By Garry Clement

Columnist Garry Clement, former RCMP anti–money laundering expert, argues Canada’s leaders have built prosperity on sand — leaving the nation exposed to collapse unless urgent reforms are made.

Canada is celebrated abroad as a safe, prosperous, and open society. But beneath the surface, a far more precarious reality is taking shape. The pillars of our economy — land, real estate, natural resources, and immigration — have been left vulnerable to foreign manipulation, criminal exploitation, and political negligence. The result is what can only be described as a sandcastle economy — striking at first glance, but fragile. Like the parable of the house built on sand, it is a foundation vulnerable to give way when the storm comes.

Investigative journalist Sam Cooper has long warned that foreign capital and organized crime have deeply infiltrated Canada’s real estate market. On Prince Edward Island, the Bliss and Wisdom Buddhist group quietly acquired swaths of farmland and property, raising questions about how religious fronts with Chinese connections gained such leverage in a province with limited oversight. In Saskatchewan, Chinese investors have been buying up valuable farmland, raising alarms about food sovereignty and the lack of restrictions on foreign ownership of agricultural land. Meanwhile in British Columbia, governments continue to downplay or outright ignore the extent to which transnational money laundering has fueled a housing market now completely detached from local incomes.

All of this has unfolded against a backdrop of minimal transparency, weak beneficial ownership registries, and virtually no effective enforcement. The same blind spots that allowed casinos and luxury real estate in Vancouver to become laundromats for dirty money are now being replicated nationwide.

The most urgent threat tied to these financial blind spots is fentanyl. Canada has become one of the world’s top destinations for proceeds from synthetic drug trafficking — a crisis that has devastated families from coast to coast. Chinese triads, Mexican cartels, and local gangs launder profits through casinos, shell companies, and real estate deals. Yet federal legislation continues to lag behind, leaving law enforcement outgunned. Every toxic opioid death in Canada is not only a health tragedy, but also a reminder of how organized crime is exploiting our lax financial controls. While other countries have implemented tough anti-money laundering regimes, Canada remains dangerously complacent.

That same complacency extends to national security. Canada has repeatedly delayed designating Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement in financing terrorism and conducting influence operations abroad. Our allies — including the United States — have acted. Canada, however, remains an outlier, seemingly unwilling to confront the risk of Iranian proxy activity operating in plain sight within our borders.

Immigration policy reveals similar weaknesses. Foreign students, particularly from India, have become central to the financial survival of colleges and universities. Yet a growing number are not here primarily to study. Instead, education visas have become a backdoor into Canada’s workforce, particularly in industries such as trucking. The tragic Humboldt Broncos bus crash in 2018 exposed gaps in training and licensing in the trucking sector. Since then, reports have continued to surface of foreign students entering the industry without adequate skills — a risk not only to public safety but to the integrity of our immigration system. Ottawa has failed to adequately regulate this pipeline, preferring instead to rely on the tuition dollars and temporary labour it generates.

Editor’s Note: Forthcoming Bureau investigations, citing U.S. government sources, question how widespread fraud and Indian transnational crime capture of Canada’s commercial trucking industry have fueled the flow of fentanyl, cocaine, and methamphetamine — turning the country into a weak link for its international allies.

The threads running through these crises are clear: willful blindness, weak laws, and short-term political expediency. Land and natural resources are being sold without regard for sovereignty. Real estate markets are distorted by laundered money. Organized crime groups funnel fentanyl profits into Canada with ease. The IRGC operates without effective restriction. And the education system is exploited as a labour channel, with little oversight. Canada is, in effect, trading away its long-term security for short-term economic gains.

Politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators too often dismiss warnings as alarmist or xenophobic, when in fact they reflect real risks to the stability of the country. A sandcastle can stand tall on the shore, admired in the moment, but everyone knows what comes next. Unless urgent steps are taken — enforcing transparency in land ownership, restricting foreign control of farmland and resources, tightening anti-money laundering measures, confronting hostile foreign actors, and restoring integrity to the education and immigration systems — collapse is inevitable.

The signs are already here: families priced out of homes, farmers squeezed out of land, fentanyl overdoses climbing, and a public losing faith in the fairness of the system. Canada prides itself on being open and inclusive. But openness without vigilance is vulnerability. Like unwise stewards, our leaders have been gifted with a land of overflowing abundance, and yet they have squandered its potential through short-sighted choices. That failure must be corrected — immediately and wisely — if the nation is to not only thrive, but survive.

Former senior RCMP officer Garry Clement consults with corporations on anti-money laundering, contributed to the Canadian academic text Dirty Money, and wrote Canada Under Siege, and Undercover, In the Shady World of Organized Crime and the RCMP

Drug lab at Seux Road near Mission, BC

Sam Cooper

Seizures included significant amounts of 4-Piperidone — a key upstream fentanyl precursor that Chinese suppliers adopted after U.S. restrictions on NPP and ANPP

A new civil forfeiture case in British Columbia has surfaced extraordinary details about a clandestine fentanyl production network that investigators say operated with academic-level expertise, imported laboratory equipment from overseas, and, significantly, relied predominantly on 4-Piperidone, a precursor chemical that Chinese suppliers moved to after the U.S. government cracked down on previous analogs.

