Thoughts on BC Politics and More

The Carney government’s move to let police forces seize and search small mail will mostly affect people who order illicit drugs through the post and represents a doubling down on “war on drugs” policies, experts say. “It’s not surprising because police organizations have been lobbying for this for over a decade,” said Ted Rutland, an associate professor of geography, planning and environment at Concordia University. Rutland studies urban policing and security as part of his work ... CLICK HERE for the full story 

Although official confirmation has not yet been provided, the federal government has indicated its willingness to re-negotiate the 20-year RCMP Police Service Agreements (PSA) that are set to expire in 2032. This comes as local governments, including UBCM, continue to call on the federal government to directly involve local governments as part of any negotiations.  Following the federal government’s 2022-2024 assessment of RCMP contract policing, the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs advised of the intention to work with provinces and territories on the renegotiation of the PSAs. However, a March 2025 white paper by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, which recommended that the federal government end its contract policing program, combined with the subsequent federal election, re-introduced uncertainty. In October, as part of the Federal-Provincial-Territorial Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Justice and Public S...

IMAGE CREDIT:  NDTV Conservatives are responding to new allegations that an RCMP national security assessment alleges the Lawrence Bishnoi gang has acted “on behalf of” the Indian government, revelations that surfaced as Premier David Eby continues a trade mission to India. Statement from Interim Leader Trevor Halford, MLA for Surrey-White Rock: “Here at home, British Columbians are dealing with the consequences of a growing transnational terrorist organization: rising threats of extortion, intimidation, and violence. Meanwhile, the Premier is in India overseas chasing deals that have failed to materialize. No one will invest in a province where people don’t feel safe, where organized crime is allowed to grow, and where government leadership is so far removed from reality that public safety gets sidelined. Economic growth depends on safety, stability, and trust. It’s unacceptable that British Columbians are being left to wonder whether the threats posed by the Bishnoi gang, a...

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is limiting the use of its 973 Chinese-made drones to non-sensitive operations, stating the devices present "high security risks, primarily due to their country of origin." Chinese drones make up about 80 per cent of the federal police force's fleet of 1,230 remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), which are used to monitor the Canada-U.S. border and in various police operations. In a written response to the national security committee of the Senate, the RCMP said replacing the drones would cost over $30 million, approximately $35,000 per device. The high cost is related to the fact that non-Chinese drones are nearly twice as expensive, the RCMP said ... CLICK HERE for the full story  

Canada’s federal lobbying commissioner and the RCMP are under new scrutiny from a national transparency watchdog demanding to know whether the lobbying regulator has concealed rulings in nine violations that were referred to the Mounties — and later quietly sent back without prosecution — in a wide range of cases from the ArriveCAN procurement imbroglio to the explosive SNC-Lavalin affair, in which a former attorney general told the RCMP they could look at criminal obstruction charges. The allegations relate to testimony now before a Parliamentary ethics committee, which has revived long-standing concerns from critics about Canada’s politically appointed watchdogs — and about the RCMP itself. Framing his most pointed suggestion — that the RCMP may be politically neutered ... CLICK HERE for the full story 

When RCMP Const. Calvin Swustus got the call to travel to BC’s Lower Mainland for a week of training in 1995, he knew was being asked to join some sort of specialized task force, but that’s about it. “When I arrived, I looked around and realized that all the First Nations police members were there,” Swustus recalled in a recent interview with the IJF. “After the first day we realized that, ‘Oh we're going to be taking on investigating residential school crimes against our people.’” The mission hit close to home for Swustus, a member of the Cowichan Tribes who was then 17 years into his career with Vancouver Island RCMP. As a teenager, he’d lost friends to suicide stemming from the trauma they’d experienced at the Kuper Island Indian Residential School. Now, he was being inducted into the RCMP Native Indian Residential School Task Force, a team assembled with the ambitious goal of investigating every single allegation of sexual assault and violence at 15 residential schools in BC  ....

