Honourable members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I come to speak on behalf of the Ontario Provincial Police and, more broadly, the members of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.
My role is not to comment specifically on matters of federal jurisdiction, although they are intrinsically tied to this legislation and our overall mission in public safety. I will focus on the critical areas in which the current and associated legislation, both Bill C-12 and Bill C-2, and the mandates and roles of our federal law enforcement and intelligence partners merge with those of the Canadian law enforcement community more broadly.
With that in mind, I am specifically focusing on the public safety threats of transnational organized crime, terrorist and extremist entities. I will discuss the convergence of these actors, malevolent foreign actors, transnational repression and the devastating impact of illicit commodities including drugs and weapons as well as human trafficking and transnational fraud, including cryptocurrency and trade-based and traditional money laundering, which impact public safety and the integrity of our criminal justice system on a daily basis.
Border security, national security, the integrity of our immigration system and the other related security measures referred to in the title of this legislation are key to public safety. This includes the safety and security of our citizens in their daily lives as they are impacted by crime and also the more elusive threats of transnational crime, terrorist conspiracies or foreign actor interference. It is the detection, prevention and mitigation of these nefarious impacts on Canadians and the disruption of the actors that perpetrate them that are our joint responsibility—what we refer to as our mission.
I wish to communicate clearly about the role of the OPP and Canada's police services in this operational environment, the complexity of our task, the challenges our investigators face daily, and how legislation such as Bill C-12 and other factors included in Bill C-2 are an absolute requirement for us to fulfill this mission and enhance the safety of Canadians. In my opinion, some are just a matter of common sense, such as lawful access.
By way of introduction, the OPP is comprised of approximately 10,000 members. It is the second largest police service in Canada and one of the largest deployed services in North America. While it provides frontline services for over 300 communities, it is responsible for vast territories that include marine and land border points, critical infrastructure and transportation in proximity to key ports of entry. The OPP also provides a host of specialized investigative services, such as intelligence and investigative capacity specific to transnational organized crime and terrorism and sophisticated investigative supports in relation to cybercrime, physical and electronic surveillance and other services.
Recently, we have watched significant developments in international relations that merit our attention. The United States conducted military operations in the Caribbean that resulted in civilian casualties. In response, trusted intelligence partners have signalled concerns about operational practices and have adjusted their intelligence co-operation. We have seen escalations in global conflict, demographic shifts, polarization, a lack of societal cohesion and increased impact domestically by foreign actors that impact the trust in our public institutions, including the police.
These are significant to us, not because the Ontario Provincial Police have a role in foreign policy but because they illustrate a broader reality. The geopolitical environment is altered. Events in the Middle East, Ukraine and Venezuela impact public safety in our small towns. Further, partnership frameworks that have governed international security for decades are shifting. For Canadian law enforcement, this means we must be thoughtful about how we develop our own operational capacity, how we leverage our intelligence resources, how our legislative norms ensure interoperability domestically and with allies—ultimately, how we build and maintain national and border security within this environment, enhancing the safety of our communities at home.
This is not a cause for alarm. It's simply a recognition that our society and the threats that are presented as well as the remedies, require more complex partnerships and more careful management. Canadian law enforcement must be increasingly nimble in our operational effectiveness. In this, we need your help.
Against this background of geopolitical change, I want to describe the very concrete operational challenges Canadian law enforcement agencies face every day. These are not theoretical but operational, as recently as today.
By way of example, just this month, the OPP seized 46 kilograms of fentanyl in a single operation. That is equivalent to 460,000 street doses. This represents only one single enforcement action against trafficking networks that, by federal health estimates, have resulted in approximately 18 deaths per day or 1,377 apparent opioid toxicity deaths in the first quarter of 2025.
The OPP and numerous services have been very engaged in targeting these trafficking networks, especially in relation to fentanyl and cocaine. Our success in countering these threats is of paramount importance, hence our discussion today.
The first reality is that sophisticated criminal organizations—Mexican cartels, South American trafficking networks, Chinese production operations and transnational criminal organizations in general—are using our country as a critical node in global supply chains. These are not traditional drug trafficking and money-laundering organizations. They operate with unprecedented sophistication. This resulted in the listing of seven criminal organizations as terrorist entities in 2025.
Intelligence indicates that at least seven major transnational criminal organizations maintain operations in our country. They have systematically embedded operatives within Canadian shipping logistics chains and export facilities. They have cultivated relationships with corrupted public and private sector employees, including port workers, warehouse supervisors, and transportation and licensing officials. They understand Canadian supply chain vulnerabilities and they exploit them methodically.
The challenge is not that organized crime exists. The challenge is the scale, the sophistication and the integration of these networks into legitimate commercial entities. A single corrupted supervisor or long-haul trucker can enable multiple trafficking operations, each generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in criminal proceeds. The changes proposed in Bill C-12 will assist in this regard undoubtedly, and we welcome them, but they fall short.
The most sophisticated investigative technique in organized crime today is effective and reasonable lawful access, including interception of criminal communications as warranted under part VI of the Criminal Code, but Canadian law enforcement faces monumental obstacles in this regard. Criminals communicate on encrypted social media applications. That is how they execute money-laundering schemes, engage in terrorist conspiracies and involve themselves in acts of murder, and yet our legislation does not recognize and act on the evolution of technology and the tools and procedures required to disrupt these conspiracies.
As the officer responsible for this capacity in the Ontario Provincial Police and the joint-force joint technical assistance centre, I can assure you that this is an absolute daily impediment with real-life consequences to our citizenry. Bill C-2 contained the lawful access updates that are necessary to be successful in combatting modern, technologically enabled crime to protect victims and prosecute offenders.
The second threat and reality is that first nations communities and territories adjacent to our border are being systematically utilized and exploited as smuggling corridors and contraband staging zones. In May 2025, the OPP's Project Panda disrupted a criminal network operating within Six Nations and uncovered transnational criminal organizations manufacturing counterfeit products, including up to 500 million counterfeit cigarettes annually on first nations territory. These operations employ community members and create a cycle where economic incentive overwhelms longer-term community welfare.
Akwesasne, Tyendinaga and communities along the St. Lawrence Seaway have similarly become primary smuggling routes for firearms and have been host to production of illicit commodities. In October of 2025, the OPP's Project Chase executed multiple search warrants, seizing over 110,000 marijuana plants with a street value of over $120 million.
This is not only a first nations law enforcement problem. This is an effective exploitation of opportunity. This is a threat that will also be faced in areas of burgeoning development in our country, such as Ontario's Ring of Fire and its access to rarefied minerals. Addressing this challenge requires both effective enforcement and collaboration. Bill C-12 provides tools for border security and the enforcement dimension, and they will assist us. Here too, legislative authority for sophisticated lawful intercept, as outlined in Bill C-2, will assist in intelligence acquisition, criminal investigation and prosecution.
The third threat is one that law enforcement has only recently begun to fully operationalize. Foreign governments are conducting security operations within Canada through proxy networks and organized crime groups. This activity is having a devastating impact on Canadians, especially those within certain diasporas. This was expertly addressed by the CSIS director in his address last week.
In September of this year, by way of example, the Bishnoi gang was designated as a terrorist entity. This organization operates globally, with approximately 700 members, including a substantial presence in Ontario.
It is simultaneously a criminal organization engaging in extortion, assault and murder and a proxy for transnational repression, targeting individuals based on their political affiliations or government stance.
