Op-Ed: With Factories on Six Nations Land, Mexican Cartels Are Using Canada to Smuggle Counterfeit Goods Into the U.S. and Mexico
June 3, 2025
OTTAWA — “Project Panda,” a major Ontario gang taskforce takedown in May targeting a counterfeit tobacco factory on the Six Nations Reserve near Hamilton and Buffalo, exposes a long-ignored reality: Mexican cartel networks have deeply embedded themselves in Canadian territory near the U.S. border—and are expanding in tandem with Chinese state-linked crime partners, using Indigenous land for counterfeit production and cross-border smuggling.
This is no longer just a policing matter. It is a national security crisis—one that exploits Indigenous communities, land, and jurisdictional protections that have inadvertently shielded criminal networks now designated as terrorist threats. Worse still, the threat has long been known to Canadian, American, and Mexican authorities. Yet Ottawa has failed to act.
Stunningly, an explosive intelligence report released last year labeled Canada a “safe zone” for Chinese and Mexican cartel networks to traffic weapons, drugs, and counterfeit tobacco through Six Nations land. “Mexican authorities have also stated that Canada is responsible for 12% of all the lost tax revenue for the Mexican Government from illicit cigarettes,” the report says, and alleges that “companies established in Six Nations have introduced up to 500 million cigarettes a year illegally into Mexico.”
That same report says more than 73 illicit factories have operated over the past 20 years, linked to 173 organized crime groups, including Mexican and Chinese networks.
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