Trump and fentanyl—what Canada should do next

During the Superbowl, Doug Ford ran a campaign ad about fearlessly protecting Ontario workers against Trump. I suppose it’s effective as election theatre; it’s intended to make Ontarians feel lucky we’ve got a tough leader like Ford standing up to the Bad Orange Man. But my reaction was that Ford is lucky to have the Bad Orange Man creating a distraction so he doesn’t have to talk about Ontario’s high taxes, declining investment, stagnant real wages, lengthening health-care wait times and all the other problems that have gotten worse on his watch.

President Trump’s obnoxious and erratic rhetoric also seems to have put his own advisors on the defensive. Peter Navarro, Kevin Hassett and Howard Lutnick have taken pains to clarify that what we are dealing with is a “drug war not a trade war.” This is confusing since many sources say that Canada is responsible for less than one per cent of fentanyl entering the United States. But if we are going to de-escalate matters and resolve the dispute, we should start by trying to understand why they think we’re the problem.

Suppose in 2024 Trump and his team had asked for a Homeland Security briefing on fentanyl. What would they have learned? They already knew about Mexico. But they would also have learned that while Canada doesn’t rival Mexico for the volume of pills being sent into the U.S., we have become a transnational money laundering hub that keeps the Chinese and Mexican drug cartels in business. And we have ignored previous U.S. demands to deal with the problem.

Over a decade ago, Vancouver-based investigative journalist Sam Cooper unearthed shocking details of how Asian drug cartels backed by the Chinese Communist Party turned British Columbia’s casinos into billion-dollar money laundering operations, then scaled up from there through illicit real estate schemes in Vancouver and Toronto. This eventually triggered the 2022 Cullen Commission, which concluded, bluntly, that a massive amount of drug money was being laundered in B.C., that “the federal anti–money laundering [AML] regime is not effective,” that the RCMP had shut down what little AML capacity it had in 2012 just as the problem was exploding in scale, and that government officials have long known about the problem but ignored it.

In 2023 the Biden State Department under Anthony Blinken told Canada our fentanyl and money laundering control efforts were inadequate. Since then Canada’s border security forces have been shown to be so compromised and corrupt that U.S. intelligence agencies sidelined us and stopped sharing information. The corruption went to the top. A year ago Cameron Ortis, the former head of domestic intelligence at the RCMP, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being convicted of selling top secret U.S. intelligence to money launderers tied to drugs and terrorism to help them avoid capture.

In September 2024 the Biden Justice Department hit the Toronto-Dominion Bank with a $3 billion fine for facilitating $670 million in money laundering for groups tied to transnational drug trafficking and terrorism. Then-attorney general Merrick Garland said “TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish. By making its services convenient for criminals, it became one.”

Imagine the outcry if Trump had called one of our chartered banks a criminal organization.

We are making some progress in cleaning up the mess, but in the process learning that we are now a major fentanyl manufacturer. In October the RCMP raided massive fentanyl factories in B.C. and Alberta. Unfortunately there remain many gaps in our enforcement capabilities. For instance, the RCMP, which is responsible for border patrols between ports of entry, has admitted it has no airborne surveillance operations after 4 p.m. on weekdays or on weekends.

The fact that the prime minister’s promise of a new $1.3-billion border security and anti-drug plan convinced Trump to suspend the tariff threat indicates that the fentanyl angle wasn’t entirely a pretext. And we should have done these things sooner, even if Trump hadn’t made it an issue. We can only hope Ottawa now follows through on its promises. I fear, though, that if Ford’s Captain Canada act proves a hit with voters, the Liberals may distract voters with a flag-waving campaign against the Bad Orange Man rather than confront the deep economic problems we have imposed on ourselves.

A trade dispute appears inevitable now that Trump has signaled the 25 percent tariffs are back on. The problem is knowing whom to listen to since Trump is openly contradicting his own economic team. Trump’s top trade advisor, Peter Navarro, has written that the U.S. needs to pursue “reciprocity,” which he defines as other countries not charging tariffs on U.S. imports any higher than the U.S. charges. In the Americans’ view, U.S. trade barriers are very low and everyone else’s should be, too—a stance completely at odds with Trump’s most recent moves.

Whichever way this plays out Canada has no choice but to go all-in on lowering the cost of doing business here, especially in trade-exposed sectors such as steel, autos, manufacturing and technology. That starts with cutting taxes including carbon-pricing and rolling back our costly net-zero anti-energy regulatory regime. In the coming election campaign, that’s the agenda we need to see spelled out.

How much easier it will be instead for Canadian politicians to play the populist hero with vague anti-Trump posturing. But that would be poor substitute for a long overdue pro-Canadian economic growth agenda.

