The UN World Drug Report 2009 was a bit startling for many Canadians. It seems our dear quiet little country has turned into one of the world’s main production hubs for illicit recreational pharmaceuticals. One quote in particular caught wide attention:
“Canada-based organized crime groups’ participation in the methamphetamine trade has grown significantly since 2003. By 2006, law enforcement intelligence noted that Asian organized crime and traditional outlaw motorcycle gangs operating in Canada had increased the amount of methamphetamine they manufactured and exported, primarily into the USA, but also to Oceania and East and South-East Asia. For example, Australia identified that methamphetamine from Canada accounted for 83% of total seized imports by weight, for Japan the figure was 62%. Although only 5% of domestically manufactured methamphetamine was exported in 2006, by 2007 that figure was 20%.”
The statistics for 2008 remain un-compiled, but at last check production of methamphetamines and ecstasy was growing in Canada and the number of seizures was increasing as well. This is no laughing matter. Methamphetamines are bad enough but crystal meth is one of the most vicious drugs ever produced and its Zombified-users can easily be spotted on the streets of many Canadian cities. Teenaged ecstasy users are commonly seen as well, wending their exhausted way home after a long night at some dance club. Both drugs can kill users, but crystal meth is obvious and sure.
The idea of Canada as a key source in the globalized narcotics industry doesn’t sit well, but no one should be startled by this news. We’ve been begging for trouble for a long time.
In 1975 when Canada’s Solicitors General met to create the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada, this country had four types of organized criminal society. The Chinese-Canadian community had long hosted some of the traditional triads, who quietly preyed on that community and on no one else. The Italian/Sicilian Mafia had strong roots in several Canadian cities, almost entirely in Eastern Canada. Montreal had also seen a lively Franco-Irish network that quietly ran alongside the Mafia. Finally, outlaw motorcycle gangs were increasingly making their smelly hirsute selves more noticeable in much of the country.
Thirty four years later we have a much more diverse organized criminal scene. First came the Jamaican Posses with their Rude Boys and Yardies; then came the desperate Vietnamese clawing their way out the wreck of their homelands, arm in arm with the Big Circle Boys and a new generation of Chinese Triads. Overseas insurgent groups like the Tamil Tigers and the Babbar Khalsa brought their criminal fundraising apparatus along; and the collapsing Soviet empire made possible the arrival of their various Mafiyas. Not to be outdone, Aboriginal communities soon gave rise to a new generation of Indian Posses and Warriors, while West African, Latin American and Palestinian and Lebanese criminal networks have also come bubbling up.
Currently, it’s hard to think of any criminal society in the world that does not have some presence in Canada.
Before the usual criticisms come shrieking in, it is important to add two or three points. Immigrants to Canada are no more inherently criminal than Canadian-born citizens are. Secondly, immigrant communities are usually the first and preferred victims of the criminals among them. Moreover, there have been innumerable times when immigrant communities have tried to warn the rest of us about some of the troublemakers we have imported, only to be ignored as we bask in the golden glow of our ideal of tolerance and so fail to see the flaws for which we should have been on guard.
The same process has been at work on the counter-terrorism front. In 1975, Canada had experienced hundreds of terrorist incidents, almost all of which killed nobody and had been undertaken with very simple weapons (Molotovs and pipe-bombs mostly). More than half of all Canadian incidents had involved Doukhobors. Since 1975 we’ve had diplomats shot on our streets, armed embassy takeovers, a very lethal pair of aircraft bombings, and over 500 dead Canadians as a result of terrorism. By and large, we imported all this new terrorism.
Just as the vast majority of immigrants are not aspiring mafia members, so are they not aspiring terrorists. However, the disruptions that immigration brings to a sense of self-identity, community and purpose can sometimes increase the likelihood that a few immigrants will turn to terrorism. Moreover, as their affiliation with their homeland identities weakens, a few will overcompensate by becoming militant about homeland causes.
The price of immigration is an increased exposure to organized crime and to terrorism for the host society. Normally, the price isn’t too steep and with careful planning, the risk can be entirely mitigated. However, ‘careful planning’ is term that one can only rarely associate with Canadian immigration policy in the last three or four decades.
