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EU elections turn ‘sharp right’ as immigration woes wreak havoc in Europe

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Plenary chamber of the European Parliament, Strasbourg,                                                                            FranceHadrian/Shutterstock

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

The recent European Union elections have resulted in significant gains for right wing and nationalist parties across major European countries in a signal move against widespread liberal immigration policies.

As predicted by the European Council on Foreign Relations in January, the EU elections have delivered a “sharp right turn” in the major nations of the European Union.

France saw the biggest gains for population friendly politics, with the right-wing National Rally party (RN) securing up to 33 percent of the vote: more than twice that of President Emmanuel Macron’s party. The map below shows in blue where nationalists won:

This 2022 map below shows the sharpness of the right turn in France in only two years:

Macron has announced a parliamentary election in France, to be held within 30 days.

In addition to the 30 seats won by the RN, led in the EU by Jordan Bardella, the Reconquest party of Marion Marechal took another five seats, leaving nationalists in France with 35 against 13 for the governing coalition. Marechal is the niece of the RN’s National Assembly leader Marine Le Pen.

A full summary of the results at the time of writing is available at Politico.

In Germany, Europe’s most solid anti-globalist party the Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second to the “conservative” Christian Democratic Union of Germany, its 15 seats and 16 percent of the vote putting it ahead of all the parties of the “traffic light” coalition of reds, greens, and yellow liberals. The ruling parties have long threatened to criminalize the AfD, as it continues to rise in the polls.

Geert Wilder’s PVV took the most seats in the Netherlands, winning six – with the anti-globalist Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB) winning a further two.

Hard right and nationalist parties came joint first in Belgium, with the Vlaams Belang returning from destruction by liberal lawfare of its immensely successful predecessor, the Vlaams Blok, to secure three seats.

Hungary’s staunchly pro-family and pro-nation ruling party Fidesz took almost 45 percent, its 10 seats edging out the second placed “conservative” Respect and Freedom Party on seven.

No change at the top of the EU

Yet the encouraging results for the reality-based community are tempered by two facts: the “conservative” faction of Ursula von der Leyen remains the largest, and the real power will still be divided among the ruling liberal establishment.

Von der Leyen is seeking a second term in office, and will likely work with red, green, and liberal globalists to get one.

In an early indication of the response to popular politics by the globalist elite, she has recently announced an enormous EU-wide censorship and propaganda effort. Known as the European Democracy Shield, its purpose is to shield the ruling elite she leads from democracy.

Real power in the EU, as in all “democracies,” is not in the Parliament – but lies with the permanent government at the top.

The real power is not in Parliament

The EU Parliament, whose new makeup now includes 157 seats for a divided right-nationalist faction, does not set EU policies.

The positions which decide EU policy are those on the European Commission and European Council. These, as before, will be allotted to members of the liberal consensus: the EPP group – led by the current EU Chief Commissioner Von der Leyen – remains the largest group with 186 seats and is “conservative” in name only. With 720 seats in total, 361 seats are required for a majority.

The EPP is expected to continue to collaborate with the reds, greens, and liberals to achieve this.

The liberal left has 135 seats – eleven fewer than the nationalists – but being a single group achieves second place as a result.

Added to this, the 79 seats of the liberals grants the globalist uniparty a majority in the EU Parliament.

Why are the nationalists divided?

The nationalist bloc – Identity and Democracy (ID) – is led by the largest party, the French RN. It suspended the AfD in May, as the French group sought to distance itself from continued attempts to discredit the AfD in the German press.

As a result, the AfD’s 15 seats join the 10 of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz in the non-aligned group. These 25 non-aligned seats for the politics of sanity are buttressed by the nationalist ID group of 58 seats, and the national-conservative ECR group with 73. A nominal total of 157 right-nationalists emerges, when the single seat from the Niki party of Greece is included.

General elections

Calls were made for a general election in France and in Germany following the decisive defeat of the ruling parties in the two major nations of Europe.

The French National Assembly has been dissolved by Macron, with a parliamentary election to follow within 30 days. With no presidential election scheduled until 2027 it is likely that Macron will remain the head of state over a Parliament firmly opposed to his personal platform which has delivered war, mass migration, and mounting left wing street violence.

