By Peter Copeland & Cal Chrustie  for Inside Policy

Transnational organized crime is ‘no longer just criminal,’ it’s become a geopolitical weapon, says Chrustie.

As geopolitical tensions rise and domestic vulnerabilities deepen, Canada is increasingly being used as a conduit for foreign adversaries waging hybrid warfare against the United States and its allies.

From fentanyl pipelines and money laundering to campus radicalization and weak border enforcement, a concerning picture emerges of transnational organized crime (TOC) networks operating with strategic alignment to states like China, Iran, and others.

In this edition of Inside Policy, Peter Copeland, deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, sits down with Cal Chrustie, a former RCMP senior intelligence officer with deep experience in national security and transnational crime.

Chrustie tells Copeland that TOC is “no longer just criminal,” it’s become a geopolitical weapon.

“It’s about destabilizing communities, overwhelming public services, and hollowing out social cohesion,” says Chrustie.

He explains that Canada is not presently well-positioned to respond to this threat.

“Canada’s legal framework is designed for a domestic, rule-of-law environment,” he says. “It’s ill-suited to confront global adversaries who don’t play by those rules.”

Their wide-ranging conversation reveals the structural, legislative, and cultural weaknesses that have left Canada uniquely vulnerable to hybrid warfare and interconnected threats—and explores what a meaningful response might look like.

Copeland: Let’s start with fentanyl. In 2023, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimated over 70,000 fentanyl-related deaths. A growing number of precursor chemicals are sourced from China and routed through networks in Mexico and increasingly Canada. How is fentanyl trafficking being used strategically by foreign actors?

Chrustie: There’s no denying the scale of fentanyl production in Canada. It far outpaces our internal consumption. While there’s uncertainty around the volume reaching the U.S.—and certainly exaggerated claims by some Americans—we know Canadian labs are supplying Australia in large quantities. The broader concern is that we don’t know the extent of what’s crossing into the U.S. from Canada because we’re not meaningfully tracking it. That lack of visibility alone is a serious national security concern. Furthermore, the media focus has typically been China, China, China. While there are obvious signs of Chinese cartels in play, but what’s often dismissed is the role of Iranian networks.

Copeland: You touched on the issue of gaps in our understanding. At MLI, we’ve documented the minimal capacity we have at our borders—limited personnel, a very small percentage of containers and vehicles physically inspected, and mostly randomized or intelligence-led searches. Given these limitations, how can we even estimate the scale of fentanyl or other cross-border activity?

Chrustie: It’s a mistake to overly focus on the border. It’s a choke point, yes, but seizures there are often the result of intelligence generated far from the physical crossing—through complex global investigations, intelligence operations, surveillance, profiling, informants, machine learning. The U.S. has robust systems for this. Canada doesn’t. So, pointing to low seizure rates at the border as evidence of low trafficking activity is misleading and isn’t overly helpful in understanding the threat. It’s more relevant in understanding what we don’t know.

Copeland: We’ve proposed mandating more information-sharing from importers and exporters to support intelligence-based inspections. What are your thoughts on this approach?

Chrustie: Transparency helps, but you must consider the risk of compliance failure. If bad actors have infiltrated parts of the supply chain—shipping firms, port operators, truckers—then even detailed regulations won’t suffice without enforcement. Foreign state actors have the cyber capabilities to manipulate these systems too. It reinforces the need to address the problem systemically, not just tactically, and appreciate corruption and compromised systems are reality, not just a possibility.

Copeland: So, more than just piecemeal fixes?

Chrustie: Absolutely. We need a strategic, whole-of-society approach. Canada hasn’t yet conducted a serious intellectual review of why our system isn’t working. Political leaders fear what they’ll find, because it would demand systemic overhauls. These systems must take into consideration the broader threat activities and their interconnectivity with corruption, electoral interference, espionage, misinformation, and threat finance. Unfortunately, these connections are largely ignored, along with the strategic recognition that national security has a symbiotic relationship with economic security. If we were to take seriously the impact of national security on countless aspects of our social fabric—from crime, and social trust, to economic security—we would have a much more robust approach to transnational organized crime.

Copeland: Let’s take a step back. Most people probably picture transnational organized crime as gangs seeking profit, often disconnected from foreign governments. But you’ve argued that TOC is used by hostile states as a weapon in hybrid warfare. What does that mean, and how should we reframe our understanding?

Chrustie: Hybrid warfare is the blending of military and non-military means to weaken or destabilize a target. For hostile states, transnational crime is a tool—just like cyberattacks or disinformation. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea—the CRINKs—use TOC to raise money, create chaos, and undermine our institutions. TOC is no longer just criminal—it’s geopolitical.

