Stream of smuggled U.S. guns has claimed many Canadian lives

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For a few terrifying moments in November, Toronto’s fashionable Queen Street West turned into something more like the Wild West.

Heavily armed members of two rival gangs, one side ensconced in a recording studio for a birthday party, the others in a car outside, exchanged more than 100 shots in a chaotic gunfight. Only by some “miracle,” police said, was no one injured.

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The Nov. 11 firefight stood out in a year of escalating gun violence in the city, with other episodes leaving dozens of murder victims in their wake. But almost overlooked was one striking fact: all 16 of the firearms seized by police after the shootout had been smuggled into Canada from the United States.

The weapons’ origins were no real surprise. Toronto police say about 90 per cent of the guns used in shootings, including those that cause injury and death, are now traced back to the U.S.

Canada’s biggest city may have a particularly acute problem, but across the country the guns that wound or kill people often turn out to be from across the border.

U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Canada of “flooding” his country with fentanyl, the oft-cited reason for the punishing, 25-per-cent tariffs he has imposed. The evidence for his assertions is slim — just two-tenths of one per cent of the fentanyl seized by American border officials last year came from Canada.

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But heading the other way, the steady stream of guns from America — fuelled by the ease and relative cheapness of purchasing firearms there — is a well-documented problem. And one that has claimed many Canadian lives.

“Having a firearm on the streets in the hands of an immature, inexperienced young person, usually a gang member … who has a beef, the results are going to be bad,” said Insp. Paul Krawczyk of the Toronto police guns and gangs task force. “When most of those weapons are coming from the United States, obviously that’s a big concern for us.”

The national data on gun origins isn’t as robust as it should be, said Jooyoung Lee, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto who focuses on gun violence. “But the data that we do have points overwhelmingly to the United States,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this changes dramatically.”

The smuggling itself can be big business, with a $24-million gold heist at Toronto’s Pearson airport used partly to finance a gun-smuggling scheme.

Yet as Canada tries to counter Trump’s trade threats, little has been said about northbound smuggling. Governments here have been “far too passive” about the contraband coming this way, former Alberta premier Jason Kenney said this week.

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“How many hundreds of Canadians have died from illicit handguns smuggled from the US?” the Conservative asked on X. “Mexico has raised US gun smuggling aggressively with the US government. Why haven’t we?”

Mexico is actually suing a number of American gun manufacturers for $10 billion, accusing them of essentially arming the drug cartels that have a stranglehold on Mexican society, their case heard by a skeptical U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

In Canada, the statistics are indeed patchy, but the data and anecdotal evidence point to a significant American role in Canadian gun crime.

More than 50 per cent of illicit handguns seized by police recently are bought in the U.S., said the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada in its 2023 report.

“Canadian organized crime groups will continue to smuggle firearms at the current volume barring U.S. changes,” added the service’s 2024 report, defining “changes” as making guns harder and more expensive to buy in America — both unlikely to happen anytime soon.

The number of firearms used in crimes in Ontario has been rising steadily in recent years, paralleling a national trend. The quantity seized in the province climbed from 1,725 in 2022 to 2,290 last year. And about 76 per cent of them were traced to the U.S., says the Criminal Intelligence Service of Ontario. Most of those weapons were handguns, with 85 to 90 per cent sourced in America.

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Serious gun crime has been spiking in Toronto, which saw 44 shooting homicides last year alone. In the last five years, 73 to 88 per cent of the firearms used in crime were smuggled into the country from the U.S., according to Toronto Police Service statistics.

After four gunman opened fire in an Edmonton lounge in 2022, killing one man and injuring seven others, police traced three of the guns they used to a seller in Texas. And one of the weapons was linked by sophisticated new technology to four separate shootings in Ontario.

Nova Scotia’s Gabriel Wortman didn’t have a firearms licence when he went on a murderous rampage in 2020, killing 22 people. He didn’t need one. Police say Wortman used three guns he had bought in Maine and smuggled into Canada.

Legal differences between the two nations mean such transactions can be irresistible to criminals looking to make a profit or arm themselves.

Canadians must obtain a licence through a relatively onerous process to buy a firearm, while some guns — like military-style assault rifles — are banned and the sale, purchase and transfer of handguns was frozen in 2022. On Friday, the Liberals announced an additional 179 makes and models of firearms would be added to the list of prohibited guns, effective immediately.

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Gun ownership in the U.S., on the other hand, is a constitutional right. As a result, firearms can be bought easily in many states and, once they’re rustled over the largely undefended 8,800-kilometre-long border, can be sold at a huge markup on the Canadian black market. A US$500 gun purchase typically turns into a $5,000 sale here.