It’s baffling that governments seem to think giving police more money will somehow magically solve problems. The latest example is the BC government’s funding for a 12-officer RCMP unit to combat human trafficking — an announcement that came in the same week The Tyee reported on the closure of PACE Society, which has provided services to sex workers in Vancouver for 31 years. Human trafficking takes many forms, from forced labour to sexual exploitation. When it comes to vulnerable people being coerced into sex work, organizations like PACE are much more likely to identify cases of trafficking and provide help than police ... CLICK HERE for the full story

In this sweeping conversation with Jason James of BNN, I discuss some of The Bureau’s biggest investigations of the summer — including the widening pattern of prosecutorial failures in major synthetic narcotics and money laundering cases in British Columbia. We spotlight the recent collapse of charges against a Chinese-state linked scientist accused of importing over 100 kilograms of precursors for MDMA production. I connect the networks involved to entities previously entangled in the RCMP’s infamous E-Pirate probe, then broaden the lens to examine organized crime's penetration of British Columbia institutions — including the province’s auto insurer. We also dig into the geopolitical and financial stakes behind Premier David Eby and BC Ferries’ controversial $1-billion deal to build vessels in China with a military-linked state shipyard — a project reportedly financed through a federal development bank overseen by Canada’s new Housing Minister, Gregor Robertson. As Vancouver’s for...

For 42 years, the Penticton Shooting Sports Association (PSSA) has served as a vital training hub for police, a centre for firearms safety, and a place for youth education in the South Okanagan. But the land leased by the PSSA — located between Penticton and Summerland — has been declared “surplus” by the federal government and is now in the final stages of the divestment process ... ... RCMP, Parks Canada, the Sheriff’s Department, and both the Army and Air Cadets regularly use the facility for firearms qualification and tactical training. Approximately 100 RCMP officers rely on the PSSA for their mandated annual certification. Staff Sgt. Bob Vatamaniuck of the Penticton RCMP detachment has publicly backed the association, calling the facility “essential” for training that must be done in a secure, secluded environment. “The PSSA not only has the exact specifications we require, but its seclusion from the public allows us to train with enhanced law enforcement tactical pri...

The Gathering Storm: Where Organized Crime Meets Espionage From my earliest days in the RCMP through years embedded with global financial intelligence units, one reality has remained consistent—and it’s now accelerating: Canada is a soft target. In Undercover in the Shady World of Organized Crime, I chronicled how criminal empires—from Italian syndicates to Asian Triads—operated in the shadows, laundering vast fortunes through our banks, casinos, and real estate. Back then, the fight was tactical. Today, it’s existential. We are witnessing a merger of interests between transnational organized crime (TOC) and hostile foreign states. China’s United Front Work Department and the PRC’s intelligence arms don’t just exploit criminal infrastructure—they integrate with it. Safe houses, shell companies, and crypto laundering chains—they’re tools of both cartels and foreign governments. This convergence is the new hybrid threat, and Canada has not adapted ... CLICK HERE for the full story

The head of a national team set up to support police departments investigating cases of extortion in cities across Canada said Surrey’s municipal police force is working well with the RCMP, but could not comment on why significant arrests have been made in Ontario and Alberta and not BC. RCMP Supt. Adam MacIntosh said there is a high level of “competence and cooperation” between SPS and RCMP officers investigating the series of extortions targeting South Asian businesses. His team was created in the fall of 2023 to increase coordination between police departments in Canadian cities, such as Brampton, Edmonton and Surrey, which were all seeing a rise in extortion cases at that time. Since then, police in Brampton and Edmonton have made arrests, while the attacks in Surrey appear to be ramping up again ... CLICK HERE for the full story

... the 92-page report, produced under a post-operation initiative called Project Natterjack, paints a portrait of intelligence breakdowns, governance failure, and inappropriate political influence—particularly from senior officials in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government. The review, first obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, included survey responses from 1,641 RCMP officers and personnel deployed during the protests, which paralyzed downtown Ottawa and disrupted key international border crossings. Yet an element overlooked in previous analyses of Natterjack may be its most damning: the complete absence of an organizing vision across Canada’s security and intelligence arms... CLICK HERE for the full story

Fentanyl overdoses. Dirty money flooding real estate. Election interference. Foreign-backed antisemitism igniting across Canadian campuses. These are not isolated crises, warns Calvin Chrustie, a veteran RCMP national security and transnational crime investigator. They are interlinked weapons in an accelerating campaign of hybrid warfare targeting Canada—one that is hollowing out state institutions, fracturing social cohesion, and damaging our alliances. In the view of Chrustie, like other North American experts recently interviewed by The Bureau, adversarial regimes are exploiting Canada's systemic vulnerabilities to destabilize the country from within, with consequences extending into the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Japan, and beyond. In a sweeping interview with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Chrustie laid out a sobering account of how foreign states—chiefly China and Iran—are combining their intelligence capabilities with organized crime networks and...