Copeland: So the fentanyl flooding North America isn’t just a public health disaster—it’s also a weapon?

Chrustie: That’s right. It’s about destabilizing communities, overwhelming public services, and hollowing out social cohesion. Just like the Soviets used propaganda and the KGB used disinformation, modern adversaries use drugs, money laundering, and crime networks to erode their adversaries from within.

Copeland: Is Canada the main target, or are we a launchpad to attack the U.S. and our allies?

Chrustie: Both. Threat actors don’t view the Five Eyes or NATO countries in isolation—they see the alliance. So, attacks on Canada are also attacks on the U.S., Australia, the UK, and vice versa. They exploit Canada’s weaknesses, especially in places like Vancouver, where strategic assets such as ports, shipping companies and supply chain infrastructure are key hybrid warfare targets and impact the national and economic security of our allies. In the case of Vancouver, the intent is to target the US and Mexico (i.e. North America), through Vancouver-based assets as it’s a location of lower risk to operate in.

Copeland: You mentioned encrypted phone networks. Could you elaborate?

Chrustie: At one point, more encrypted communication companies linked to TOC and terrorist financers were based in Vancouver than anywhere else in the world. These platforms were used globally—by cartels, arms traffickers, terrorists, state proxies. That tells you all you need to know about how Canada is perceived by adversaries.

Copeland: What structural weaknesses are they exploiting?

Chrustie: First, we lack a national security strategy. Other countries—Australia, the U.S.—have all-of-government approaches. We don’t. Second, our institutions are siloed. Policing is on the front line, but CSIS, CBSA, military and CSE aren’t always integrated. Third, our systems—immigration, legal, financial—are outdated and easily gamed. Finally, there’s our culture: we’ve been complacent about national security.

Copeland: What does a serious strategy look like?

Chrustie: It starts with clear national priorities: identifying top threat actors (China, Iran, Russia, North Korea), coordinating agencies, aligning law enforcement and intelligence. It also means acknowledging our legal framework can’t always meet the challenge. Disruption and foreign operations—working with allies to stop threats before they reach our shores—will be critical.  Also, the historical paternalist approach of governments and bureaucrats—of “we know best, and we won’t discuss these issues in public, it’s too sensitive and we are the experts,”—I think that’s dated, and China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are the biggest fans of this arrogant and naïve thinking. We need to shift immediately, engage the communities, business leaders, the legal community, and others. The solutions are in the communities, not in the siloed offices of governments.

Copeland: That raises a point about legal constraints. Are you saying our rights framework is part of the challenge?

Chrustie: Yes. Canada’s legal framework is designed for a domestic, rule-of-law environment. It’s ill-suited to confront global adversaries who don’t play by those rules. We either need carve-outs with enhanced powers for TOC-related and foreign threat activities investigations, or we need to rely more on foreign-facing disruption efforts—working abroad, with allies and accept prosecutions are secondary in measuring success. We can’t pretend that our current legal framework is workable, as the threat actors have figured this out and are taking advantage of it.

Copeland: Let’s talk about antisemitism and extremism. In the past year, we’ve seen a sharp rise on university campuses. What’s driving it?

Chrustie: Some of it is ideological, but we’re ignoring the role of transnational organized crime and foreign money. Iranian networks, for example, have long been tied to money laundering and extremist financing. These aren’t disconnected trends. The same threat actors behind fentanyl and money laundering are often involved in radicalization efforts. These are the same networks aligned to China and the Mexican cartels; they don’t operate in boxes. An old school bureaucratic lens on terrorism from the middle east, or terrorist financing analysis from a regional lens, is placing Canadians and others at risk.

Copeland: You’re suggesting that protests, radical activism, even antisemitic incidents may be downstream of the same networks enabling fentanyl and laundering billions?

Chrustie: Exactly. We’re talking about convergence. These networks exploit every vulnerability—from public health to political discourse. Failing to connect the dots between TOC, extremism, and foreign interference means we’re always reacting too late. Let’s look at the historic HSBC case, in which hundreds of millions had been laundered by the Sinaloa cartel due to lax anti-money laundering compliance by the bank, resulting in a $1.9 billion fine being levied against it. The same cartel networks that emerged through the HSBC probe are engaged in Canada today. Experts need to focus on what they don’t know versus what they think they know—look at the strategic and historical activities, accept that we are not in the middle east and accept the complexities of TOC of other activities, including terrorism and extremism.

Copeland: Lastly Calvin, I want to talk about the big picture. Evidently, Canada is seen as an easy target by our adversaries. What structural weaknesses are they exploiting?

