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National

“No public events scheduled”

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21 minute read

The PM is on a national campaign tour. He lies about it every day.

Here’s Justin Trudeau at the Saldenah Mas Camp in Toronto on July 18. Volunteers spend months making costumes every year for the Toronto Caribbean Festival. It’s a fantastic tradition. My father, who lived in Barbados for a while, used to drive us up from Sarnia every year for the parade.

The prime minister’s public itinerary, which is emailed daily to members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and posted on his website, said that on July 18 he’d be in Ottawa for the Change of Command ceremony. It acknowledged no other public event.

The itinerary usually goes out around 7 p.m. each night and lists the PM’s public activities for the next day. Then on the morning of the day, we get an itinerary that either repeats the night-before email, or modifies it. On July 15 the night-before itinerary said the prime minister would be in “Southwestern Ontario” and would have “no public events scheduled” the next day, July 16.

Here’s where it gets a little weird. I never received an itinerary for July 16 that said anything else. The itinerary that went out on the morning of July 16, like the night-before email on the 15th, said “no public events scheduled.” But on the PM’s website, the itinerary that’s there now lists a meeting with Kitchener mayor Barry Vrbanovic.

Later that day, Trudeau was in Scarborough at Junior Carnival. “You could just feel the energy in the air!”, the PM tweeted.

Not a public event.

The first I learned of the PM’s meeting with Kitchener mayor Vrbanovic was when reporters received a pool report from a CP reporter, a couple of hours after the meeting ended.

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Pool reports have been used in many countries for many years. If there’s not room for every reporter or photographer who might want to attend, a smaller number are designated, on the understanding that they’ll share their observations and images with everyone who couldn’t go. It’s not great, because typically the pool reporter is not permitted to ask questions.

Sometimes journalists vote to determine who among them will be the pool. Sometimes it’s a Canadian Press reporter, by tradition and convention. In all recent cases with Trudeau, it’s been a CP reporter — because no other news organization except CP has been informed of these events.

There’s also a separate broadcast pool, in which all the broadcast networks participate. That way one camera goes to pooled events, and every network gets the images and audio.

The CP reporter’s account of the Vrbanovic meeting said Vrbanovic “thanked Trudeau for his government’s programs that provide funding to municipalities.” Trudeau “said he will discuss issues that matter to the region including housing and climate change with Vrbanovic.” At this point, “The pool reporter was then asked to leave the room.” I’ll bet she was.

So here’s what I’m here to write about today. This has become standard operating procedure for Justin Trudeau and his staff during the difficult summer of 2024: they claim in public every day that the the PM has “no public events scheduled.” Even though he is in a different city every day. And he has public events scheduled. In fact, he is in the city in question so he can attend the public events he claims aren’t on his schedule.

And a small number of journalists are told, every day, “for information purposes only” — i.e., on the condition that they not tell other journalists or the public — about the public events the PM has scheduled but is lying about.

On Monday Trudeau’s itinerary said he was in “Northern Alberta” and had “no public events scheduled.” Later on Monday he was in Hinton, AB to “get a briefing on the status of the Jasper wildfire, as well as meet with the province’s premier and evacuees who fled the blaze.” I know this because it was in the CP report. “Trudeau did not speak with reporters while he was in Hinton,” the story adds.

wrote about this on Notes, Substack’s fun short-form social-media platform. A reader responded (and here I paraphrase) that, well, maybe the PM wanted to do serious business in a crisis situation without having to dodge snarky questions from rude reporters. And, you know what? Fair enough.

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But here’s the thing. I’ve covered a lot of political leaders in emergency settings. It’s perfectly routine for the advisory to say what a leader will do today, but to say a given event is “Closed to Media.” Or for reporters to be sequestered in a room, well away from the meeting between PM and premier, with time for questions only after the meeting ends.

What’s rarer — what I’d never actually seen before — is for a PM to fly to Alberta, for his staff to say he’s going to be in Alberta, but for them to claim he won’t be doing anything while he’s there.

