Public Safety Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[Tim Nohara]

That's an excellent question.

There are different types of radar, or at least radar processing, for different targets of interest. This is the language we use. We're tracking vessels on the water versus drones, or aircraft in the air versus persons walking out of a forest onto an open road or field.

I'm familiar with a lot of those areas. Certainly drones are an important new concern. We have good drone-detection capability to see drones carrying contraband fly out of or above those areas.

For persons, there is everything from cameras to sensors underground that can actually see and track people coming out of forested areas. That technology has been well developed. It was included in and originally part of the BITEP, which I referred to.

It's a combination of radar, counter-drone, drone-detection sensors and human-detection sensors, which are what we typically call radio frequency-based or camera-based technologies. They're readily available.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

What blind spots remain to be covered? A lot of technology is being deployed and there is a lot of potential. Radar is not the end of innovation. What are the next steps in terms of technologies to improve border security? As we know, since it is a very long line on a map, the border is not monitored in its entirety.

[Tim Nohara]

Hopefully, first and foremost, it would be an expansion of the proven technologies we have, because they cover a tiny fraction of 1% of the border. That's the first piece—it's an expansion of what we already know. We've spent 15 years developing and understanding how to do this.

There are continuous innovations going on in technology. I would say the biggest area—and I don't want to use the word—is AI. We helped invent it in the eighties, but everybody uses that word, so you're familiar with it. Let me say it's the automated mining, the better mining, of data, so we can pull the suspicious activity out of the background, where normal, good folks are carrying out what they're doing. It's better post-processing. I'll use that word generically. There's lots of investment and capabilities coming there.

Then it's really about information sharing and interoperability. It's not so much the technology—the other witness was speaking to this—but the inability to share information among trusted partners. It's exactly the same thing. When you secure a border, you have partners on the U.S. side and the Canadian side at the federal level, the provincial or state level and the local level. It's about taking the sensor data from one sensor and sharing that information, in an appropriate way in real time or in analytical, historical intelligence, with respective users.

[Marianne Dandurand, Liberal, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Nohara.

Mr. Cooper, your previous answers were based largely on hearsay. Even though you started by saying that you are not an expert, can you tell us about your experience and relevant skills with regard to managing the border between Canada and the United States? Can you elaborate a little more on this?

[Samuel Cooper]

I've been studying, as an investigative journalist, cross-border issues related to transnational crime for over 10 years now. My career started in exposing what is now called the Vancouver model of transnational money laundering. It's—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I'm sorry, Mr. Cooper, but that answer unfortunately comes at the end of the five minutes. You have another 10 seconds, and then we'll need to switch to another MP.

[Samuel Cooper]

Sir, my work as a journalist has been adopted by international academics. The typologies I exposed have now been reported on by the U.S. Treasury, and I have shared my information with the Pentagon, so that shows you my level of expertise.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you.

Mrs. DeBellefeuille, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Mr. Nohara.

I was a member of Parliament for my riding from 2006 to 2011, and I have been again since 2019. In the region, we feel that our land and sea borders, particularly at Lake Saint-François, Akwesasne and Lake Ontario, have been abandoned by the government. It is not investing the resources or making the efforts necessary to catch smugglers or stop arms trafficking and human trafficking. You confirmed to me that technology was withdrawn from the area in 2017, so this is not just a feeling we have.

I would like you to tell me about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pilot project, which was apparently a success but could not continue due to a lack of funding. How much did the technology for this pilot project cost? Considering the value for money, was it an astronomical expense or a reasonable one?

[Tim Nohara]

It's not expensive at all. If you google “BITEP”, you'll probably find an Ottawa Citizen article on it.

The original budget they proposed was, I believe, $92 million. For comparison, the Gordie Howe bridge, if you look generically, might be $6 billion. At the time, that whole stretch—a good part of Lake Ontario and the entire area of concern on the St. Lawrence that you're speaking to—was deemed to be a cost of $92 million, as I said. To do the entire Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway system and provide the surveillance capability is somewhere between 10% to 20% of the cost of the Gordie Howe bridge.

