First Nations Free Enterprise

"As a result, targeting raw-leaf products as an enforcement strategy may fall short of the anticipated impact on reserves that are growing their own tobacco."
2013 RCMP Report

Surete Quebec Lt. Guy Lapointe shows seized tobacco at a news conference on April 30. Police said a U.S.-Canadian investigation had broken up an illegal-tobacco ring with ties to the Mafia. Photo: Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press/File

The report lays out the flourishing of the illicit tobacco trade in Central Canada, where some First Nations manufacturers use industrial-grade machinery cranking out 3,000 to 10,000 cigarettes each and every minute of production. FINTRAC -- the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada tracked $100-million related to "suspicious financial transactions", coming out of Kahnawake, Quebec from 2006 to 2012.

This is such a generously remunerated activity that to make even greater profits some manufacturers located on First Nations reserves harvest and dry their very own tobacco. Illicit tobacco manufacturing looms large in the economies of Kahnawake, Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario, and the Akwesasne Mohawk Territory. Police are aware of the presence of roughly 50 unlicensed manufacturers in Canada. Tobacco-smuggling boats cross the St.Lawrence River at night.

Unlicensed equals illegal. Criminal activities, in other words. But these are the activities related to the affairs of sovereign nations. That those sovereign nations just happen to be located within the vicinity of a larger sovereign nation is of little concern to First Nations. They make their own rules and regulations and they recognize their own laws. And woe betide any, be they civilian or of government origin that would have the effrontery of challenging their rights as sovereign nations to do as they will.

Some of the manufacturers, unlicensed as they are, have their own tobacco plantations, and so, have no need to import raw materials. While others rely on tobacco suppliers in the United States and South America. The House justice committee was informed by Geoffrey Leckey, director general of enforcement and intelligence operations at the Canada Border Services Agency, that the amount of fine-cut tobacco seized at the border rose from 35,000 kilograms in 2011 to 148,000 in 2012 and to 192,000 in the first ten months of 2013.

"We feel that it is a plague that is increasing."

Evidence is surfacing that licensed Canadian tobacco farmers are involved in diverting raw tobacco leaves to unlicensed (criminal) manufacturers in Ontario and Quebec. Police are most concerned with the obvious link between this illicit tobacco trade and organized crime. Threats of violence are encountered by police in the active investigation of these problems. In the spirit of protecting First Nations entitlements.