Incidentally, the version of the PM’s itinerary for Monday that’s on his website now says he had a meeting with Danielle Smith and with emergency responders. This version was never sent to reporters, either before or after the meeting. Absurdly, the itinerary has also been corrected to put Hinton in “Central Alberta” instead of “Northern Alberta.”

A colleague at a large news organization who’s vocationally preoccupied with following politicians’ schedules tells me this has happened “multiple times” in recent weeks: the itinerary on the website gets updated after the fact, in ways that do not reflect what reporters were told in real time. This is the smallest possible routine coverup, for the smallest possible benefit, that I have ever seen.

Pretty soon, news organizations are going to have to start explaining why Justin Trudeau’s summer schedule is so surprising to us.

Here’s Justin Trudeau making a “surprise appearance” at Vancouver Pride on Sunday. Here’s the PM making a “surprise appearance” at Winnipeg’s Filipino Folklorama pavilion on Monday. I’m here to tell you, reporters were not informed of either event — except the ones who were given a quiet heads-up so there’d be cameras on hand. Although how can you be expected to believe me? The PM’s gaslighting website says he “will attend” Pride on Sunday. At least they haven’t rigged the Monday advisory so it retroactively lies about having told us he’d be at the Winnipeg event.

I suspect today’s post will create some buzz, so I want to be careful to say precisely what I mean to say. Politicians are under no obligation to tell anybody how they spend every minute of their day. (It’s worth noting, however, that the public agendas of leaders in other places are sometimes more detailed than in Ottawa: here’s Emmanuel Macron’s and Joe Biden’s agendas for today. The UK’s Keir Starmer seems less forthcoming.) And it’s routine for leaders’ teams to acknowledge calendar events while also emphasizing that the public and journalists can’t attend. What’s an innovation is this business of claiming the PM has nothing “public” on his schedule when he is, in fact, on tour to do public events for which he will seek tightly controlled media and social-media credit.

It’s become entertaining to learn, after the fact, what the hell has been going on. Last week the PM was on vacation in British Columbia. We receive daily itineraries during a vacation, with no public events scheduled, and I don’t begrudge anyone any vacation time. Then he was back in Ottawa for two days, and then he was back in the “Lower Mainland” of BC with “no public events scheduled.” That was Pride, as it turned out. I’m pretty sure that when the big guy was on an airplane for the second time in as many days, he knew why. Eventually so did we.

Since I’ve started making a fuss about this stuff on Notes, I think the PMO is starting to get nervous. Here’s the itinerary we were sent for today, Tuesday, at 7:03 a.m. EDT:

And here’s the updated itinerary we received at 2:33 p.m.

Thanks for the update! Unfortunately, every event in the updated itinerary occurred before the PMO sent it out. When covering your tracks, try not to be so terrible at it. Fortunately the pool report should be landing in my inbox any minute.

I asked Andrea Baillie, the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Press, for an explanation of the national newsgathering cooperative’s role in these activities. She replied:

“It’s long been part of CP’s mandate to be with prime ministers as they carry out their duties. Alongside major broadcasters, we provide ‘pool coverage.’ That means we gather details on what the PM said and did on behalf of all press gallery journalists, at events where there is limited space. Typically, the PMO provides embargoed information (i.e. times and locations) on the PM’s schedule on short notice so we can get there on time. The pool is bound by an agreement to use this information for planning purposes only until the events take place, at which point the CP reporter provides details on what they saw and heard in a note sent to all press gallery journalists.”

I want to be clear that I intend no criticism of CP, which has come in for some cheap shots from Pierre Poilievre and others. Reporters who are told of politicians’ activities ahead of time routinely keep this information to themselves, as I have done for politicians from many parties. Including, come to think of it, while covering elections in other countries. It’s the only way to reconcile coverage of an event with politicians’ preference for planning in secrecy. In particular, readers who are quick to dream up heroic scenarios for reporters to act as their proxy to sabotage politicians’ schemes — You should just refuse to cover it! You should just shout your questions until they’re forced to answer! — are typically less thrilled when reporters try that stuff against the politicians they like better.