The key piece, and maybe something I can share with you, is about RCMP members themselves. We know we're short-staffed; we know that today. Everywhere, we know it will take years to hire new members. Law enforcement is facing that everywhere. The surveillance-based decision support is a major force multiplier. When you have limited staffing, you can't be everywhere, so your eyes are provided by that persistent radar—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I'm sorry, Dr. Nohara. This is my fault. I should have informed everyone that this segment was for two and a half minutes, and that's already over. Hopefully we'll have more time for Madame DeBellefeuille.

That leads us to MP Lloyd and then MP Ehsassi, for five minutes each.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

I'm sorry, but I have a couple of questions, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cooper, I have a number of questions for you, so I'll try to be brief. Could you take about 30 seconds, please, so that I can turn it over to MP Lloyd?

Mr. Cooper, you talked about the compromise of security and political apparatuses. In about 30 seconds, where does that leave us with our Five Eyes partners?

[Samuel Cooper]

The case of Cameron Ortis is the known concrete example that has driven a deep wall in our partnership with the United States government, first and foremost. With allies, there is a loss of confidence in the ability of the U.S. government to share very sensitive intelligence with the Canadian government, and vice versa, with the Canadian government or RCMP citing Stinchcombe laws for not sharing intelligence or ongoing information, such as with the Falkland lab probe, back to the U.S. This has left us in a near rupture with Washington, and I believe that relates to the tariffs we're experiencing now.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Wow, it's a near rupture. That's fairly strong language.

Beyond the Cameron Ortis case, is there high-level corruption at the RCMP, to your knowledge?

[Samuel Cooper]

I need to answer...because of the gravity of the question related to the Ortis case. Again, in open testimony, much of which was closed for national security reasons, he pointed to compromises that he was aware of when he came into the force and started rising and pointed to other suspected high-level corruption suspects. I believe the gravity of that trial we don't yet fully understand.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

If he is pointing to other suspects and nothing has come of that, then I think we have our answer.

When it comes to this high level of corruption, does that reach our political ministerial levels? Obviously, we have ministers responsible for these things. Does that reach into that political apparatus? At the very least, is there wilful blindness from our current ministers on this?

[Samuel Cooper]

Again, due to the gravity, I'll answer very carefully. I've been informed by multiple credible sources, some of them on the record, such as Dr. David Asher, a former senior Trump administration State Department investigator, that the DEA and State Department had long had concerns that high-level corruption problems in Canada had blocked investigations into Hezbollah. Other sources I can't name said they have a fear that at the ministerial level, or high in the bureaucracy, some sensitive investigations involving foreign threat networks can be blocked.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

I'm going to be very clear here. Our Five Eyes partners, particularly the United States, are worried that at the ministerial level or at high bureaucratic levels, there are blocks to investigations. Is that correct?

[Samuel Cooper]

That's correct.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola, BC]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Lloyd.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Parkland, AB]

In the time I have left, can you summarize how a non-resident import system is being used to bring precursor drugs into Canada?

[Samuel Cooper]

Yes. I've written stories for The Bureau from an intelligence source—who can't be named in this case—who pointed to data that our non-resident import system involves the transshipment of goods from China that are able to be shipped to third party locations. These shipments can then be received in Canada by non-resident, non-Canadian citizens, who use moving addresses and warehouses to receive precursors.

This, I'm told, is a major lack of visibility for the CBSA. They only have visibility to a level where China.... The way I've termed it, you can think of it as an encryption technology app. China can essentially be invisible, moving fentanyl precursors into Canada that can be received by non-Canadians.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Parkland, AB]

So transnational gangs are using basically a federal program to move precursor chemicals into Canada through the non-resident import system. These precursor chemicals are being manufactured in Canada and then shipped out to places like New Zealand.

We talk about fentanyl a lot, but you were talking about methamphetamines. Is Canada now a massive exporter of methamphetamines to countries like New Zealand? Can you elaborate on that?

[Samuel Cooper]

I've reported deeply on Vancouver especially being a transshipment and production hub for not only fentanyl transnationally but also methamphetamine and ecstasy. This has been going on since the early 2000s in Vancouver for precisely the reasons I've testified about today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

You have 10 more seconds, Mr. Cooper.