Related Topics:#RossMcKitrick CanadaUSATrade feature FrasierInstitute TrumpCanadaFentanyl TrumpTariffs

Up Next

Canada’s Liberals: Looking For A Place To Picnic In A Minefield

Don't Miss

Trudeau billed taxpayers $81,000 for groceries in one year

Todayville

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Chinese Election Interference – NDP reaction to bounty on Conservative candidate

Censorship Industrial Complex / 11 hours ago

Welcome to Britain, Where Critical WhatsApp Messages Are a Police Matter

2025 Federal Election / 14 hours ago

Poilievre on 2025 Election Interference – Carney sill hasn’t fired Liberal MP in Chinese election interference scandal

Business

DOGE discovered $330M in Small Business loans awarded to children under 11

Published on March 30, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Quick Hit:

In a bombshell revelation at a White House cabinet meeting, Elon Musk announced that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had uncovered over $330 million in Small Business Administration (SBA) loans issued to children under the age of 11.

Key Details:

Elon Musk stated that DOGE found $330 million in SBA loans given to individuals under the age of 11.
The youngest recipient was reportedly just nine months old, receiving a $100,000 loan.
SBA has now paused the direct loan process for individuals under 18 and over 120 years old.

Diving Deeper:

At a cabinet meeting held Monday at the White House, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk detailed a staggering example of federal waste uncovered by the newly-formed Department of Government Efficiency. Speaking directly to ongoing efforts to eliminate corruption and abuse in federal agencies, Musk explained that the SBA had awarded hundreds of millions in loans to children—some of whom were still in diapers.

“A case of fraud was with the Small Business Administration, where they were handing out loans — $330 million worth of loans to people under the age of 11,” Musk said. “I think the youngest, Kelly, was a nine-month year old who got a $100,000 loan. That’s a very precocious baby we’re talking about here.”

DOGE’s findings forced the SBA to abruptly change its loan procedures. In a post on X, the department revealed it would now require applicants to include their date of birth and was halting direct loans to those under 18 and above 120 years old. Musk commented sarcastically: “No more loans to babies or people too old to be alive.”

The discovery was just the latest in a series of contract cancellations and fraud crackdowns led by DOGE. According to Breitbart News, DOGE recently canceled 105 contracts totaling $935 million in potential taxpayer liabilities. The agency’s website currently lists over 6,600 terminated contracts, accounting for $20 billion in savings.

The president praised Musk and DOGE for rooting out government inefficiencies, noting his administration was focused on “cutting” people and programs that were not working or delivering results. “We’re not going to let people collect paychecks or taxpayer funds without doing their jobs,” Trump said.

Also during the cabinet session, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins revealed her department had eliminated a $300,000 program aimed at teaching “food justice” to transgender and queer farmers in San Francisco. “I’m not even sure what that means,” Rollins said, “but apparently the last administration wanted to put our taxpayer dollars towards that.”

These revelations highlight what many conservatives have long suspected—that during prior administrations, including under President Joe Biden, massive amounts of federal funding were funneled into unserious, ideologically-driven projects and mismanaged government programs. Under the Trump administration’s second term, DOGE appears to be living up to its mission: trimming fat, exposing fraud, and putting American taxpayers first.

Business

Cuba has lost 24% of it’s population to emigration in the last 4 years

Published on March 30, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Quick Hit:

A new study finds Cuba has lost nearly a quarter of its population since 2020, driven by economic collapse and a mass emigration wave unseen outside of war zones. The country’s population now stands at just over 8 million, down from nearly 10 million.

Key Details:

Independent study estimates Cuba’s population at 8.02 million—down 24% in four years.
Over 545,000 Cubans left the island in 2024 alone—double the official government figure.
Demographer warns the crisis mirrors depopulation seen only in wartime, calling it a “systemic collapse.”

Diving Deeper:

Cuba is undergoing a staggering demographic collapse, losing nearly one in four residents over the past four years, according to a new study by economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos. The report estimates that by the end of 2024, Cuba’s population will stand at just over 8 million people—down from nearly 10 million—a 24% drop that Albizu-Campos says is comparable only to what is seen in war-torn nations.

The study, accessed by the Spanish news agency EFE, points to mass emigration as the primary driver. In 2024 alone, 545,011 Cubans are believed to have left the island. That number is more than double what the regime officially acknowledges, as Cuba’s government only counts those heading to the United States, ignoring large flows to destinations like Mexico, Spain, Serbia, and Uruguay.

Albizu-Campos describes the trend as “demographic emptying,” driven by what he calls a “quasi-permanent polycrisis” in Cuba—an interwoven web of political repression, economic freefall, and social decay. For years, Cubans have faced food and medicine shortages, blackout-plagued days, fuel scarcity, soaring inflation, and a broken currency system. The result has been not just migration, but a desperate stampede for the exits.

Yet, the regime continues to minimize the damage. Official figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) put Cuba’s population at just over 10 million in 2023. However, even those numbers acknowledge a shrinking population and the lowest birth rate in decades—confirming the crisis, if not its full scale.

Cuba hasn’t held a census since 2012. The last scheduled one in 2022 has been repeatedly delayed, allegedly due to lack of resources. Experts doubt that any new attempt will be transparent or complete.

Albizu-Campos warns that the government’s refusal to confront the reality of the collapse is obstructing any chance at solutions. More than just a demographic issue, the study describes Cuba’s situation as a “systemic crisis.”