But reporters are obviously getting played here. When the prime minister of Canada deploys half-way across the country, with his staff photographer and videographers; and then tells hundreds of journalists he’s got nothing planned for the next day or the day dawning; and smaller numbers of journalists already know that’s not true; and then the PM meets public officials or crowds of voters, speaks on public-policy issues, and sends out his own shop’s versions of those conversations and professionally curated images; and then (I can’t believe I’m writing this part) his staff sneaks into the website to cover their tracks ex post facto — well, this is a lake of bullshit so deep I can’t touch bottom, and at the very least, we should let you know it’s going on.

Now watch the commenters under this post line up, like iron filings in a magnetic field, to reveal their polarity.

People who hope the Liberals will win will be furious at me for nitpicking. THIS MAN IS DOING THE BUSINESS OF THE COUNTRY AND YOU JUST WANT TO TEAR HIM DOWN, they’ll say. YOU’RE NO BETTER THAN BOB FIFE. HE’S SMART TO KEEP YOU AWAY FROM SERIOUS WORK.

The ones who wanted him gone years ago will say, AH-HA. THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS PLOTTING WITH LIBERALS TO HIDE THE SATANIC PM. YOU HOWLED WHEN POILIEVRE DID FAR LESS, BUT NOW YOU’RE PLOTTING! PLOTTING! WITH YOUR LIBERAL PAYMASTERS.

What’s much rarer will be voters who would actively prefer, say, a Liberal government that doesn’t routinely lie about what its PM is doing. Let me tell you, I sure notice every time a supporter of the Liberals who claims to support the Liberals because they like honest reporting and evidence-based policy suddenly complains about the reporting and evidence that make their guy look bad.

As for Poilievre, I’ve written about his media manipulation at length and, I suspect, will again. These attitudes — good coverage good, bad coverage wicked and worth any artifice to avoid — are widespread and party-agnostic. But it’s worth pointing out that Poilievre now routinely sends out advance notice of his rallies, and has lately been setting aside a few minutes for brief sessions with individual reporters after such events. This one with a Sudbury reporter was chippy but informative; this one with The Gazette’s Aaron Derfel caught Poilievre in a relatively introspective mood.

Mostly I’m not surprised when any public figure avoids scrutiny. Journalistic scrutiny is so rare these days, for reasons I’ve written about at length, that nobody should be surprised when it draws an annoyed and defensive reaction from politicians who view any surprise as an attack. Or, indeed, from anybody at all. “Freedom of the press” loses friends quickly in almost any concrete case.

But again, I’ve never seen this before, a Prime Minister of Canada who demands that his staff enable him as he claims to be taking the summer off even as he’s campaigning for re-election. One more irony: If you’re paying half the salary of most Canadian journalists, even while you’re sending emails to them full of lies about your schedule, you’ve made destroying their credibility a very expensive object of government policy.

Finally, what does all this tell us about the year Justin Trudeau’s having?

I’m not Catholic, but I view this extended fibbing campaign as a venial rather than a mortal sin. It’s mostly kind of baffling.

But it has precedent. In his memoir, Trudeau recollects the times he introduced himself as “Jason Tremblay” or as “Justin St-Clair” as a student or a young adult, to avoid being judged before he could make his case. He learned early how much of himself he wanted others to see.

What’s harder to discern is the point of the artifice. Trudeau gave an extended interview to the CBC days before the disastrous Toronto—St. Paul’s byelection. Within days after the returns from St. Paul’s were in, he adopted this duck-and-cover routine. To what end? Does he seriously hope to pick up 15 points of polling deficit by pushing out Instagram photos of parade floats? Does he think he can keep this up for a year until an election?

