Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre is vowing fentanyl drug “kingpins” will receive life imprisonment if he becomes prime minister.
Canada needs legislative changes to deter criminals from participating in the trade, Poilievre said. His comments come as Ottawa ramps up the fight against the deadly synthetic opioid in the face of U.S. tariff threats.
“Making and selling fentanyl is mass murder. Selling 40 mg of this poison is enough to kill 20 people,” Poilievre said in a Feb. 5 statement. “I will lock up fentanyl kingpins and throw away the key.”
The Tory leader compared selling fentanyl to shooting in a crowd with a firearm, saying “even if you don’t aim, you kill people.”
Federal health authorities have noted a dramatic increase in opioid-related deaths since tracking began in 2016. The latest statistics show there have been more than 49,000 reported opioid toxicity deaths in Canada between 2016 and June 2024.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada over drugs like fentanyl going across the border into the United States. Ottawa has prepared a border plan in response, which includes specific measures to deal with fentanyl, such as boosting Health Canada’s capacity to trace precursor chemicals.
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Trump signed an order on Feb. 1 to begin the tariffs, but ordered a pause two days later after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to bolster Canada’s border plan.
Other new measures include creating the position of a “fentanyl czar” to coordinate the whole-of-government effort, and the signing of a new intelligence directive which will increase the amount of information collected against drug traffickers.
“We’re going to be really wrestling this fentanyl scourge to the ground,” Public Safety Minister David McGuinty said while discussing the measures in Manitoba on Feb. 4.
Poilievre’s proposal would take these measures a step further by increasing the risk for criminals involved in the illegal activity. He said he would repeal Bill C-5, which was adopted in November 2022.
The bill removed mandatory minimum sentences for offences such as robbery and extortion with a firearm. The Liberal government said it was an “anti-racism” measure that aimed to reduce the proportion of indigenous and black people in prison.
Mandatory minimum penalties for three drug-related offences were also repealed, including trafficking, importing and exporting, and production of a substance.
Poilievre argued the changes, along with the “failed” decriminalization of hard drugs experiment in B.C., are responsible for causing the crisis.
He said anyone caught trafficking, producing, or exporting more than 40 milligrams of fentanyl would be given a life sentence under his administration. For traffickers caught with between 20 and 40 milligrams, the penalty would be 15 years in jail.
Speaking to reporters in Vancouver on Feb. 5, Poilievre said his plan would be compatible with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that some mandatory minimum penalties were unconstitutional.
“What I am proposing today is not only allowed under the Charter, it is required by the Charter,” he said. “I will protect the Charter rights of Canadians and their right to life, liberty, and the security of the person by locking up the mass murderers that bring these drugs in.”
Only a few grains of fentanyl are enough to kill a person. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says two milligrams of the drug can be lethal depending on body size, tolerance, and past use.
Trudeau and other cabinet ministers responded to Trump’s concerns about Canada’s fentanyl problem by pointing out that the volume of the drug being intercepted by U.S. border authorities is relatively small, especially compared to the quantities coming from Mexico.
Trump’s Feb. 1 executive order countered that a small amount of the drug can kill millions of people.
Canadian government data indicates that fentanyl has been a growing problem. Criminal organizations’ involvement in the trade has increased by 42 percent since 2019, according to the 2024 public report from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada. The number of groups involved in manufacturing drugs has nearly doubled in the past year, from 51 to 99, and 35 criminal organizations are involved in exporting.
In October 2024, B.C. RCMP announced its dismantling of the “largest” and “most sophisticated” drug superlab in the country. The force said the combined fentanyl and precursor chemicals seized could have amounted to more than 95.5 million “potentially lethal doses of fentanyl.”
Poilievre said the superlabs are controlled by organized crime networks and are “mass-producing fentanyl that is not only killing Canadians, it is being exported abroad.”
“Canada has drug-manufacturing hot spot,” he said in his statement.
