Canada’s threat convergence – transnational organized crime, terrorism, and hybrid warfare.

By Calvin Chrustie and Dr. John Gilmour, published by Inside Policy, a project of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI)

Canada must shift perspective – from only asking “what is different?” between terrorism and organized crime to also asking “what is similar?” Only by doing so can we understand the interconnectivity of threats against Canadian interests and develop strategies that strengthen resilience.

In Brief by Probe International

In a commentary published by Inside Policy, authors Calvin Chrustie from The Critical Risk Team, and Dr. John Gilmour, an expert on on terrorism, counterterrorism, and intelligence, look at how criminal networks are being weaponized by adversarial states like Russia, Iran, India, and China.

Exploiting this nexus, hostile states use cartels and terrorist entities as proxies to destabilize regions and undermine democratic institutions. Recent investigations reveal that these groups are not just profit-driven; they are integral to state-directed aggression, with Iran using criminal networks for politically motivated assassinations and China actively supporting drug trafficking operations that flood Western markets with fentanyl. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has even been accused of directly subsidizing the export of synthetic narcotics, all while publicly claiming to combat drug trafficking.

Despite clear evidence of this escalating crisis in Canada, bureaucratic inertia has hindered a comprehensive response to these emerging dangers, leaving the country vulnerable to a convergence of organized crime, terrorism, and state-sponsored aggression, the authors argue.

Although Canada has officially designated seven transnational crime groups, primarily Mexican cartels, as terrorist entities, acknowledging their drug trafficking activities as a significant risk, this classification fails to capture the true nature of the threat, write Chrustie and Dr. Gilmour. These cartels, they say, operate more like profit-driven enterprises than ideologically motivated terrorists, which renders the distinction of terrorist entity as increasingly outdated and dangerously misleading.

The question, the authors pose, “is not whether these cartels are ‘terrorist’ in the traditional sense, but whether their actions and alliances produce the same strategic objectives in support of adversarial states: fear, control, destabilization, and political influence.”

Read the full piece at the publisher’s website here.

Calvin W. Chrustie, BA, BA (Hons), LLM is a Senior Partner at Critical Risk Team, a boutique risk management group advising C-suite leaders, high-net-worth individuals, and law firms on complex threat prevention and risk mitigation.

Dr. John Gilmour is an instructor on terrorism, counterterrorism, and intelligence, with the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute and recently at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA).