Manitoba premier Wab Kinew announced he’s going to deploy conservation officers (COs) to the Canada-U.S. border and pay RCMP officers overtime in order to bolster security.
The announcements came after U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened Canada and Mexico in late November via a social media post, saying he’ll impose a 25 per cent tariff on all goods entering the U.S. on the day he takes office [Jan. 20, 2025]. Trump said the tariff is a response to what he claims is an “invasion” of drugs and illegal aliens entering America from the two countries.
Canada’s federal government and provincial and territorial leaders met a few times over the past few weeks to come up with strategies to address Trump’s threat, which included a show of muscle from Ontario premier Doug Ford, who doubled down on his threat to cut off energy flowing from Ontario to the U.S., and the premiers of Manitoba and Alberta announcing their plans to shore up their respective borders with additional policing resources to show the U.S. they’re doing their part to strengthen security.
Kinew told media at a Christmas Cheer Board event on Dec. 6 that he’ll be deploying conservation officers to the border, and last week said the government will pay overtime for federal police at the border.
Offering no further details on how many COs would work the border and what duties they’ll be carrying out, Kinew said the transfer of COs would not affect other areas where they normally serve.
Conservation officers are Manitoba’s third largest law enforcement agency and fall under the provincial department of Natural Resources and Indigenous Futures. COs conduct checks on anglers, commercial fishers, hunters, trappers and other resource users, police provincial parks, take part in wildfire suppression and investigate the causes of wildfires, provide enforcement to the fishing, mining and forestry sectors, deal with human-wildlife conflict, assist at watercraft inspection stations and help with search and rescue operations in backcountry regions, among other duties.
Commercial fisher and analyst Bill Buckels said Manitoba COs are a finite resource and they could potentially be pulled from monitoring the commercial and recreational fisheries to serve along the border. But he’s all for Kinew’s plan to have them at the border as they’re better equipped than Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) staff to work outdoors in all kinds of terrain.
“The COs will have to go where the greatest need is. We’re going to need every available public service officer who is savvy with terrain out there along the border,” said Buckels. “CBSA officers don’t know the land as well as COs know it. The COs will likely be out in the bush or on snowmobiles or quads. We’re going to need extra people searching every vehicle as though it’s a police checkpoint program we see every Christmas.”
Buckels said Manitoba is “sadly understaffed” when it comes to CBSA staff. Compiling and analysing data from Statistics Canada, CBSA, the Manitoba government, and the Manitoba Government and General Employees Union (MGEU), Buckels estimates that Manitoba is short 360 CBSA officers.
“The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has only 1,208 officers in the Prairie Region, which spans Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories and which in itself can be interpreted as a ‘cruel joke’ when compared proportionally to the rest of Canada since, overall, CBSA has around 16,500 employees, including more than 8,500 frontline employees,” said Buckels, who shared his concern with Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman MP James Bezan. “When we look at how that breaks down by our population of 41 million on a per province basis, we are likely not getting our money’s worth here in Manitoba or, indeed, in the Prairie Region. The Prairies sadly have less than half of its fair entitlement of 3,069 employees, which means that Manitoba could be approximately 360 officers short.”
Conservation officers are also in short supply, with COs moving to other provinces for higher pay and successive Manitoba governments having done little to plug the drain, he said.
“In December 2024, Progressive Conservative critic [Greg Nesbitt] said Manitoba Conservation was understaffed, with only around 90 field officers instead of the 130 it should have,” said Buckels. “Yet for the many years when the PCs held power, including in 2021, only 76 COs were left in the field, with only 15 employees at headquarters, and Manitoba was losing experienced COs to Saskatchewan where they earned more in entry level positions than the PCs were willing to pay. It’s obvious that the situation hasn’t changed no matter who gets elected.”
In March 2023, before the NDP formed government later that year, NDP leader Wab Kinew said in a news release that his party obtained government documents showing that the number of vacant CO positions “has increased to 21 out of 102 total positions” and that vacancies are “rising year over year.”
A spokesperson for the provincial department of natural resources and indigenous futures was unable to share details on how many COs will be deployed to the border and what they’ll be doing, but did confirm the number of Manitoba’s “active” COs.
“Details on the assignments and/or deployment of conservation officers to assist in monitoring the border with the United States are still being worked out,” said the spokesperson on Dec. 13. “There are currently 78 active conservation officers working in the field ….”
The movement of fentanyl, in particular, from Canada to the U.S. is a mere fraction of what gets smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, and Canadian politicians have offered this fact in response to Trump’s assertion that there’s an “invasion.”
CBSA’s vice president of intelligence and enforcement Aaron McCrorie told the CBC on Dec. 13 that fentanyl devastates communities, and that Canada and the U.S. have a “shared interest” and “shared responsibility” in stopping it. But Canada is not a key player in relation to its movement across the border.
Citing U.S. and Canadian agency data, McCrorie said “Canada is not a significant source of fentanyl for the United States” and that “98.8 per cent is coming from Mexico.”
Between January and October, CBSA seized 4.9 kilograms of fentanyl, which was included in a total illegal drug seizure of 25,600 kilograms, according to a Dec. 9 CBSA news release. CBSA also seized 7,770 weapons, including 1,274 prohibited weapons and 750 firearms that came from the U.S. during that 10-month period. Further, CBSA identified 34,000 foreign nationals trying to enter Canada from the U.S.
Federal minister of public safety Dominic LeBlanc repeated last week that border security is a “shared responsibility.”
The federal government is expected to provide more information about border security and funding support in its fall economic statement, scheduled for release on Dec. 16.
