Toronto: The Canadian government has appointed a former law enforcement professional with intelligence experience as its new Fentanyl Czar.
The announcement of the appointment of Kevin Brosseau to the position was made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday.
Brosseau is currently serving as the Deputy National Security and Intelligence Advisor and earlier, was with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) for two decades including as its Deputy Commissioner from 2016 to 2019.
The post of Fentanyl Czar was created as part of a package of concessions made by Ottawa to allay threats made United States President Donald Trump of levying a 25 per cent tariff on Canadian imports unless it controlled the flow of the deadly drug and illegal immigrants into America.
A release from the PMO said Brosseau “will work closely with US counterparts and law enforcement agencies to accelerate Canada’s ongoing work to detect, disrupt, and dismantle the fentanyl trade.”
Among them was the addition of new and expanded detection capacity at border entries to find illegal drugs and guns and shorten cargo container processing time, while building a Canadian Drug Analysis Centre to analyze illegal drug samples and identify where and how these drugs are manufactured. Ottawa is deploying new chemical detection tools at high-risk ports of entry, new canine teams to intercept illegal drugs, and a new Precursor Chemical Risk Management Unit to better track precursor chemicals and distribution channels.
An intelligence directive will give Canadian security agencies more capacity to gather intelligence on transnational organized crime and share that with American partners and law enforcement across the continent. This will complement joint law enforcement co-ordination efforts, including through the Canada-US Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl, and money laundering.
“While less than 1 per cent of the fentanyl intercepted at the U.S. border comes from Canada, any amount of fentanyl is too much,” the release noted.
It reiterated the intent to list organized crime cartels as terrorist entities to strengthen the RCMP’s ability to prevent and disrupt cartel activities in Canada.