The Bureau’s analysis of the filing and information from expert sources suggests the network is consistent with the hybrid model now driving the global fentanyl trade: Chinese Communist Party–linked chemical suppliers, Mexican cartel distributors, and Iranian transnational networks partnering with Canadian gangs, notably the Wolfpack Alliance, to embed industrial-scale production inside British Columbia.

In a case first reported by the Vancouver Sun, filed August 13 in B.C. Supreme Court, the Director of Civil Forfeiture seeks to seize three properties in Langley and Aldergrove, three vehicles, and $1,860 in cash linked to the alleged operation.

The filing names Cesar Douglas Escobar-Calderon, Harpal Singh Gill, Michaela Marie Butler Christensen also known as Michaela Marie Gill, and One Oak Construction Ltd. as defendants. Investigators allege Gill purchased large volumes of fentanyl precursors under a fictitious company name, and ordered professional laboratory equipment from overseas to outfit clandestine labs. Equipment and chemicals were distributed through a network of suburban properties, including Pitt Meadows, Mission, Aldergrove, and Langley.

While the filing does not name the overseas jurisdiction where Gill allegedly sourced high-grade laboratory equipment and fentanyl precursors, prior U.S. sanctions cases focused on British Columbia indicate China is almost certainly the origin, consistent with wider patterns documented in the global fentanyl trade.

Court documents show RCMP arrested Escobar-Calderon at a Pitt Meadows site alongside 359 grams of fentanyl, large volumes of precursors including pyridine, propanoyl chloride, and aniline, and laboratory equipment contaminated by residues.

But the most significant seizure came at a property on Seux Road in Mission, a mountainous northern pocket of the Fraser Valley outside Greater Vancouver. The site resembled a smaller version of the so-called superlab dismantled in Falkland, B.C., and appeared to function as the network’s largest production node. Here police found a fully equipped clandestine laboratory, commercial-sized synthesis equipment, and vast stores of chemicals. The haul included more than 2,000 grams of MDMA and approximately five kilograms of fentanyl. Large volumes of precursor chemicals were also seized, including pyridine, propanoyl chloride, aniline, and 4-Piperidone — compounds central to industrial fentanyl synthesis.

After the U.S. government placed strict controls on fentanyl precursors NPP and ANPP, Chinese suppliers shifted toward 4-Piperidone as the primary replacement. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has since designated 4-Piperidone as a List I chemical, describing it as a crucial precursor for fentanyl that cannot be substituted in the main synthesis routes. Both U.S. and UN authorities note that restrictions on downstream precursors have driven traffickers to exploit this earlier-stage chemical.

Linked Langley addresses yielded manuals on drug synthesis, 8.3 grams of MDMA, laboratory equipment, handwritten notes, and $1,600 in cash found in a safe. At an Aldergrove home, officers seized commercial-scale equipment contaminated with fentanyl precursors. Officers also seized a Dodge Ram, a Chevrolet Tahoe, and a Snake River dump trailer allegedly used to store and transport chemicals.

Inside the Dodge Ram, which investigators linked to Escobar-Calderon, police found approximately one kilogram of 4-Piperidone. Investigators also recovered handwritten notes on illicit synthesis and keys that showed interconnections between the labs and the suspects.

The filing argues the properties, vehicles, and money are proceeds and instruments of unlawful activity, citing not only drug production but also laundering of criminal proceeds and failure to declare taxable income.

The forfeiture claim adds detail to a case first unveiled in March, when RCMP announced coordinated raids and described “academic and professional research-grade” labs outfitted for mass production. At a Vancouver press conference, Cpl. Arash Seyed said the bust had prevented millions of potentially lethal doses from reaching the streets, calling it evidence of “progressively enhanced scientific and technical expertise among transnational organized crime groups.”

“The fentanyl production labs located in the cities of Pitt Meadows, Mission, and Aldergrove were equipped with specialized chemical processing equipment often found in academic and professional research facilities,” the RCMP said, “with one of the arrested individuals claiming to be a chemist with an advanced degree in organic chemistry.”

But Canadian officials also sought to reassure Washington.

“There continues to be no evidence, in this case and others, that these labs are producing fentanyl for exportation into the United States,” said Assistant Commissioner David Teboul. That assurance has been challenged. A U.S. government source told The Bureau there is no clarity on how the RCMP determined that assertion, noting Canada’s own data shows it has emerged as a global fentanyl exporter, and that the volume of fentanyl precursors flooding into Vancouver’s port far exceeds the needs of Canada’s domestic market. The presence of apparently Chinese-sourced precursors, overseas lab equipment, and commercial-scale output suggests the network was positioned for broader distribution.

The Bureau’s assessment is that the network revealed in the forfeiture case fits a wider pattern. Chinese brokers, operating with tacit state oversight, dominate the supply of fentanyl precursors such as 4-Piperidone. Mexican cartels — particularly Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation — run production and export chains into North America. Iranian-linked transnational operators have been documented in connection to a number of facets of cartel distribution and broader intelligence activity that draws in Canadian-based gangsters involved in the fentanyl networks. In Canada, the Wolfpack Alliance has provided the connective tissue, bridging domestic gangs to Mexican cartels and global suppliers. The B.C. network appears to embody that model.