Two Vancouver police officers were attacked and one set on fire while on patrol on the Downtown Eastside. The suspect was wanted on 10 outstanding warrants, several for violent offences. In Parksville, a man was attacked in his own home. An assailant rammed a car through his garage, broke in, wrapped a chain around his neck and threatened to kill him. The suspect was arrested, then released on $500 bail. Last month, the RCMP dismantled three highly sophisticated drug labs — staffed with chemists and stuffed with industrial equipment — in Pitt Meadows, Mission and Aldergrove. Two suspects were arrested, then released. Those and other horror stories were recounted in question period this week as the BC Conservatives dramatized the failings on public safety, random violence and bail reform ... CLICK HERE for the full story

The section on firearms is designed to appeal to the ignorant. Honestly, I read the section on guns and I laughed. I laughed because Mark Carney and the Liberals have no idea how the Firearms Act works and rather than get a briefing on it, they just spew garbage. Automatically revoking gun licenses for people convicted of violent crimes, particularly when those crimes include intimate partner violence . Well that is already in the Firearms Act. Anyone that is arrested for any serious crime gets their PAL/RPAL suspended. The police already confiscate people's firearms in that instance and even when a firearms owner is found not guilty they have to apply to the court to get their license reinstated and their firearms back. That doesn't always happen. Passing legislation making the RCMP responsible for classifying new firearm models rather than the gun industry. The Liberals passed amendments giving the RCMP that power 2 years ago. Are the Liberals even aware o...

An internal RCMP report warns of an increase in “stalking and harassment” of politicians during this election year, citing anti-Israel street demonstrations as a major concern. “Flash protests present a significant challenge to law enforcement’s ability to provide sufficient protection for VIPs,” the report stated ... ... 2025 campaign “will yield additional increases in threats,” according to the report, titled Evaluation Of The Implementation Of The Protective Behavioural Analysis Unit ... CLICK HERE for the full story

In an explosive RCMP transcript, Jody Wilson-Raybould told an investigator that she believed Justin Trudeau and his office had unchecked powers, as evidenced by their potentially unlawful pressure for intervention to block a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, and as Attorney General, she believed Canada needed laws to protect its democracy from the excessive power of the prime minister ... CLICK HERE for the full story

The New Democrats were put on the defensive last year by mounting evidence that government-approved safer supply drugs were being diverted to the illicit market. “More BC detachments report having seized suspected safe supply drugs,” read a March 2024 headline in the Northern Beat online news service, summarizing evidence from the RCMP in Prince George, Campbell River and Nanaimo. Reporter Fran Yanor later expanded the list to five detachments after she herself witnessed drug transactions outside pharmacies in Victoria and Duncan. The shocking details of what was happening emerged from a search warrant obtained by reporter Jason Proctor of the CBC. He disclosed how Prince George RCMP spent 10 days in March “mounting a surveillance operation on a woman who stood outside a downtown pharmacy each morning trading illicit drugs for safer supply medication ... CLICK HERE for the full story

Newly surfaced documents have reignited scrutiny of Project Sidewinder, a 1990s joint investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) into allegations that Chinese state interests, organized crime, and influential corporate figures were converging to reshape Canada’s economic and political landscape. The report singled out Chinese entities now facing intensified scrutiny in Washington, as US officials move to counter Beijing’s expanding influence over critical global infrastructure, including its strategic footholds in international shipping hubs such as the Panama Canal. An RCMP Chief Superintendent backed a forceful June 1997 Sidewinder draft that named Hong Kong tycoons, among them Li Ka-Shing, and highlighted major shipping and investment companies like Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. and CITIC. Yet CSIS leadership disputed the draft’s conclusions, according to a 1999 review by the Security Intelligence Review Com...

Premier David Eby’s appointment of Surrey-Guildford MLA Garry Begg as BC’s solicitor general could signal that significant police reform is on the way, according to a former solicitor general. Kash Heed, a former police officer who was minister of public safety and a solicitor general under a BC Liberal government from 2009 to 2013, says the appointment of Begg has made him more encouraged than ever that substantive reform could take place, including a move to a provincial police force. Begg, a retired RCMP inspector who finished his nearly 40-year career in Surrey, was a member of a 10-person all-party committee of MLA recommended sweeping changes to policing in 2022, including dumping the RCMP and moving to a provincial police force as in Ontario and Quebec ... CLICK HERE for the full story