While we wait to find out, if I were on the PM’s communications staff and I had pre-existing plans to be working somewhere else in a year, this would be an excellent week to resign, because this week you’d get to do it on principle.

I hear the PM will be in St. John’s tomorrow. Tonight we’ll see whether it’s on the itinerary.For the full experience, subscribe to Paul Wells.

Health

Canadian Health Organizations Unite to Demand Truth on Vaccine Safety

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News release from the World Council of Health Canada

Canadian Health Authorities Served Over Childhood Vaccine Information

Children’s Health Defense, Canada Health Alliance, Vaccine Choice Canada, and WCH Canada joined this week to serve health officers and ministers of health across the country.

The Canada Health AllianceChildren’s Health Defense CanadaVaccine Choice Canada, and the World Council For Health Canada united this week to put Fraser Health and other health authorities across Canada on notice regarding dangerous information being provided to parents and families about vaccinations. Fraser Health, one of five regional health authorities in British Columbia, Canada, is responsible for delivering health care services to a population of over 2 million people in Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. Fraser Health is currently promoting COVID-19 genetic “vaccines”  and various traditional vaccines for children and youth. The information that Fraser Health is providing is inaccurate and dangerous. Like many governmental agencies in Canada and elsewhere, Fraser Health is promoting misleading claims of safety and efficacy for DNA-contaminated, modified-RNA, genetic “vaccines” for COVID-19, as well as various traditional vaccines for other infections. Children’s health and lives are at risk.

On October 28, 2024, four major Canadian health organizations together sent a registered open letter to all medical health officers in Fraser Health, as well as mailed copies to all other district medical health officers in BC; all provincial, territorial, and federal chief medical officers of health; and all provincial, territorial, and federal health ministers. Appropriate cover letters were included for each recipient.

The intent of these letters is to reach the heart of the recipients, inspiring them to take corrective action on dangerous misinformation regarding childhood vaccines.

October 25, 2024

Re: Open Letter to Fraser Health Authority

We are writing in response to the information currently being disseminated by various public health officers at the request of Fraser Health Authority utilizing the ‘Healthy Schools Communications Toolkit’. (Source)

The broader medical community, the public, and especially parents look to health authorities such as Fraser Health Authority to provide accurate, up-to-date information to assist in making informed decisions regarding the health and safety of children.

Statements in the ‘Healthy Schools Communication Toolkit’ issued by Fraser Health Authority in recent weeks claim, with no conditions or qualifiers, that vaccines are ‘safe, effective and necessary’ for the health and safety of children.

These statements are inaccurate and misleading.

Of particular note for being misleading and outright dishonest are the following:

  • Tdap-IPV: protects against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and polio.
  • “Vaccines are safe and are your child’s best protection.”
  • Repeatedly misrepresenting “vaccination” as “immunization” (Source)
  • “The COVID-19 vaccines . . . are safe, effective and will save lives.”
  • “Vaccines do more than protect the people getting vaccinated, they also protect everyone around them. The more people in a community who are immunized and protected from COVID-19, the harder it is for COVID-19 to spread.”
  • “The best way to protect others and reduce the risk of getting sick with the flu and COVID-19 is to get immunized. The flu and COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective and available for free to anyone aged six months and older. It is much safer to get the vaccines than to get the illnesses.” (Source)

These statements are especially disconcerting given recent disclosures related to the lack of evidence of the safety of childhood vaccines and the COVID ‘vaccine’ in particular.

The COVID ‘Vaccine’

The claim of safety of the COVID ‘vaccine’ cannot be made in the face of the May 29, 2024 admission by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in response to an order paper question from Conservative MP Cathay Wagantall. (Source) The Public Health Agency of Canada acknowledged that booster recipients have higher death numbers than the unvaccinated. The report states: “Across all weeks in the time period of interest, the number of deaths were highest among those with a primary series and 1 additional dose.”

