Alberta’s border crackdown draws support and criticism from experts, rural leaders | CBC News

As one southern Alberta community welcomes the crackdown on border security unveiled Thursday by Premier Danielle Smith, some experts question the need for the investment.

Randy Bullock is the reeve of Cardston County, which sits on the 298-kilometre border Alberta shares with Montana. He said a two-kilometre-deep border zone that will be policed by the province’s new Interdiction Patrol Team (IPT) is an important announcement.

“We need to be proactive and have safe measures in place to protect from that illegal activity,” said Bullock, who added that the mayors of the communities of Cardston and Magrath are in agreement.

But even as Bullock supports the effort, he admits that incidents of trafficking illicit drugs, weapons or people across the border isn’t something he’s familiar with in his community.

“It’s a rare occurrence,” Bullock said. “We have 90 kilometres of border in Cardston County, alongside the state of Montana, and I’m just not aware of many infractions or people trying to do deviant activity along the border, to be honest.”

WATCH | Alberta unveils U.S. border security plan with sheriffs, dogs and drones: 

On Thursday, Alberta introduced plans to invest $29 million to create the IPT under the command of the Alberta Sheriffs.

Featuring 51 officers, as well as patrol dogs, surveillance drones and narcotics analyzers, the team is designed to intercept illegal attempts to cross the border, and attempts to bring drugs or firearms across the international boundary with the U.S. The unit will be able to make arrests without a warrant inside a red zone at least two kilometres from the border.

The plan follows threats from U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, who has said he would impose 25 per cent tariffs if Canada and Mexico do not handle the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs. Trump has specifically singled out the smuggling of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Approximately 20 kilograms of fentanyl were seized at the Canada-U.S. border from October 2023 to September 2024, compared to more than 9,500 kilograms at the Mexico-U.S. border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. 

A small share of that was seized at the Havre border patrol sector, which covers most of the border between Canada and Montana. The sector seized about three pounds (1.4 kilograms) of fentanyl in fiscal year 2024, according to CBP data. 

The number of “encounters” — referring to those people apprehended for sneaking over the border between the ports of entry, according to a CBP spokesperson — vary per month across the Havre sector, with 100 registered in fiscal year 2024.

In a statement to CBC News on Friday, an RCMP spokesperson said the force targets all aspects of the illegal drug trade, with synthetic drugs like fentanyl being a main priority, but noted there’s a lack of data to back up concerns about fentanyl travelling over the border. 

“There is limited to no evidence or data from law enforcement agencies in the U.S. or Canada to support the claim that Canadian-produced fentanyl is an increasing threat to the U.S. Generally, reports do not indicate that Canada is trafficking significant amounts of fentanyl into the U.S.,” RCMP Federal Policing Northwest Region spokesperson Christina Zoernig wrote in an email.

Former CBSA senior official skeptical of plan

While Smith and provincial officials see it as a proactive measure, experts and a former border official aren’t convinced of the plan’s practicality, legal authority or effectiveness.

Richard Huntley worked for and managed southern Alberta’s inland Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) office in Calgary for more than 30 years. 

His office was mainly responsible for the detection, arrest, apprehension and removal of people who were in Canada without authorization. 

One of the challenges of enforcement involved the physical nature of the border between Canada and Montana, Huntley said. Many regions are remote, sparsely populated, and their rugged nature makes the work difficult, especially in the winter.

“Our border is not like the border down east, where you have huge population centres beside huge population centres,” Huntley said. “Ours is way more remote.”

Huntley said he has concerns about the effectiveness of deploying sheriffs at the border, adding there are questions around their legal authority under immigration laws.

Counting on the provinces to solve this problem isn’t an effective solution, in Huntley’s view.

“The patchwork system will not work, [it’s] proven not to work in the past. In the meantime, if the premier wants to send sheriffs to the border, well, good on you,” he said. “But I can almost bet, in a year, they won’t have caught too much. I doubt it, sincerely.”

He said he wants to see better federal co-ordination, increased surveillance and properly trained border patrol teams to manage the situation effectively. Huntley believes this is especially needed if Canada sees more border crossings due to Trump’s deportation plans.

“They’re quoting numbers in the millions of people that they want to deport, right? Even if you take a small, tiny part of that, if you go one per cent of that, we can’t handle that here,” he said.

“We do not have the resources or the capabilities to handle 10,000 people, let alone 100,000 people. We just can’t do it.”

Province needs more information on border crossings

On CBC TV’s Power & Politics on Thursday, Smith defended the border policy as legitimate, adding that the province knows drug precursors and illegal weapons are getting into Alberta somehow, and that current policy isn’t stopping that inflow.

She added if the IPT doesn’t find a problem at Alberta’s border with Montana, the province will be able to deploy it wherever there is a problem of illicit substances arriving in Alberta.

LISTEN | Smith discusses province’s border policy on CBC’s Power & Politics: 

“I don’t think that just because we haven’t found anything yet doesn’t mean we’re not going to find anything,” Smith said. 

“We don’t know what we don’t know, and that’s part of the reason why we’re putting such a strong force all along that border, because we want to make sure that we’re doing what we can to address the issue of both incoming and outgoing criminal activity.”

Most of the team’s work will involve secondary stations checking vehicles crossing the border, and Smith said the province needs to understand a little more about what’s happening along the border.

“We cannot allow for the lack of policing on the border to create an open season for criminals,” Smith said.

‘One cannot have absolute control’

Historically, there has been a struggle to verify if what is being done at borders is effective, said Benjamin Muller, a professor at King’s University College in London, Ont., and a border security expert.

“We can say that means we’re capturing a significant amount or we’re seeing a small snippet, and we don’t really have any sense, and there’s no verifiable or empirical way for us to show whether that’s true or not,” he told the Calgary Eyeopener.

LISTEN | Border security expert Benjamin Muller discusses Alberta’s plan on the Calgary Eyeopener: 

But Muller noted that what’s crossing the Canada-U.S. border pales in comparison to what crosses the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Although it’s not to say that there isn’t more contraband out there than what we are capturing, I think the numbers would suggest it’s probably not incredibly large amounts, because there’s simply not that kind of movement at that border,” Muller said.

WATCH | Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatens more tariff pushback as Danielle Smith unveils border plan: 

Doug Ford threatens more tariff pushback as Danielle Smith unveils border plan

Ontario Premier Doug Ford reiterated threats to halt Ontario energy exports to the U.S. if Donald Trump follows through on tariffs, and is considering banning U.S. alcohol products from the LCBO, one of the world’s biggest liquor purchasers. Urging diplomacy, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said her province will not cut its energy exports.

He noted that $29 million is a considerable amount of money that Albertans might prefer gets spent elsewhere.

“Although I understand the sentiment of a leaky border, that’s the nature of borders. The United States spends far more, has far more resources devoted to its border,” he said. “One cannot have absolute control, as they demonstrate there.”