The smugglers use a variety of methods to get guns into Canada, said Trishann Pascal, the Canada Border Services Agency’s executive director for combatting firearms. They come in automobiles, by foot, in boats, even on ATVs, she said. The guns can be hauled into Canada in bags or secreted in compartments concealed inside vehicles, said Pascal.

Then there are gun parts and material for 3D printers sent from the U.S., used to assemble or make guns in Canada. Those bits and pieces are often sent by mail and particularly hard to detect, she said.

The agency has a team dedicated to curbing gun smuggling, there are detector dogs trained to sniff out firearms and gun parts, and the federal government has invested millions in the area in recent years.

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Even so, “it is a daunting task,” said Pascal in an interview.

The aim of any smugglers, of course, is to avoid CBSA scrutiny.

In May 2023, a small power boat pulled up to the shore of the St. Lawrence River in Cornwall, Ont., and its occupants dropped off three duffel bags. The nearby Akwesasne reserve, which straddles the border with its American counterpart, has a long history of being used as a smuggling route. A homeowner who saw the delivery in broad daylight contacted police, providing a description of the vehicle whose passenger picked up the bags.

RCMP officers tracked down the Honda Civic and discovered 53 handguns, six “machine guns” with the serial numbers removed, and 80 high-capacity magazines secreted inside the bags. All the fire power was bought in the U.S.

“The sheer number of weapons is staggering,” commented the judge in sentencing Inti Sebastian Falero-Delgado to 11 years in prison.

A Toronto man got 15 years in 2021 after being caught driving away from Cornwall with 60 handguns and high-capacity magazines that had been bought in Florida and moved north to the border.

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“Those who import and traffic in firearms for profit provide the tools that cause death and injuries and tragedies, said Ontario Superior Court Justice John McMahon in meting out the punishment.

Then there was the brazen theft at Pearson of gold bars flown from Switzerland on an Air Canada plane. The thieves’ proceeds were used in part to buy guns in the U.S., police said. Nando Iannicca, chair of the Peel Regional Police’s civilian board, called it a case of “reverse alchemy … how gold becomes guns.”

The problem is serious enough that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly referred to as ATF, has had an attaché at Washington’s Canadian embassy since 1991.

Christopher Taylor, who’s held the post for the last five years, says coordination with Canadian law enforcement is extensive. He’s provided training to thousands of Canadian police officers, and the agency helps with tracking the origin of crime guns seized in Canada.

When a weapon is traced to the U.S., ATF agents will also often investigate the original, American-based buyer. Depending on the evidence, that person could receive a warning letter or face criminal charges, Taylor said.

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The ATF has encouraged Canadian police to trace a larger percentage of their crime guns — using the serial number on the weapon and other methods to follow the distribution chain to the first retail purchaser. The result is what Taylor calls a more complete picture of gun crime here, with just 45 per cent of those firearms traced back to the U.S. Many of the smuggled American items are handguns that end up in big cities like Toronto, where owning a U.S.-sourced Glock or other automatic pistol is a criminal status symbol, he said. In smaller cities and regions, such weapons are much rarer, with criminals relying on alternatives like rifles and shotguns stolen from legal owners or weapons made with 3D printers, said Taylor.

In Canada it’s not a punitive system

Christopher Taylor, ATF

Meanwhile, he’d like to see much wider use of the Canadian Integrated Ballistics Identification Network (CIBIN), where technology developed in Quebec can, for instance, rapidly match spent bullet casings to a gun involved in lawbreaking elsewhere.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, for instance, recently posted online a letter from the ATF praising Saskatoon police for using the novel equipment to link a crime gun seized in the Canadian city to an unsolved homicide in Atlanta, Ga.

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Taylor noted that Canada sees about 300 shooting homicides a year, compared to around 12,000 in America – four times as many per capita. But he said Canada still needs to stiffen its penalties for smuggling offences. He cited the case of a gun runner who received a sentence of a few months for dragging a sled full of weapons across the border.

“Where is the disincentive?” he asked. “In Canada it’s not a punitive system.”

Krawczyk of the Toronto Police Service agrees the penalties for wielding guns in crimes do need to be strengthened, as do bail laws that now often see criminals commit new offences after being released pending their trials.

When he started his career in the 1990s it was relatively rare for police to seize a gun from a suspect. Not so today, Krawczyk said. Guns, most from the U.S., are everywhere and often used recklessly, he said.

“I see this in the CCTV footage we have of shootings every week —the blatant disregard for people’s lives,” said the officer.

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