Chrustie: This is where I think about it in four layers: strategy, structure, systems, and culture.

First, strategy. We lack a cohesive, public national security strategy. Unlike the United States or Australia, Canada doesn’t clearly define TOC as a strategic national threat. We don’t have a single, unified doctrine coordinating our federal agencies—police, intelligence, border services, foreign affairs. And without that, every department works to its own mandate, and TOC thrives in those gaps. We need to name top threat actors—China, Iran, Russia, North Korea—and make their proxies part of the strategy. We also need to shift from a policing mindset to one focused on disruption and prevention, including operations overseas.

Second, structures. Right now, the RCMP is expected to shoulder most of the burden. But that’s unsustainable. We need an all-agency model—where the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), and Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the Department of Justice, Global Affairs, and others are all responsible for TOC enforcement and disruption. In the U.S., agencies are compelled to coordinate on TOC. In Canada, they’re siloed. And without a lead co-ordinating body or national TOC co-ordinator, those silos are growing.

Third, systems. Our legal system is outdated. Charter protections, disclosure rules from cases like Stinchcombe, and overly complex evidentiary requirements mean that complex cases fall apart or never get prosecuted. We also lack a dedicated foreign intelligence service like the CIA or MI6. Our immigration system is overwhelmed—there’s no way current vetting can match immigration volumes. And our financial system, particularly in real estate and casinos, has become a playground for laundered money. We need a legal and regulatory framework built for transnational threats, not 1980s-era domestic crime.

Fourth, culture. This is the most overlooked piece. Canadians are culturally indifferent to national security. We’ve taken a maternalistic approach—shielding the public from harsh realities, hoping to avoid panic or xenophobia. But that silence has allowed foreign actors to operate here with little resistance. Until we educate the public and foster a culture that values sovereignty and security, there will be no pressure to change the strategy, structure, or systems.

Copeland: Final thoughts?

Chrustie: We need to stop thinking of TOC as a law enforcement issue. It’s a military, intelligence, legal and most importantly, an all-Canada problem. There is no room for spectators.  We need to stop thinking its someone isolated from all other threats and threat actors. It’s a national security crisis and its part of the slow play to weaken our political, social, and economic structures. We are years behind our allies. If we don’t get serious—strategically, structurally, and culturally—we will pay the price.

Copeland: Here’s my takeaways: In summary, we can see that Canada is uniquely vulnerable to transnational organized crime which makes it vulnerable for the broader foreign threats. Our agencies are siloed, and we lack a comprehensive strategy to effectively address issues like drug and human trafficking, to the presence of radicalization and extremism on our campuses. What’s more, our legal framework is such that we don’t have the same kinds of tools as our allies, that allows law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies to act swiftly where issues of national security are in play.

Peter Copeland is deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Cal Chrustie is a former RCMP senior intelligence officer with deep experience in national security and transnational crime.

Short-term rentals. Legal weed. Illegal exports. United Front agents built a decentralized drug trafficking network—using Canadian land and export markets to fuel China’s narco-financial machine.

VANCOUVER, Canada — Around the time Canadian police uncovered a massive Chinese drug cash bank in Richmond, B.C.—exposing the so-called Vancouver Model of transnational money laundering—investigators made another stunning discovery that has never before been publicly disclosed.

According to sources with direct knowledge, operatives tied to Beijing’s foreign influence arm, the United Front Work Department, were orchestrating a parallel cannabis trafficking and money laundering operation—leveraging Canada’s legalization of marijuana to export the lucrative commodity to the United States and Japan. The scheme used short-term rental platforms to operate illicit cannabis brokerage houses in Vancouver, aggregating product from vast acreages across Western Canada and shipping it to destinations including Tokyo and New York City. Proceeds were collected in United Front-linked drug cash brokerages in those cities and laundered back through Canadian banks.

As previously reported by The Bureau, the RCMP has observed a two-decade-long consolidation of legal cannabis licenses in British Columbia by Chinese state-linked mafia networks. These groups have exploited illegal migrant labor from Asia—often housed in suburban townhomes and single-family grow-ops across Vancouver—to power what amounts to a parallel, state-enabled narco economy.

But as real estate prices in Metro Vancouver soared—driven in part by drug capital—RCMP investigators noticed Chinese triads strategically selling off high-priced grow-op properties to avoid scrutiny and reinvesting profits in remote farmland across B.C., including in Oliver, Prince George, and the Okanagan Valley.

