Although US Customs and Border Patrol data reveal that only about 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl entering the US are made at the Canadian border (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg93nn1e6go), and although Canada was not mentioned at all in the annual threat assessment of the US intelligence agencies (https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2025-Unclassified-Report.pdf), there has been a persistent drumbeat of claims from the Trump administration that Canada has been a major source of the fentanyl epidemic that has afflicted so many Americans.
Timothy Snyder, a distinguished and award-winning professor of history at Yale University who has recently joined the Munk School at the University of Toronto, has looked at this conspiracy theory. A student of Naziism, Snyder has no difficulty calling what he sees today a Nazi-style große Lüge, or Big Lie, and argues that the fabrication of this conspiracy theory can only be understood in one way: as an effort by the Trump administration to get Americans to see Canada as an enemy, and thus an appropriate target for crushing tariffs — or military action (https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-absurdity-is-the-point).
This is a sample of the claims by Trump and members of his administration since November 2024 that Canada is a major source of the fentanyl flowing into the United States.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States
25 November 2024, Truth Social post:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-morning-update-trumps-truth-social-tariff-threat/
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States
21 January 2025, media interview
“The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive… The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive. And people are getting killed and families are being destroyed.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________
JD Vance, Vice President
2 February 2025, Twitter post
https://twitter.com/JDVance/status/1886093995819844090?lang=en
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States
27 February 2025, Truth Social post
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114076153524132682
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States
4 March 2025, Address to Congress
“But even more importantly, [Canada and Mexico] have allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens and many very young, beautiful people — destroying families. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/remarks/2025/03/remarks-by-president-trump-in-joint-address-to-congress/
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce
4 March 2025, CNBC interview
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary
5 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9T3zFUJ99g
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Peter Navarro, Senior Counselor to the President for Trade and Manufacturing
6 March 2025, interview
https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/2023262/donald-trump-adviser-attacks-canada-cartel-takeover
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Kevin Hassett, Director, National Economic Council
9 March 2025, ABC News interview
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-3-9-25-white-house-nec/story?id=119591726
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security
11 March 2025, Twitter post
https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/1899460507263795563
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump, President of the United States
2 April 2025, Truth Social post
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114266599439835683
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Sebastian Gorka, Senior Director for Counterterrorism, National Security Council
28 April 2025, interview
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Kash Patel, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
18 May 2025, Fox News interview
Kim Richard Nossal 