In an early sign of rising political violence, left wing rioters marauded through Paris, smashing windows and burning cars in BordeauxToulouse, and other French cities following the results of the EU elections in France.

In Germany, the leader of the right-liberal Christian Democratic Union called for elections after his “conservative” party topped the polls, with the AfD in second place. The current Chancellor Olaf Scholz ruled out snap elections,  promising  instead to crack down on the AfD and propagandize his people into becoming more “modern” and “progressive.”

This was the prescription written for the ruling parties of the elite in the Council on Foreign Relations’ January warning, which said globalist power must be secured by information control:

Progressive policymakers need to start considering the trends that are driving these voting patterns and begin preparing narratives that can cut through them.

With this report in detail from Ireland, narrative control is compounded with another “conspiracy theory” in action: the replacement of the electorate by mass migration driven by war.

Irish elections ‘rigged’? Globalist replacement in action

Ireland has seen the most widespread popular revolt against what Irish natives call the “plantation” of huge volumes of male migrants into their nation.

Yet this popular upsurge was not reflected in local and EU elections, whose results are yet to be fully declared. The talk in Ireland is of migrants bussed to polling stations, and a media blackout on non-mainstream candidates for an Irish Ireland.

Dublin doctor Jane Holland, had this to say: “Imagine a government operated so poorly they had to import an entire nation of new voters because they lost the citizens’ vote.”

Holland sensibly suggested that “Voting should be reserved for citizens only.” Is she representative of a far-right conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement”?

Since 2004, non-Irish residents have been permitted to vote in elections in Ireland. An NGO campaigning for increased migrant rights to Irish homes and benefits has been “bussing” migrant voters to polling stations, ensuring they “vote correctly.”

Both the newspaper which reported this fact above, and the NGO bussing migrants to vote for migrants in elections – are funded by the European Union to do so.

The efforts of this NGO ensured “90 percent of asylum seekers turned out to vote.”

They celebrated many victories, including the first Nigerian woman to hold office in Galway.

Former Irish republican party Sinn Fein, now globalist, has been caught “farming votes from Ukrainians” in Ireland, with the promise of housing and accelerated citizenship in return.

Media ‘lockout’ of non-establishment candidates

Irish people simply do not hear of any alternative, according to critics, thanks to media censorship by omission.

“This is very clear after these elections. The national media worked in a deeply unethical manner to shield the general public from conservative perspectives in particular.”

So said independent journalist Eoin Lenihan, explaining, “There was a blanket lockout of non-leftist and non-establishment parties and independents.”

Lenihan’s statement on X (formerly Twitter) referenced another Irish user’s claim that “Irish journalists working for national media are toxic and a threat to democracy in Ireland. There was a blanket lockout of non-leftist and non-establishment parties and Independents.”

Despite regime efforts to suppress native Irish politics, four nationalists were elected to council positions in Dublin. Pro-life Patrick Quinlan won for the National Party, and Catholic Gavin Pepper is one “working class ordinary Irishman” who managed to break through the “lockout” to win a local council seat in Dublin.

“We’re up against the media” he said in his victory speech, “who don’t let us have a fair say.”

Attempted murder of Catholic nationalist

Another breakthrough came with the victory of pro-life Catholic Malachy Steenson, also in Dublin. Steenson, described as the “Plantation resistance leader,” recently addressed a crowd of 15,000 in a mass demonstration against the “plantation” of migrants into Ireland by its globalist government.

The Irish nationalist was attacked in his office last month by an “antifascist thug” who had arrived to kill him. Having announced his intention to assassinate Steenson to Irish police, he was followed to Steenson’s office, where he was arrested whilst attempting to carry out his threat.

Steenson is a strong critic of Israel’s actions in Gaza, and on his election denounced the Irish state broadcaster RTE as a “government propaganda organization.”

Steenson’s message was simple, stating that with his victory, “The revolution has begun.”

The view from Russia

With the mainstream media a component in the consolidation of globalist elite power, the perspective from a so-called enemy nation is perhaps the most sincere appraisal of the European situation.

