwall) or it goes to Massena," he said.

Americans "are in exactly the same position that we are. They are
very concerned

and it's not simply cigarettes, it's much more extensive than that
and it spills into the whole area of (border) security, which the
Americans are very concerned about.

"The solution is to work closely to share not only information but
also resources and that's one of the things were looking at Massena."

Chronic, low-grade cross-border smuggling, from cattle to booze, has
existed in this area for decades, yet never at the extremes
experienced around Cornwall, 32 kilometres west.

But in 2009, after Akwesasne residents on the Canadian side of the
international reserve protested the arming of federal border guards
on native territory, the Canada Border Services Agency moved its
Cornwall Port of Entry off the Cornwall Island portion of the reserve
to the north span of the bridge.

With that, smugglers couldn't easily bypass the crossing point and
found their primary overland route between Canada and the United
States far riskier to navigate.

The problem compounded a year later when the RCMP-led Cornwall
Regional Task Force anti-smuggling unit was established with Ontario
Provincial Police, Cornwall police, the CBSA and Ontario Ministry of Revenue.

The same year the RCMP, with $7.4 million in federal funding from
Toews, put together a St. Lawrence Valley combined forces organized
crime investigative team operating from Cornwall.

All that new heat convinced smugglers to turn their speed boats and
high-revving snowmobiles downriver to the south shore stretch between
Dundee, Que., and Valleyfield, and along the north shore east of
Cornwall, from Glen Walter, Ont., to Riviere Beaudette, Que. Others
moved their activities west of Cornwall toward Long Sault.

But where smugglers once relied mainly on trucks and cars to sneak
contraband around the old border crossing, now they needed hidden
places to dock their craft and unload their winter sleds.

Shoreline property owners on both sides of the river east of Cornwall
have witnessed the river runners, some heavily-armed against rival
gangs, coming ashore on their land in the middle of the night and
transferring the illicit goods to waiting cars and trucks.