Unlock the White Home Watch e-newsletter totally free
Your information to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Canada’s authorities is to bolster its funding in border safety after Donald Trump threatened to impose steep tariffs over unlawful immigration and drug smuggling throughout the US-Canada frontier.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met Canada’s provincial leaders late on Wednesday to agree a united response to the US president-elect’s pledge this week to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all merchandise from Mexico and Canada, which he mentioned would stay in place “till such time as medicine, particularly fentanyl, and all unlawful aliens cease this invasion of our nation”.
After the assembly with Trudeau, Canada’s public security minister Dominic LeBlanc mentioned: “We consider that there’s a circumstance the place we are able to make extra investments to reassure Canadians that all the measures vital are in place and can proceed to be in place”, though he declined to say how a lot extra cash the federal authorities would make accessible.
The US-Canada border is the longest on the earth, stretching practically 9,000km throughout land and water. Safety on land is gentle; there are few partitions or fences and in locations it’s marked by easy stone markers alongside residential streets. Whereas main highway crossing factors have checkpoints, the boundary is basically managed by cell patrols, leaving it susceptible to smugglers of migrants, medicine and weapons.
Washington’s incoming border tsar, Tom Homan, mentioned in a tv interview earlier this month that “Canada . . . can’t be a gateway to terrorists coming to the USA”. “It’s an excessive nationwide safety vulnerability on the northern border, and it’s one of many issues I’ll deal with,” he added.
The variety of migrants caught attempting to cross from Canada into the US jumped from 27,180 in 2021 to 198,929 in 2024 — an increase of virtually 600 per cent — in accordance with US Customs and Border Safety information.
Canada’s provincial leaders have criticised what they are saying is a failure by the federal government in Ottawa to prioritise border safety. Ontario premier Doug Ford on Wednesday mentioned he hoped the assembly with Trudeau can be “the beginning of a extra proactive strategy from the federal authorities” and would present it “takes the safety of our border critically . . . or threat the financial chaos of Trump tariffs”.
Some 8,500 frontline Canada Border Companies Company employees man the Canadian facet of the border and monitor the practically C$3.6bn (US$2.6bn) price of products and companies and about 400,000 individuals who cross annually. However their union says 2,000-3,000 extra border officers are wanted. “The union has been vocal in regards to the lack of employees on the border for years,” mentioned Customs and Immigration Union president Mark Weber.
Regardless of the criticism, Trump’s considerations about medicine getting into the US from Canada aren’t backed up by official information.
Canadian officers admit Mexican drug gangs have shifted their operations north because the US has tightened its southern border controls. However US border safety figures present brokers seized a mean of simply 800 grammes of fentanyl a month on the Canadian border between January 2022 to October 2024, in comparison with about 821kg of fentanyl a month on the Mexico border over the identical interval.
Canada has its personal fears over border safety. Trump has pledged to hold out mass deportations of undocumented migrants as soon as he takes workplace early subsequent yr and Canadian officers concern many might head north to keep away from being caught by US immigration officers.
Quebec’s premier, François Legault, who has been an outspoken critic of border safety, late on Wednesday mentioned: “You will need to safe the borders in each instructions. We don’t need to have a brand new wave of immigrants, however it’s additionally vital that Mr Trudeau tables a plan to reassure Mr Trump.”