When asked about the election results – and why EU policies will not change despite them – Chargé d’Affaires of the Russian Mission to the EU Kirill Logvinov said this on June 10 in an interview with Russian news outlet RIA:

The main reason is that protest sentiments have been ignored for a long time. The attempted violation of rights and freedoms during the pandemic, the failed migration policy, rising inflation, the deteriorating socio-economic situation, the urge to equate pro-European and pro-Ukrainian interests – the public grievances piled up and sooner or later had to find a ‘way out.’

And they found it in the European elections.

It is startling to see how the Russians view Europe: a managed democracy which is radicalizing its own populations against itself. Continuing, Logvinov stated:

In a number of countries, voters have virtually passed a vote of no confidence in the parties in power. Contrary to the rules of political life, however, ‘flawed’ national governments are not obliged to learn lessons immediately, which could lead to further radicalization of society.

The Russian diplomat concluded that the EU system will simply neutralize the will of its people:

Despite the voters’ simple demand for attention to their vital interests, the centrist majority will do its utmost to ‘dilute’ views and approaches that go against the political mainstream.

This is all the easier when MEPs are essentially unaccountable to their own electorate.

With a locked down media and the plantation of an imported voting bloc, Ireland is one nation to watch to see how long the politics of elite repression can continue under the European Union.

Business

‘Context Of Chemsex’: Biden-Harris Admin Dumps Millions Into Developing Drug-Fueled Gay Sex App

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Owen Klinsky

The Biden-Harris administration is spending millions funding a project to advise homosexual men on how to more safely engage in drug-fueled intercourse.

The University of Connecticut (UCONN) in July announced a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) for Assistant Professor Roman Shrestha to develop his app JomCare — “a smartphone-based just-in-time adaptive intervention aimed at improving access to HIV- and substance use-related harm reduction services for Malaysian GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex,” university news website UCONN Today reported. “Chemsex,” according to Northern Irish LGBTQ+ nonprofit the Rainbow Project, is the involvement of drug use in one’s sex life, and typically involves Methamphetamine (crystal meth), Mephedrone (meth), and GHB and GBL (G).

Examples of the app’s use-cases include providing a user who has reported injecting drugs with prompts about ordering an at-home HIV test kit and employing safe drug injection practices, UCONN Today reported. The app is also slated to provide same-day delivery of HIV prevention drug PrEP, HIV self-testing kits and even a mood tracker.

“In Malaysia, our research has indicated that harm reduction needs of GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex are not being adequately met,” Shrestha told UCONN Today. “Utilizing smartphone apps and other mHealth tools presents a promising and cost-effective approach to expand access to these services.”

Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia and is punishable by imprisonment, according to digital LGBTQ+ rights publication Equaldex. Drug use, including of cannabis, is illegal in Malaysia, and drug trafficking can be a capital offense.

The NIH disbursed $773,845 to Shrestha in July to conduct a 90-day trial testing the efficacy of JomCare among 482 chemsex-involved Malaysian gays. It also provided Shrestha with $191,417 in 2022 to “facilitate access to gender-affirming health care” for transgender women in the country.

“Gender-affirming care” is a euphemism used to describe a wide range of procedures, including sometimes irreversible hormone treatments that can lead to infertility as well as irreversible surgeries like mastectomies, phalloplasties and vaginoplasties.

Shrestha has a track record of researching mobile health (mHealth) initiatives for foreign homosexuals, co-authoring a 2024 study entitled, “Preferences for mHealth Intervention to Address Mental Health Challenges Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in Nepal.”

The proliferation of LGBT rights has been a “foreign policy priority” under the Biden-Harris administration, a State Department spokesperson previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation, with President Joe Biden instructing federal government department heads to “to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons.”

“Around the globe, including here at home, brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) activists are fighting for equal protection under the law, freedom from violence, and recognition of their fundamental human rights,” a 2021 White House memorandum states. “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle — speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values.”

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Nov. 12 that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would collaborate to establish a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with Musk claiming the agency would feature a leaderboard for the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.” Some DOGE cuts could come from LGBTQ+ programs, such as a grant from the United States Agency for International Development to perform sex changes in Guatemala and State Department funding for the showing of a play in North Macedonia entitled, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

“The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” Musk said at an event in Italy in December 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.”

