Drug precursors the new 'primary threat' entering Canada as fentanyl imports drop

With criminal networks shifting to domestic production of fentanyl and other opioids, the focus of law enforcement at Canada's borders has now shifted to the chemicals used to make the deadly drugs.

The Public Health Agency of Canada estimates that more than 47,000 Canadians have died of toxic drug overdoses since 2016. Four out of every five of accidental overdose deaths recorded this year in Canada involved fentanyl.

The shift away from importing opioids to manufacturing them on Canadian soil began roughly in 2019, when the Chinese government listed fentanyl as a controlled substance and imposed more regulations on its production and export.

Since then, organized crime groups have focused on importing and smuggling the chemicals that go into making fentanyl and other opioids — known as precursors — into Canada.

"Precursors might be [the] primary threat coming into Canada for things that contribute to the deaths of Canadians," said Dan Anson, the director general of the Canada Border Services Agency's intelligence and investigations directorate.

But detecting precursors at the border can be difficult, especially if they're unregulated, Anson said.

"It is challenging to find those because you need a level of front-end detection technology capability to identify what the chemical is," he said.

Last week, the government released details of a $1.3 billion plan to secure the Canada-U.S. border and allay U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's concerns about migrants and drugs.

A significant amount of that money is aimed at regulating precursors and intercepting them at the border. The government is promising to use artificial intelligence and imaging tools to help law enforcement and border officials detect precursors.

Ottawa also says it will cut the processing time for banning precursors from 36 months to six months and is promising a new "Chemical Precursor Risk Management Unit" within Health Canada that will help law enforcement agencies intercept the chemicals.

One of the challenges the CBSA faces, Anson said, is the fact that some precursors are legal and have "dual use."

"Very rarely will you have a chemical that doesn't have two uses, dual use application. So a lot of these chemicals are used for cleaning and fabrication in other domains," he said.

But Jennifer Pelley — a director with Health Canada's controlled substances and overdose directorate — said all the chemicals that are essential to making fentanyl are illegal in Canada.

"There are some additional chemicals that can be used in the illegal production of fentanyl, but it is actually not possible to make fentanyl unless you have one of the essential building blocks that we have controlled," she told CBC News.