By Nirvan Bose, August 21, 2026
Canada’s drug crisis has claimed well over 50,000 lives in the last 10 years; 60 per cent of those involved fentanyl and its analogues. On average, 15 Canadians overdose on opioids every day, with the overwhelming majority of the supply originating from China. These numbers obviously depict a public health catastrophe. The deeper question is whether they point to war, specifically a hybrid war coordinated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Hybrid warfare, as understood by NATO, is a combination of covert and overt means to blur the lines between war and peace with the aim of destabilizing and undermining a target society. What makes hybrid warfare so dangerous is its capacity for massive damage against a population or government while being difficult to attribute to a single actor. It often takes the form of misinformation campaigns, cyberwarfare, and as will be argued, in China’s instance, the intentional flood of narcotics in order to destabilize and control rival nations.
The global fentanyl trade starts in China. A landmark bipartisan US Congressional Select Committee confirmed that the CCP heavily subsidizes the global fentanyl precursor market through undisclosed tax rebates, and has given monetary grants to companies openly trafficking fentanyl online, in some of which the state holds an ownership stake. Additionally, precursor chemicals remain available for open sale on Chinese online marketplaces, despite the state having the internet surveillance capacity to notice and crack down. When US investigators tried to take matters into their own hands and inspect suspected production sites, official Chinese regulators prevented their access, resisting co-operation.
Those precursor chemicals are then intentionally routed into Canada to exploit weak jurisdiction. A recent Frontier Centre for Public Policy report notes that Vancouver and Prince Rupert have become prime drug trafficking targets especially from China precisely because traffickers can count on a low chance of getting caught. Audit data cited in a Metro Vancouver policing review report shows that fewer than two per cent of shipping containers entering the city’s ports are scanned with X-ray or gamma imaging, and fewer than one per cent are physically opened and searched.
Once the precursors enter Canadian borders, they wind up in fentanyl labs, such as those uncovered in Vancouver, Edmonton, and Toronto, where they are used to manufacture finished fentanyl product at massive scales. In 2024, the RCMP uncovered the largest known illegal drug lab in Canada which contained enough synthetic drugs to deliver more than 95 million potentially lethal doses to Canadians.
These drugs don’t just stay in Canada. A recent case in The Bureau ties the Big Circle Boys, a Chinese transnational crime network, to a seizure of roughly 17,600 kilograms of solid precursor chemicals moving through the Port of Vancouver linked to a China-based syndicate supplying both Mexican cartels and the finished fentanyl market in the US. In 2023, the RCMP confirmed the nature of the Canadian drug trade classifies the country as both a producer and exporter of fentanyl and synthetic opioids. Philip Heard, commander of the organized crime unit for police in Vancouver, agreed, affirming that “Most police leaders I’ve spoken to believe our [drug] production outstrips what our domestic demand is.”
American officials have begun saying the same publicly. Testifying before a US Senate appropriations committee in May 2026, DEA administrator Terrance Cole said his agency is “very conscious” of fentanyl now being manufactured in Canada for export south, citing significant seizures over the preceding two months. “Precursor chemicals,” he said, “are increasingly entering through the Port of Vancouver, where Canadian traffickers process them before shipping the finished product across the border, working in some cases directly alongside Mexican cartel operators.”
Taken together, the evidence is clear. China is very likely behind the drug crisis killing thousands of Canadians and poisoning our allies. The question worth asking is not whether Beijing’s fingerprints are on the trade, but what its intentions are in pursuing a narcotic hybrid warfare campaign against Canada.
There are three likely objectives.
The first is a shaping operation: an action taken before or during a larger confrontation to weaken an opponent’s capacity to respond once that confrontation arrives. For example, the 2022 Russian Viasat cyberattack, which blinded Ukrainian military communications hours before Russian troops crossed the border. The Canadian drug crisis has degraded our population’s health, workforce, and pulled billions of federal dollars in mitigatory efforts; these effects will permanently weaken Canada for decades to come. China’s role in flooding precursors into Canada gives Beijing an overwhelming advantage in any potential future confrontation.
The second is an economic advantage. Beijing’s export tax rebates alone can generate millions of dollars in revenue from just a single precursor company. This figure, multiplied across thousands of precursor firms, proves China makes huge profits at the expense of Canadians. Much of this money is either reinvested back into drug production, laundered through casinos and real estate, or potentially used to fuel further hybrid warfare campaigns and illicit activities within Canada.
The third objective is political. A manufactured drug crisis creates a damaged population that has less capacity to organize, less trust in its own institutions, and less appetite for electoral focus on foreign policy. Additionally, it gives Beijing additional fuel to manufacture support towards political candidates and influence Canada’s relations with the world. Most evidently, cross-border fentanyl trafficking was directly cited by Congress and US President Donald Trump as a major reason for the imposition of significant tariffs on Canadian exports. Destabilizing Canada’s relationship with our biggest ally pressures Ottawa to increasingly turn to China for trade, directly playing into their hands.
There is good reason to believe this risk is serious. The Bureau traced a similar campaign to Saipan, where former federal investigator Jim Kingman described watching the Chinese drug networks he once tracked in Texas resurface on the island. “Well, the island’s full of Chinese people and Chinese agents, and they don’t want bodies in the streets. What they want is a weak, pliable population. And so you want drug addicts, you don’t want casualties.”
Unrestricted Warfare, an influential 1999 book on Chinese military strategy by PLA colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, explicitly lists drug warfare among the tools available to a CCP seeking to weaken a stronger rival without ever risking direct confrontation. As part of the broader theoretical framework for asymmetric warfare against Western states, the authors note that China should engage in “drug warfare that causes disasters in other countries and make huge profits”; exactly what Beijing is doing in Canada.
Despite this glaring evidence, Canada has been slow to react; in fact, Ottawa confusingly has spent the past year deepening ties with China, a state with documented willingness to retaliate against governments that attempt to investigate its crimes. Discourse, Dissent, and Strategic Surprise, a study by Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, identifies two explanations for why governments repeatedly fail to identify and react to major international threats. The first is cognitive dissonance; when evidence sounds too extreme or too diplomatically awkward, it tends to lose investigative priority. The second is a conflict of interest; when the body responsible for responding to a threat has convenient reasons to look away from it, threat investigation ends up losing political capital and support.
A country negotiating access to Chinese markets has little appetite for a security file that threatens smooth negotiations, which explains why Ottawa is doing very little to prioritize investigations.
Inaction is unacceptable. Canada has a crisis on its hands and there is good reason to believe that beyond bearing responsibility, the Chinese state is conducting hybrid warfare against Canada. Policymakers and government officials in Ottawa should take this into account when considering future engagements with Beijing, prioritize investigations into Chinese drug precursor trafficking, and treat China’s support for the fentanyl crisis as a serious act of warfare.
Nirvan Bose is a student at Western University studying at the Ivey Business School and is working as a Foreign Policy Intern for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