Shrestha and the NIH did not respond to requests for comment. When reached for comment, a UCONN spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation that, “specific questions about the grant and the decision to award it to our faculty member should be directed to the NIH, since that’s the funding agency.”

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Crime

Mexican cartels are a direct threat to Canada’s public safety, and the future of North American trade

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From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By Gary J. Hale for Inside Policy

RCMP raided a fentanyl ‘superlab’ in Falkland, BC, with ties to a transnational criminal network that spans from Mexico to China.

On October 31, residents of Falkland, BC, were readying their children for a night of Halloween fun. Little did they know that their “quaint, quiet, and low-key little village” was about to make national headlines for all the wrong reasons.

On that day, RCMP announced that it had raided a fentanyl “superlab” of scary proportions near Falkland – one that police called the “largest and most sophisticated” drug operation in Canada. Officers seized nearly half-a-billion-dollars’ worth of illicit materials, including 54 kilograms of finished fentanyl, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, 35 kilograms of cocaine, 15 kilograms of MDMA, and six kilograms of cannabis” as well as AR-15-style guns, silencers, small explosive devices, body armour, and vast amounts of ammunition.

They also found massive quantities of “precursor chemicals” used to make the drugs. This strongly suggests that the superlab was tied into a transnational criminal network that spans from Mexico to China – one that uses North America’s transportation supply chains to spread its poisonous cargo across Canada and the United States.

The Canada-US-Mexico relationship is comprised of many interests, but the economic benefits of trade between the nations is one of the driving forces that keep these neighbours profitably engaged. The CUSMA trade agreement is the successor to NAFTA and is the strongest example globally of a successful economic co-operation treaty. It benefits all three signatories. This level of interdependence under CUSMA requires all parties to recognize their respective vulnerabilities and attempt to mitigate any threats, risks, or dangers to trade and to the overall relationship. What happens to one affects all the others.

The supply chain, and the transport infrastructure that supports it, affects the balance books of all three. While the supply chain is robust and currently experiences only occasional delays, the different types of transport that make up the supply chain – such as trucks, trains, and sea-going vessels – are extremely vulnerable to disruption or stoppages because of the unchecked violence and crime attributed to the activities of Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs). These cartels operate throughout Mexico, from the Pacific ports to the northern plains at the US-Mexico border.

The sophistication of the Falkland superlab strongly suggests connectivity to multi-national production, transportation, and distribution networks that likely include China (supply of raw products) and Mexico (clandestine laboratory expertise).

For most Canadians, Mexican cartels call to mind the stereotypical villains of TV and movie police dramas. But their power and influence is very real – as is the threat they pose to all three CUSMA nations.

Mexico’s cartels: a deadly and growing threat

Mexican cartels started as drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) in the 1960s. By the late 1990s they had evolved to become transnational enterprises as they expanded their business beyond locally produced drugs (originally marijuana and heroin) to include primarily Colombian cocaine that they transported through Mexico en route to the US and Canada.

Marijuana and the opium poppy are cultivated in Mexico and, in the case of weed, taken to market in raw form. While the cartels required some chemicals sourced from outside Mexico to extract opium from the poppy and convert it into heroin, the large-scale, multi-ton production of synthetic drugs like Methamphetamine and today Fentanyl expanded the demand for sources of precursor chemicals (where the chemical is slightly altered at the molecular level to become the drug) and essential chemicals (chemicals used to extract, process, or clean the drugs.)

The need to acquire cocaine and chemicals internationalized the cartels. Mexican TCO’s now operate on every continent. That presence involves all the critical stages of the criminal business cycle: production, transportation, distribution, and re-capitalization. Some of the money from drug proceeds flow south from Canada and the US back to Mexico to be retained as profits, while other funds are used to keep the enterprise well-funded and operational.

In Mexico, the scope of their activities is economy-wide; they now operate many lines of criminal business. Some directly affect Mexico’s economic security, such as petroleum theft, intellectual property theft (mainly pirated DVDs and CDs), adulterating drinking alcohol, and exploiting public utilities. Others are in “traditional” criminal markets, such as prostitution, extortion, kidnapping, weapons smuggling, migrant smuggling and human trafficking. Organized auto theft has also become another revenue stream.

