What to Know About Canada’s Role in the Fentanyl Crisis

Canada’s last-minute reprieve from crushing U.S. tariffs came after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled a series of measures aimed at controlling the trafficking of fentanyl, a key reason President Trump has cited for wanting to impose levies.

Fentanyl has flooded North America’s drug supply over the last decade, killing tens of thousands in Canada and the United States, and generating enormous profits for criminal organizations using basic chemistry skills, improvised equipment and home laboratories to produce millions of doses.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly talked about fentanyl as a major public health threat to Americans and holds Mexico and Canada responsible for allowing the drug to enter the United States. But last year, less than 1 percent of the fentanyl arriving in the United States came from Canada.

In fact, fentanyl is just as big a public health threat in Canada, where on some days more Canadians than Americans die of opioid overdoses, officials say.

The number of organized crime groups making fentanyl in Canada keeps growing, and Canadian officials have uncovered links between Mexican drug cartels and some domestic crime groups involved in the drug’s production.

In the last six years, Canadian police have dismantled 47 fentanyl labs, including the largest ever last year in British Columbia, government officials said. That lab had enough material to produce 96 million opioid doses.