Despite PHAC urging caution in interpreting the data, they fail to address their own misleading definitions when they identify vaccine recipients as “unvaccinated” during the first 14 days following vaccination, the period of high lethality after the injections. The misleading use of the term “unvaccinated” renders all information from the PHAC and Health Canada unreliable and validates the safety and efficacy concerns surrounding these products.

Researchers investigating the safety and effectiveness of Pfizer’s vaccine in fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, and unvaccinated children and teens found cases of myocarditis and pericarditis only in vaccinated children. (Source) The study also found that initial protection by BNT162b2 vaccination against positive SARS-CoV-2 tests in adolescents aged 12-15 had waned by 14 weeks after vaccination. Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense states: “This study clearly shows that Pfizer’s COVID vaccine provides almost no benefit to children and adolescents but does increase their risk of myocarditis and pericarditis. It begs the question: Why does the CDC continue to recommend these unlicensed shots for kids? Where is the data they use to support their statement that the benefits of these vaccines outweigh the risks?”

On October 7,2024, Florida State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo announced new guidance regarding mRNA vaccines. (Source) The Florida Department of Health conducted an analysis to evaluate vaccine safety. This analysis found that there is an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males 18-39 years old within 28 days following mRNA vaccination. Non-mRNA vaccines were not found to have these increased risks. As such, the State Surgeon General recommends against males aged 18 to 39 from receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

The Department continues to stand by its Guidance for Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccines, issued March 2022, which recommends against use in healthy children and adolescents 5 years old to 17 years old. This now includes recommendations against COVID-19 vaccination among infants and children under 5 years old.

The following is beyond medical debate and considered accepted medical knowledge:

  • The COVID injections do not stop COVID infection or transmission.
  • Healthy young people have essentially zero risk of serious illness and death from COVID.
  • Since the COVID mRNA “vaccines” were given to the public, over 1.6 million adverse events and over 38,000 deaths related to these injections have been reported to the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in the US. Among these toxicities, increased rates of myocarditis—sometimes fatal—in young people, especially boys, have been demonstrated in recipients of the mRNA injections.
  • Additionally laboratory analysis has found high levels of DNA adulteration, and multiple undeclared genetic sequences in both Moderna and Pfizer Covid-19 genetic “vaccines”.
  • The Pfizer and Moderna COVID mRNA injections, while commonly called vaccines, are not true vaccines, but a type of mRNA-based gene therapy. In effect, they are ‘vaccines-in-name-only’.

There is no legitimate medical justification for healthy children or young adults to receive the COVID mRNA injections. Any institution continuing to refer to these injections as ‘vaccines’ and declaring them to be “safe and effective” is intentionally misinforming the public and health practitioners alike. This demonstrates a blatant disregard for scientific evidence and the health of our children and youth.

Lack of Proven Safety of Childhood Vaccines

In August 2024 Vaccine Choice Canada sent personalized letters (Source) to all provincial Health Ministers and chief public health officers, including Dr. Bonnie Henry, on the lack of proper safety testing of childhood vaccines. In that letter VCC stated:

In the July 6, 2024 publication of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Stanley Plotkin et al. (Source) admitted “the need for more rigorous science” pertaining to the safety of vaccines. They noted that “In 234 reviews of various vaccines and health outcomes conducted from 1991 to 2012, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found inadequate evidence to prove or disprove causation in 179 (76%) of the relationships it explored.”

What Plotkin and his fellow authors acknowledged is that the science to conclude vaccine safety is inadequate. (Source) Additionally, in 2023 the Informed Consent Action Network confirmed that “none of the vaccine doses the CDC recommends for routine injection into children were licensed based on a long-term placebo-controlled trial.” (Source) This is also true for Health Canada.