Criminal Actors

The Cartel de Sinaloa (CDS or Sinaloa Cartel) and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) are the two principal TCO’s vying for territorial control of Mexico’s air, land, and maritime ports, as well as illegal crossing points. These points on the cartel map are known as “plazas,” and are often between formal ports of entry into the US. By controlling territories crucial for the inbound and outbound movement of drugs, precursors, people, and illegal proceeds, the cartels secretly transport illicit goods and people through commercial supply chains, thus subjecting the transportation segment of legitimate North American trade to the most risk.

That is giving the cartels the power to impair – and even control – the movement of Mexico’s legitimate trade. While largely kept out of the public domain, incidents of forced payment of criminal taxation fees, called “cuotas,” and other similar threats to international business operations are already occurring. For instance, cuotas are being imposed on the transnational business of exporting used cars from the US to Mexico. They’re also being forced on Mexican avocado and lime exporters before the cartels will allow their products to cross the border to the US and international markets. This has crippled that particular trade. Unfortunately, the Mexican government has been slow to react, and the extortion persists throughout Mexico. It is worth repeating – these entirely legitimate goods reach the market only after cartel conditions are met and bribes paid.

The free trade and soft border policies of the US of recent years have allowed cartel operatives to enter that country and work the drug trade with limited consequence. In May, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) published the National Drug Threat Assessment 2024, where it reported that the Jalisco and Sinaloa cartels operate in all 50 US states and are engaged in armed violence in American cities as they fight for market shares of the sales of Methamphetamine, Fentanyl, and other drugs sourced from Mexico.

The DEA’s findings should sound alarms in Canada. Canada and the US have similar trade and immigration policies, which allow the Mexican cartels to easily enter and control the wholesale component of the drug trade. The long-term effects of the drug trade are the billions of dollars gained that allow for the corruption of government officials. Canada should be on guard: Mexican drug cartels in Canada could begin to not only kill ordinary Canadians by knowingly selling them deadly drugs like Fentanyl – their operatives can also embed themselves in Canadian society, as they have in the US, leading to ordinary citizens on Canadian streets being victimized by the armed violence cartels regularly use to assert their position and power.

Organized crime and Mexican governance

Canada faces these threats directly, but the indirect ones that the cartels present to Mexican governance are no less consequential to Canada in the long term – and likely sooner. Illicit agreements between corrupt Mexican government officials and the cartels assure that the crime organizations retain control of territory and have freedom to operate.

That threat is becoming increasingly existential. Cartel fighters are well disciplined, well equipped and strong enough to challenge Mexico’s military, currently the government’s main tool to fight them. Should the TCOs come to dominate Mexican society or gain decisive influence over government policy, Mexico’s government risks being declared a narco-democracy and the US may come to see the cartels as a threat to national security. That in turn could lead to a US military intervention in Mexico – not an outcome desired by either side.

While that scenario may be considered extreme, it is not as far from reality as many may think. While in many respects the US-Mexico trading relationship remains unchanged, the overall political context has become testy – and could be a real flashpoint for the incoming Trump administration.

Political developments in Mexico have played a role. After his election in 2018, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly referred to his initials, AMLO) demonstrated a disdain for all things North American. This included frequent complaints of US interference or violation of Mexican sovereignty – complaints that were more about keeping Mexican government domestic actions out of the public eye. To retain a shroud of secrecy over government corruption, Mexico under Amlo started in 2022 to limit the activities and numbers of US federal law enforcement agencies operating there, particularly the FBI, DEA, ATF and ICE. These agencies formerly enjoyed a close relationship with the Mexican Federal Police – a force AMLO disbanded and replaced with the National Guard. The AMLO administration reduced the number of US assets and agents in Mexico, particularly singling out the DEA for the most punitive restrictions.

During his administration, AMLO placed the army and navy in charge of all ports of entry and gave them responsibility for all domestic public safety and security by subordinating the Guardia Nacional (GN), or National Guard, to the army. The GN, the only federal law enforcement agency, has been taken over by military officials who are sometimes corrupt and in league with the cartels.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in 2024, has continued AMLO’s organizational moves. Sheinbaum comes from the same political party and has so far extended carte blanche to the military, whose administration is opaque and now operates with impunity, under the guise of “national security” and “sovereignty” concerns.