These rural acreages became production zones. Asian organized crime groups transported cannabis to centralized brokerage houses, where senior Sam Gor figures and affiliated United Front community leaders established hubs for transnational shipment, trafficking, and laundering. The system—structured like a decentralized factory—was engineered to distribute risk and rapidly shift locations.

“They transport it down, and then we started seeing the rise of these brokerage houses again, with United Front control and Asian organized crime links,” a Canadian intelligence source told The Bureau. “New York is a favourite destination. The weed goes out in a variety of routes, the money comes back to be laundered. The process is repeated.”

In the case that triggered the discovery, an RCMP informant observed a steady stream of individuals entering a Vancouver-area home with black garbage bags, heading into the garage, and emerging minutes later with duffel bags of unknown contents. To detectives from E-Pirate—Canada’s largest-ever casino money laundering investigation—the duffel bags looked strikingly familiar.

This was the same method used by Chinese high-rollers supplied through a Sam Gor-linked cash brokerage in Richmond. In that case, associates of Paul King Jin and Jian Jun Zhu received large cash deposits at a bulletproof-glass storefront called Silver International—funds delivered by drug traffickers from across Western Canada. Couriers from Alberta and B.C. drove proceeds into Richmond, dropped off suitcases of cash, and each transaction was meticulously recorded in paper ledgers. Sam Gor would then transfer the equivalent funds into Chinese bank accounts—often linked to fentanyl production.

The warehoused cash at Silver International was also loaned to Chinese gamblers, with Paul Jin himself frequently delivering bundles to parking lots outside River Rock Casino in Richmond, as well as to other government-run casinos in Burnaby and surrounding suburbs. The funds were laundered through B.C.’s provincially regulated gaming system. This was the Vancouver Model. Chinese high-rollers provided liquidity to the system by depositing funds into United Front-linked bank accounts in China, then receiving their payouts in Richmond—delivered in duffel bags of cash.

The discovery of cannabis collector sites near these casinos resembled the other side of the pipeline—this time focused on cannabis rather than cocaine, fentanyl, or methamphetamine—a ‘legal’ narcotics trade now dominated across North America by Chinese organized crime networks operating in tandem with CCP-linked regional officials, according to former DEA Special Operations Division leader Don Im.

In this operation, RCMP investigators recorded license plates of drivers arriving at the suspected brokerage house. They matched many of them to vehicles also seen at Paul Jin’s Richmond boxing gym—an establishment tied to the highest levels of Sam Gor and UFWD figures in Vancouver.

“It was just phenomenal,” a Canadian intelligence source said. “And all of it links back, ultimately, to the exact family and community of people that we’ve talked about for years. You’d see a girlfriend—the girlfriend’s car of some well-known guy that goes to Paul Jin’s gym—would be showing up at this place for five minutes, would drive away, and then somebody else’s car which was associated to this guy’s girlfriend.”

In one RCMP raid on a brokerage house, investigators seized not only cannabis, but packaging materials and branded labels imported from Asia via commercial carriers—designed for a recognizable brand of cannabis sold online.

“What these guys were doing,” the source disclosed, “was securing rental houses through VRBO or other short-term platforms—one, two, three months at a time—and using them as brokerage houses. Then they’d move to another location. And they would bring in labor from overseas.”

That labor, often undocumented immigrants from China and Vietnam, was found living in squalid, makeshift conditions.

“Mattresses on the floor,” the source said. “This is where we get into the CBSA piece—where they found people at these locations who were overstays, undocumented, all the rest of it—and they would boot them out.”

The level of sophistication in these narcotics brokerage operations—essentially the mirror image of Chinese cash collection hubs uncovered by DEA agents in the United States—stunned RCMP intelligence officials.

They noted unintended consequences stemming from cannabis legalization under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in 2018.

“Since legalization, Asian organized crime has emerged as the dominant force behind cannabis in Canada. Product from grow ops in the interior of B.C. gets consolidated at a variety of VRBO and short-term rental houses in the Lower Mainland,” one source texted to The Bureau. “Brokers bid on product and provide packaging services for online sales.”

“In one case, the brokerage house was in the east end of Vancouver,” the source, who could not be named, said. “It was equipped with a cryptocurrency ATM. Come in, pay by Bitcoin, leave with your weed.”

The discovery of these covert brokerages prompted RCMP transnational crime investigators to dig deeper.

“And that led to a couple of other investigations,” the source said. “And that led to marijuana that we knew was getting shipped to New York State. They really liked B.C. Bud.”

According to the source, the cannabis was often transported overland across Canada in commercial vehicles, hidden inside consumer goods.

“We found evidence of water coolers and stuff like that, or on-demand water heater systems—gutted and repurposed just to move the product. They’d drive it across the country with this stuff packed inside.”