Only Australia exceeds Canada in terms of the ratio between its native born and immigrant residents. So far Canada (and Australia) seem to be handling this high rate of immigration without the trauma we have seen in several Western European nations. However, we have been blind to a number of problems.
| Country | Population | Immigrants | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Argentina |
40,135,000
|
1,500,000
|
3.9%
|
| Australia |
21,825,000
|
4,097,000
|
19.9%
|
| Canada |
33,691,000
|
6,106,000
|
18.8%
|
| France |
65,073,482
|
6,471,000
|
10.2%
|
| Germany |
82,062,200
|
10,144,000
|
12.3%
|
| Italy |
60,090,400
|
2,519,000
|
4.3%
|
| Japan |
127,580,000
|
2,048,000
|
1.6%
|
| Netherlands |
16,517,532
|
1,638,000
|
10.1%
|
| Poland |
38,130,300
|
703,000
|
1.8%
|
| South Korea |
48,333,000
|
551,000
|
1.2%
|
| Spain |
45,828,172
|
4,790,000
|
10.8%
|
| UK |
61,612,300
|
5,408,000
|
9.0%
|
As an aside, at the time of writing, Canadians became aware of a new immigration/refugee policy dodge that illustrates the dysfunctional nature of our system. Teenagers who had entered the US with false documentation were making their way to the Canadian border and declaring themselves as refugees. It seems we automatically accept any claim from a minor. One can guess what comes next once they are secure — the admission of relatives under ‘family unification’ rules, and another set of New Canadians has bypassed our controls…
We have, as we did in days of yore, immigrant slums. Rather than stuffing Italians, Jews and Eastern Europeans into tenement slums; what we now have are suburban houses that get illegally subdivided into a dozen makeshift apartments. Our police and fire departments commonly notice this, but it is puzzling how often municipal building inspectors miss the phenomenon. Of course, if H1N1 really hits this autumn, recent arrivals to Canada will be the hardest hit. Overcrowding, such as we see on Aboriginal reserves, is also a major risk factor.
Canadians like to believe that we don’t have slums anymore or that so-called “White-Flight” is an American phenomenon and not something that we do. But again, one should ask police and firemen about their experiences in our cities… or ask real-estate agents. There are neighborhoods where there is a virtually complete homogeneity of one particular set of new Canadians and nobody else lives in the neighbourhood.
The immigration is welcome, although Canada has definitely not been meeting its stated objectives of increasing the birth rate by importing younger couples that we can readily assimilate. As the Fraser Institute and several highly informed immigration critics point out, we’ve largely been importing the same demographics that already live here – people in late middle age.
The swelling growth of several major Canadian cities was likewise unplanned. Nobody told Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver in 1976 to prepare for tens of thousands of new arrivals per year for the next few decades. No money was set aside for infrastructure development or industrial strategies either. Now we wonder why new Canadians often can’t find meaningful work, why so many hospitals are so crowded, and why the lights get dim occasionally.
All these factors increase our exposure to terrorism and organized crime. There is another statistic to consider:
| Argentina |
513
|
| Australia |
274
|
| Canada |
194
|
| France |
366
|
| Germany |
305
|
| Italy |
358
|
| Japan |
197
|
| Mexico |
388
|
| Netherlands |
275
|
| Poland |
260
|
| South Korea |
197
|
| Spain |
458
|
| UK |
254
|
| USA |
244
|
Japan and Korea might get away with being as thinly policed as Canada — largely because they are both largely homogeneous societies with a strong tradition of social conformity. The first statement is not true of Canada, and the second one is more of a habit (particularly for an older generation) than a tradition.
Our police are expensive, but then we don’t make good use of them. Salaries must be high to encourage retention, particularly as few forces can recruit enough new members. Moreover, Canadian police seldom spend a full shift out in the patrol car (or ‘scout cars’ as they are called for some forgotten reason in Toronto). A couple of hours out on the street is normally enough to generate five or six hours of paperwork back at a desk somewhere. As their routine functions get more specialized, more and more officers likewise become specialists.
Canada has traditionally skimped on our military spending because we are remote from most of the world’s trouble spots and always keep close relations with the nation that owns the most powerful navy in the world – Britain before 1940 and the US thereafter. We cannot likewise have skimped for decades on our police budgets and hoped to evade the inevitable consequences.
We’ve been dopes, and now we are purveying dope to the whole world. Quelle surprise…