It is expected that Sheinbaum will continue to shield American eyes from Mexico law enforcement and judicial affairs. The fear in the US law enforcement and national security community is that Sheinbaum may even declare DEA non grata, much as then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2005 and Bolivian President Evo Morales in 2008 did in their countries. Both were anti-American leftists of the same mindset as AMLO and Sheinbaum, who feared detection of their connections to the illegal drug trade.

Sheinbaum has publicly demonstrated disinterest in the consistent application of the rule of law against the TCOs by stating that she will continue the “hugs not bullets” (“abrazos, no balazos”) non-confrontational, non-interventional posture towards organized crime. Agreements with corrupt government officials will allow the cartels to expand their business and to operate with impunity. Through intimidation, bribery, and murder, the cartels affect decision making at the municipal, state, and federal levels of Mexican government. That leverage, while performed outside the public eye, has the potential to negatively affect supply and demand among the three countries at the very least, and at worst, to signal that cartels in Mexico are directly or indirectly involved in the formulation of government security, immigration, drug, and trade policy.

AMLO enacted constitutional changes that will provide Sheinbaum with the powers of a dictator, giving her administration unchecked control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. As a result, the judiciary in Mexico is in crisis mode with 8 of 11 Supreme Court Justices resigning in October 2024 to protest the unconstitutional disregard for due process that started with AMLO and continues with Sheinbaum thanks to a “voting for judges” law that she and AMLO have rammed into operation without debate. This development portends even more corruption.

Without the existence of an independent judicial system, these institutional changes could give pause to US and Canadian negotiators when it comes time to renew CUSMA in 2026.

Beyond 2025: Mexican organized crime as a threat to the US and Canada, and Greater North American implications

Most worrying, the cartels will be in a yet stronger position to affect and even dictate the pace and volume of legitimate trade between the US and Mexico under Sheinbaum. This makes Mexico the weakest link among the three CUSMA members.

The US and Canada should therefore be concerned about the strength and power of the cartels because the current trajectory could provide them a greater role in Mexico’s performance as a trade partner. Should this trend continue, the US would likely begin to see Mexico through the lens of a threat to critical components of its national security: 1) the public safety of US citizens being killed in epidemic proportions by the drugs produced by citizens of Mexico; 2) the negative impact or increased cost of commerce that supplies goods to the American market; and 3) the CUSMA relationship that sustains the economic strength of all three participating countries.

This worrisome evolution requires proactivity by Canada and the US to insist that Sheinbaum reverse the gains that the cartels have made to influence policy and erode the government’s monopoly on territorial control and the use of violence, and reverse Mexico’s limits on drug enforcement co-operation with what should be its partners to the north. Pressure should also be applied to demand a return to a drug policy model that includes international law enforcement co-operation and a continuation towards the transformation of the Mexican judicial system from a mixed inquisitorial or accusatorial system to an adversarial system that employs the use of juries, witness testimony, oral hearings and trials, and cross-examination of witnesses, as opposed to a system where cartel-influenced elections could dictate judicial outcomes.

The implications of the further development of a Mexico narco-democracy for US-Mexico-Canada relations would be devastating. Co-operation on public safety and security would cease completely, allowing the cartels to take full control of commercial supply lines, significantly reducing trade between the three nations – likely causing the CUSMA trade deal to fracture until governance returned to duly elected civilian officials.

Continental security and Canada’s contribution

The continued success of CUSMA lies with Mexico more than any other country. Should Mexico continue on its path to autocracy, it could upset the trade deal, crucial to the prosperity of all three countries. Canada is not immune from what on the surface may appear to be mostly bilateral, US-Mexico issues, because, regardless of the commodity – whether it’s consumables or manufactured items – the cartels are positioned and empowered to affect imports, exports, trade, and migration throughout North America.

For the foreseeable future, Mexico is not going to voluntarily change its security posture. This enables the cartels to remain persistent threats, especially to trade. Canada and the US need to continue to jointly insist that Mexico take a stronger stance against organized crime and that it take steps to strengthen the judiciary and the rule of law in that country.


Gary J. Hale served 31 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), retiring as an executive-level intelligence analyst. In 2010, he was appointed as Drug Policy fellow and Mexico Studies Scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

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