As a threat, Canada doesn’t warrant a mention

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/03/2025 (195 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Technology is a marvellous thing. So much information at your fingertips, downloadable in fractions of a second.

Huge reports. Reams of data. And all of it and all of it searchable with a simple, pull-down “Find” function that can lead you straight to the facts you need.

You can, for example, type six letters into that function — C-A-N-A-D-A — and sometimes, in the blink of an eye, get the fascinating and definitive answer “not found.”

Why is this important?

Well.

Take a document like the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community — which, this year, is based on information up to and including March 18, 2025. It’s a major report with lofty goals.

“This report reflects the collective insights of the intelligence community, which is committed to providing the nuanced, independent, and unvarnished intelligence that policymakers, warfighters, and domestic law enforcement personnel need to protect American lives and America’s interests anywhere in the world,” the document states.

The report was released yesterday, at the same time as U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee about global threats to America.

For both Gabbard and the authors of the Annual Threat Assessment, the biggest danger was drug importation by cartels — and more specifically, the manufacture and importation of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which Gabbard said was responsible for the deaths of 54,000 Americans in the last year.

The Annual Report named names: “Mexico-based TCOs—including the Sinaloa Cartel and the New Generation Jalisco Cartel—remain the dominant producers and suppliers of illicit drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and South American-sourced cocaine, for the U.S. market. Last year, official points of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border were the main entry point for illicit drugs, often concealed in passenger vehicles and tractor trailers.”

Also: “China remains the primary source country for illicit fentanyl precursor chemicals and pill pressing equipment, followed by India. Mexico-based chemical brokers circumvent international controls through mislabeled shipments and the purchase of unregulated dual-use chemicals.”

In addition to China, India and Mexico, the report named other countries as being involved in drug trafficking into the U.S.: Columbia and Ecuador, for example.

There were other global threats as well, from ransomware attacks to sex trafficking, fraud, and the smuggling of weapons and humans to online state-sponsored misinformation. The report also mentions Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guatemala in passing.

Then there were the major state actors: China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Missing from the report? Any mention of Canada. Not in relation to fentanyl — not in relation to anything. Our country’s name simply does not appear.

Questioned about Canada’s absence from the assessment, Gabbard said the report focused on major threats.

“So, the president has stated that the fentanyl coming through Canada is massive, and actually said it was an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ and that was the language that was used to justify putting tariffs on Canada,” New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich said. “I’m just trying to reconcile those two issues. Is it an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” or is it a minor threat that doesn’t even merit mention in the annual threat assessment?”

Gabbard, like the annual threat assessment, had no information to offer about Canada’s supposed role, conceding that drugs from Mexico were the threat.

In a few days, 25 per cent tariffs are expected to come into place against Canada, tariffs that the U.S. President needed a national emergency to have the power to introduce.

He justified the tariffs — and upending the trade agreement he signed with Canada in an executive order “under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to combat the extraordinary threat to U.S. national security, including our public health posed by unchecked drug trafficking.”

Canada’s “extraordinary threat” and Trump’s justification for tariffs? In the eyes of the entire combined U.S. intelligence community, “not found.”