Canada may add more resources at the U.S. border after tariff threats: minister

OTTAWA — Canada is considering a number of measures at the American border including additional resources, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday in response to Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on Canadian imports into the U.S.

The president-elect threatened to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports unless action is taken to stem the flow of both migrants and illegal drugs crossing the border.

“As everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” Trump said on Truth Social on Monday night.

Miller was asked on Tuesday about deploying more officers to oversee the New York-Vermont border area, which sees the highest rates of illegal crossings from Canada into the United States.

He cautioned that there is no comparison to the flow of migrants entering the U.S. from Mexico.

“It’s the equivalent on a yearly basis with a significant weekend at the Mexico border. At the same time it’s not something I want to not take seriously, because it is serious,” Miller said.

“We have a job to not make our problems the Americans’ problems and they have a job not to make their problems ours.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows its officers recorded nearly 200,000 encounters at the northern border between October 2023 and September 2024. The same period in 2022 saw more than 109,000 encounters and there were around 32,000 in 2020.

The term “encounters” includes apprehensions, people who are deemed inadmissible and those who are expelled from the U.S.

Between October 2023 and September 2024 U.S. officials recorded more than two million encounters at the Mexican border. The two prior years also saw more than 2 million encounters at the southern border.

Chief border patrol agent Robert Garcia said last month on X that agents in the Swanton Sector, which covers Vermont’s border with Quebec, apprehended more than 19,000 people from 97 countries in the last year — more than the last 17 years combined.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it also seized nearly 5,000 kilograms of illegal drugs at the Canadian border between October 2023 and September 2024. That included 19.5 kilograms of fentanyl.

Comparatively, border agents seized nearly 125,000 kilograms of narcotics at the southern border, including almost 10,000 kilograms of fentanyl.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, two milligrams of fentanyl is a potentially fatal dose.

From Canada, marijuana is by far the most commonly seized drug, accounting for almost 60 per cent of total seizures. From Mexico it’s methamphetamine, accounting for about 57 per cent of seizures at the southern border.

Drug seizures coming from Canada to the U.S. are down significantly from the prior two years, according to border patrol data: about 25,000 kilograms of narcotics were seized in the October 2022 to September 2023 period, down from about 27,200 kilograms in that period between 2021 and 2022.

In recent months the RCMP announced two significant operations with ties to Mexican drug cartels.

This includes the arrest of three men in Surrey, B.C., earlier this month, who police say are connected to an organized crime group with ties to Mexican drug cartels.

Police seized “multiple kilos” of illicit drugs, and said the accused were allegedly “planning large-scale distribution” of drugs out of Surrey.

In October, the RCMP, FBI and other policing partners arrested nine Canadians in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

The accused are alleged to have ties to a Mexico cartel-linked criminal network. Charges include murder, conspiracy to commit murder and drug trafficking.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2024

David Baxter, The Canadian Press