By Garry Clement

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.

Law Enforcement Paralysis: A System in Denial

Organized Crime: A “Geopolitical Weapon”

• CSIS reports that approximately 668 organized crime groups operate across Canada; 7 are considered “high-level threats,” with 45% active beyond provincial borders.

• Fentanyl superlabs in BC, Ontario, and Quebec show rising domestic drug production and export, including to the U.S., Europe, and Australia.

• Money laundering—estimated at $45–113 billion annually through real estate, casinos, banks, and crypto—is systemic and undermines fiscal and institutional integrity.

• Experts have warned in reporting by The Bureau: Organized crime networks are now “geopolitical weapons,” destabilizing communities, overwhelming services, and weakening borders.

In Canada Under Siege, I outline how our institutions—political, financial, and judicial—are outpaced by threat actors. As recently as 2024, CSIS acknowledged over 668 organized crime groups operating domestically. Yet funding, resources, and political will remain grossly inadequate.

Canada’s failure to implement meaningful anti–money laundering reforms—despite the Cullen Commission and FATF warnings—has left us vulnerable to becoming a hub for global illicit finance. We talk transparency while foreign-backed actors launder fentanyl profits through Vancouver condos. I’ve seen the evidence. We have the tools—but not the leadership.

RCMP units are still hamstrung by bureaucracy, resource gaps, and turf wars. Cybercrime enforcement? Understaffed and reactive. We’re deploying 20th-century structures against 21st-century adversaries.

The big problem: Canada’s enforcement remains under-resourced, fragmented, and reactive—threatening public health, safety, and economic integrity.

Foreign Interference: The Invisible Siege

Growing State Espionage & Foreign Interference

• CSIS confirms Canada faces sophisticated espionage threats from China, Russia, India, Iran, and others through person-to-person networks, digital campaigns, and elite infiltration.

• China is deemed Canada’s highest espionage threat, targeting democracy, research, institutions, and diaspora—using both overt and covert influence tactics over years.

• The Hogue Inquiry (2025) confirms foreign interference attempts in Canadian elections by China, India, and Russia—though so far deemed marginal and ineffective—while highlighting disinformation as the larger threat.

• Government steps include Bill C-70 (Countering Foreign Interference Act), an enhanced SITE Task Force, and CSIS/RCMP/CSE cooperation—but critics say responses lag behind evolving threats.

The revelations of China’s political interference, as outlined in the Hogue Inquiry, confirm what many of us in the intelligence world have warned about for years: that Canada has become a permissive environment for hostile influence operations.

China’s interference isn’t just about elections. It’s about long-term institutional capture—of universities, diaspora communities, tech sectors, and political offices. In both books, I detail how these efforts unfold: co-opting community leaders, silencing dissidents, and using underground banking to fund espionage and coercion.

Russia and Iran, too, are exploiting our open society—not through tanks or drones, but through hackers, gang proxies, and cyber psyops. These threats are not tomorrow’s—they are today’s battlefield.

Fiscal Reality vs. National Security: The Price of Delay

The rising national debt and aging population are limiting fiscal space. Yet the cost of inaction is even higher. If Canada doesn’t fund its intelligence, law enforcement, and border protection appropriately, we are essentially ceding sovereignty—incrementally and invisibly.

In Canada Under Siege, I argue this is a strategic moment. Investments in threat mitigation now—cybercrime squads, a national AML agency, a foreign influence registry—will pay long-term dividends. The longer we wait, the higher the cost of cleanup.

Canada is not yet lost. But as someone who’s spent five decades in the trenches—tracking narco dollars, interrogating gang members, briefing governments—I’ll say this:

We can’t keep policing yesterday’s crime with yesterday’s mindset.

The country must:

• Empower CSIS and FINTRAC with prosecutorial pathways.

• Create a standalone national enforcement agency for money laundering.

• Treat foreign interference as a national security emergency, not a partisan hot potato.

• Forge stronger partnerships with Five Eyes allies to share intelligence, tech, and rapid-response capabilities.

We can protect Canada. But not by looking away.

Former senior RCMP officer Garry Clement is author with Dean Baxendale and Michel Juneau Katsuya of the forthcoming book Canada Under Siege. He consults with corporations on anti-money laundering, contributed to the Canadian academic text Dirty Money, and wrote Undercover, In the Shady World of Organized Crime and the RCMP