Further, five studies comparing unvaccinated children with vaccinated children provide compelling evidence that the current vaccination schedule is harming our children and a significant contributor to the epidemic of chronic disease in children today. (A New Parents Guide to Understanding Vaccination)

There is no substantive evidence to claim that the following vaccines prevent infection or transmission:

  • Pertussis
  • Polio
  • Tetanus
  • COVID
  • Influenza
  • Diphtheria

These vaccine products are designed to minimize symptoms, and do not prevent infection or transmission. Referring to these products as “immunizations” is misleading and dishonest. With these critical disclosures, it is no longer honest, responsible, or ethical for Public Health authorities to claim that “vaccines have been proven to be safe and effective”.

Fraser Health has no scientific basis to assure parents that giving their children vaccines is “your child’s best protection” when none of the vaccines on the childhood schedule have been tested for safety and effectiveness against a true placebo. That claim is scientifically unsupported and contradicts what is medically known.

It is time to cease the unqualified claim that “vaccines are safe, effective and necessary”.

Canada has consumer protection laws which prohibits engaging in any act or practice that is otherwise misleading, false, or deceptive to the consumer. Because parents rely on Health Canada and our Public Health Officers when they make health care decisions, children are harmed by the misleading and deceptive claims of health agencies such as Fraser Health Authority. These consumer protection laws need to be enforced.

Conclusion

  • Public Health agencies such as Fraser Health Authority continue to mislead and deceive the public by maintaining the unsubstantiated claim that vaccines are safe, effective and necessary. That claim requires immediate retraction and correction.
  • Public Health undermines their credibility in making such unsubstantiated statements and puts the credibility of the entire health care system at risk.
  • We appeal to your moral and legal responsibility to be fully transparent regarding the limitations on the evidence of vaccine safety, effectiveness and necessity.

We expect you will address this matter with the same seriousness that we are and we look forward to receiving your response.

Sincerely,

Ted Kuntz, President, Vaccine Choice Canada

Dr. Bill Code, President, Canada Health Alliance

Dr. Mark Trozzi, President, World Council for Health Canada

Christine Colebeck, President, Children’s Health Defence Canada


Organizations

The Canada Health AllianceChildren’s Health Defense CanadaVaccine Choice CanadaWorld Council For Health Canada, and the World Council For Health International.

Related Material

  • Here is honest, concise information about vaccines and genetic injections in the form of a 6-minute video. Please share this liberally with parents, teachers, and families (Click Here)
  • Vaccine Choice Canada’s New Parents’ Guide to Understanding Vaccinations (Click Here)
  • Children’s Health Defense Canada. A Parents’ Guide to Healthy Children. (Click Here)
  • World Council For Health International 2022 Alert to Parents Regarding Children and Covid-19 Genetic “Vaccines”. English, Spanish, and German. (Click Here)
  • Children Should Be Freed Now and Never COVID-Injected. Children are by nature very resistant to coronavirus infection for multiple reasons that we will concisely discuss below. (Click Here)
  • COVID Injections: Unveiling the Mechanisms of Harm. New pathology, a new wave of disease, and 44 common examples of injection-induced illnesses supported by over 930 scientific publications linking these diseases with the injections. (Click Here)
  • Canada Health Alliance. Why Do Vaccines Continually Fail to Live Up to Their Promises? (Click Here)
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Crime

RCMP Bust B.C. Fentanyl Superlab Linked to Mexico and Transnational Exports

Published on

Sam Cooper 

@samthebureau

In a remote mountainous area of British Columbia, federal police have dismantled the largest fentanyl laboratory ever discovered in Canada. This western province has become a critical front in the Five Eyes battle against the production and distribution of deadly synthetic narcotics trafficked globally by networks involving Chinese and Iranian state-sponsored mafias and Mexican cartels.

In a groundbreaking discovery, the RCMP located the superlab in Falkland—a village of 946 residents nestled in the rugged terrain between Calgary and Vancouver—using Phenyl-2-Propanone (P2P) to manufacture methamphetamine. This production method, primarily employed by Mexican cartels, stems from the precursors and scientific expertise Mexican cartels have gathered from elite Chinese criminals since the early 2000s, according to U.S. enforcement sources.

