Canada’s border agency made more than 60 seizures in B.C. of methamphetamine over a six-month stretch this year — all destined for the lucrative Australian market.
Canada Border Services Agency officials showed reporters on Tuesday some of what they found — methamphetamine hidden inside wrapped birthday gifts, plastic bottles, a blanket.
CBSA had earlier released details of the largest shipment seized from a container at Fraser Surrey docks in June — 1,278 litres of liquid meth hidden inside juice bottles. Authorities replaced it with a dummy shipment that was delivered in Queensland, resulting in arrests there last month.
“These seizures prevented close to eight million individual doses of meth from reaching communities and put a sizable dent in the pockets of criminals,” CBSA director Rahul Coelho said Tuesday. “Australia is a top destination for exports of dangerous drugs from Canada. As the market for narcotics there offers significantly higher prices than in Canada, this is a way for transnational criminal networks to generate substantive profits.”
In 2023, the CBSA seized eight tonnes of methamphetamine bound for Oceania. Earlier this year, Postmedia reported on the devastating impact of the illicit meth exports in Australia, New Zealand, and South Pacific countries such as Fiji.
Australian Federal Police told Postmedia that a kilo of methamphetamine there can be sold for as much as $200,000 AUD or about $184,000 CAD. The same kilo sells for a few thousand dollars in B.C.
Linell Redmond, the CBSA’s director of the intelligence and investigations division, said the seizures — totalling 397 kg of crystallized meth, on top of the 1,278 litres in liquid form — prove the CBSA’s commitment to disrupting organized crime.
“I think our main priority here today is to really display that CBSA takes the responsibility very seriously of interdicting those exported narcotics,” she said.
“To put it simply, our job in the intelligence section is to narrow down that needle in a haystack so that our border services officers can efficiently identify those trying to break the law.”
She wouldn’t comment on whether anyone in Canada has been charged in connection with the methamphetamine or what B.C.-based criminal organizations are suspected of being involved.
Postmedia previously reported that at the international level, criminal organizations such as the Hells Angels, United Nations gang, Mexican cartels and Asian Triads all cooperate to move their illicit goods around the globe.
One of the 2024 seizures was made March 12, when officers found 194 kg of methamphetamine during a search at the Tsawwassen Container Examination Facility.
Between April and August, a combined total of 85 kg was found in 54 separate packages at the Vancouver International Mail Centre. Another 93 kg was seized by officers in air cargo at Vancouver International Airport between April and August. Two travellers at the airport were caught with 25 kg total in July.
Ravinder Ozla, CBSA’s acting director at the airport, said, “The creativity of smugglers knows no bounds.”
“In one case, our officers found six kilograms of methamphetamines concealed within cosmetic mirrors. And another, they located four kilograms of methamphetamine concealed within trading cards,” he said.
Australian police recently reported three meth seizures from arriving Vancouver travellers.
A 59-year-old Vancouver man appeared in a Brisbane court last week after allegedly smuggling five kg of meth in his suitcase. Two days earlier, another Vancouver man, 38, appeared in a Sydney courtroom after allegedly flying into the country with 15 kg of the illicit drug. And in July, a Vancouver woman was arrested at Brisbane airport with another 14.4 kg of meth.
Redmond said the CBSA works closely with the RCMP here, as well as with the Australian Federal Police and Australian Border Force.
“Our transnational partnerships, specifically with law enforcement partners in Australia, have been vital to the discovery of the methamphetamine seizures,” she said.
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