And Sam Gor operatives transported Canada’s “legal” weed through Ontario and across the border into the United States.

“They would get it over into New York State,” the source said. “And then we actually—years previous to this—we did a money laundering file where we were receiving back the money from those proceeds, coming back through the United States from New York. So it showed you a full circle of it.”

Meanwhile, a source added that a small island in the Fraser River, near River Rock Casino, has drawn law enforcement attention due to warehouses allegedly controlled by Sam Gor associates and underground bankers connected to the Silver International case and United Front networks.

“There’s a whole series of warehouses there that are of extreme interest to CBSA and to us,” a source said, explaining that consumer goods from across Western Canada are exported from the location, with narcotics secreted inside, and product labels altered to evade international customs scrutiny.

“What they did is they secreted—they would cut open the bags and they’d put marijuana inside those bags, and then they were going to export to Japan,” the source said. “So that’s the kind of thing that we’re seeing going on here as well—these brokerage facilities are multipurpose. Some of the product is also moved to other locations where they’re actually altering packaging and everything else to head off detection.”

“That use of brokerage houses—just moving it around—is extremely common now,” the source added. “In fact, that’s been known for years—even over in Australia.” Describing a typical “shore party” tactic, the source said:
“They’ll send a local guy from Vancouver down to Sydney. He’ll stay in a VRBO at Bondi Beach. While he’s there, a UPS package arrives. He takes it to a drop point, gets paid, spends a few days on the beach, and flies home. From the AFP’s perspective, they find that, obviously, quite difficult too.”

Asked whether these Sam Gor and United Front-linked cannabis trafficking and money laundering networks were also dealing in fentanyl, one source responded bluntly:

“No doubt. When you are in one aspect of the biz, what’s the disincentive not to be in fentanyl too? Or wine, or cigarettes.”

Former DEA Special Operations Division leader Don Im, a veteran expert on China’s transnational narcotics and money laundering architecture, reviewed the evidence cited in this story for The Bureau. Decades ago, as a young agent in New York City, Im said he witnessed the early evolution of Triad-linked money laundering networks—surveilling Colombian heroin traffickers forging connections in Chinatown.

Prior to his retirement in 2022, Im said he had direct visibility into how Chinese Communist Party-linked drug barons—operating through Sam Gor and allied Triad syndicates—seized control of cannabis cultivation across much of the world. These networks, he explained, have repurposed the same smuggling corridors, laundering systems, and brokerage house infrastructure to traffic a range of narcotics, from synthetic opioids to methamphetamine.

“This playbook was being mirrored throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe,” Im said of the cannabis brokerage system described in this story.

“The Chinese have become the dominant cultivators of marijuana in North America, in my opinion. They’re doing it in Europe, too. Why? Because it’s legal in most places—with little to no risk of imprisonment. So they’re generating literally tens of billions from marijuana alone.”

Im said U.S. law enforcement began noticing the pattern around the same time Canadian police observed Triads consolidating medicinal marijuana licenses in British Columbia.

“We started seeing it in the mid-2000s—Chinese workers coming into indoor grows, especially in Colorado,” he said. “At first, we thought it was an anomaly. But it wasn’t.”

“Now, China holds an annual hemp trade fair because they’re trying to corner the global hemp industry. They bring in thousands of companies and individuals to expand the global marijuana market.”

According to Im, Chinese Communist Party officials—particularly in provincial governments—view global decriminalization trends as a strategic opening to dominate transnational black markets with minimal legal risk.

“The global drug markets have become the ad hoc bank not just for Chinese citizens seeking to move capital abroad—but for CCP officials, provincial governors, and state-owned enterprises,” Im said. “They use drug proceeds to pay off massive debts, fund capital projects, finance Belt and Road operations, and carry out influence campaigns. It’s a cycle.”

“People think, ‘Oh, marijuana is a benign drug.’ Okay? It’s still a drug. And the value it generates—the profit—is massive,” Im continued. “Even on a conservative estimate, we’re talking half a trillion to three-quarters of a trillion dollars annually. That’s off the streets and across the world—not just Europe and North America.”

“People think I’m crazy when I say it generates that much,” he added. “But the RAND Corporation and the U.N.—they track the value of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl, ecstasy, and marijuana. That’s the number.”

The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Bureau is a reader-supported publication.

To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe to The Bureau

Invite your friends and earn rewards

If you enjoy The Bureau, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe.

Invite Friends

Recommend The Bureau to your readers

Investigative Journalism. Anti-Corruption. Whistleblowers. Sunlight.

Recommend