David Teboul, Commander of the RCMP Federal Policing program in the Pacific Region, underscored the significance: “Manufacturing methamphetamine using P2P had not been seen in Western Canada until now,” he said. “The P2P manufacturing method has been the primary method used by Mexican cartels to produce methamphetamine for years.”

Demonstrating the destructive power of the cartels involved, the RCMP seized a staggering cache of illicit substances and weapons. Officers confiscated 54 kilograms of fentanyl, massive amounts of precursor chemicals, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, 35 kilograms of cocaine, 15 kilograms of MDMA, and 6 kilograms of cannabis. The superlab was described as the largest and most sophisticated of its kind, capable of producing multiple types of illicit drugs.

“To put things into context,” Teboul said, “the over 95 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl that have been seized could have taken the lives of every Canadian at least twice over.”

A large portion of the product was destined for other countries.

During the investigation, RCMP officers learned of several large shipments of methamphetamine prepared for international export. They intercepted 310 kilograms of methamphetamine before it could leave Canada, preventing a significant quantity from reaching global markets—a critical point as Canada faces pressure from its allies over its role in the global fentanyl and methamphetamine trade.

Teboul noted that the RCMP collaborated with its Five Eyes enforcement partners—an intelligence alliance comprising Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Although Teboul did not provide specific details, this cooperation underscores the international scope of the transnational investigation.

The first suspect, Gaganpreet Singh Randhawa, was identified and arrested during raids. He is currently in custody and faces multiple charges, including possession and export of controlled substances, possession of prohibited firearms and devices, and possession of explosive devices. More arrests are expected, Teboul said.

The scale of this criminal network echoes the power and violence fueling gang wars that have rocked British Columbia, putting innocent lives at risk during high-powered shootouts in Vancouver. Investigators seized a total of 89 firearms, including 45 handguns, 21 AR-15-style rifles, and submachine guns—many of which were loaded and ready for use. The searches also uncovered small explosive devices, vast amounts of ammunition, firearm silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armor, and $500,000 in cash.

British Columbia has been grappling with an influx of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, significantly exacerbating the opioid crisis across Canada. The province has witnessed a surge in overdose deaths, prompting law enforcement to intensify efforts against drug production and trafficking networks. Experts highlight weaknesses in Canadian laws and a lack of federal oversight at the Port of Vancouver, which have been exploited by transnational crime and money laundering organizations from China, Iran, and Mexico.

This significant bust comes at a time when Canada is under increased scrutiny from international allies over its role as a hub for the export of fentanyl and methamphetamine. The superlab takedown appears to align with serious concerns raised by lawmakers in Washington about how Canada and Mexico are being used by transnational crime organizations to distribute fentanyl worldwide.

A recent U.S. congressional report argues that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy relies less on overt military actions and more on covert tactics, including trafficking of fentanyl and leveraging money laundering, aimed at exploiting vulnerabilities across social, economic, and health domains.

“Fentanyl precursors are manufactured in China and shipped to Mexico and Canada. For precursors that arrive in Mexico, Chinese transnational mafias work with Mexican cartels to smuggle and distribute fentanyl in the United States on behalf of the CCP,” the report states. “The DEA confirmed Chinese transnational crime leaders hold government positions in the CCP and indicated that Chinese transnational crime organizations are dedicated to the CCP.”

“The public deserves to know about the CCP’s role in fentanyl production and how the Party is using fentanyl as a chemical weapon to kill Americans,” the report adds. It recommends that Washington publicly “blame the CCP as much as the DEA and its partners currently blame the Sinaloa Cartel” for fentanyl trafficking and urges the government to “educate international allies about CCP chemical warfare” and encourage them to condemn Chinese transnational crime.

According to congressional investigations, Beijing is actively incentivizing the export of fentanyl and methamphetamine worldwide. The report alleges that Chinese criminal organizations, including Triads led by individuals with official positions in the CCP, are working alongside Mexican cartels to generate profit to fund interference operations in America.

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