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Canada’s Complicity in Illegal U.S. Military Strikes: When “Public Health” Drug Policy Meets Extrajudicial Killings 

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Written by

Canadian Drug Policy Coalition

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Since September 2, 2025, the U.S. military has killed at least 57 civilians in international waters, in strikes that international law and human rights authorities have condemned as illegal.1 Evidence is mounting that demonstrates Canada’s extensive involvement in these U.S.-led military operations.2 3 

At a basic level, prohibitionist drug policy has been increasingly discredited for its failure to stop the use of drugs and its success in producing harms and suffering. It undermines both human rights and effective public health responses, at home and abroad.4 Instead of stemming the flow of unregulated drugs, prohibition has driven drug production and trade underground, strengthened organized crime, disproportionately harmed already-marginalized communities, accelerated environmental degradation, and contributed to instability, violence and human rights abuses abroad, while fueling a toxic unregulated drug crisis at home.5678 

The United States’ extrajudicial killing campaign is a dangerous escalation of prohibitionist policy, and by falling in line and participating, Canada is abandoning our stated values and risking our international credibility. There is nothing to be gained from attempts to appease the current American president: Canada’s deference to the whims of President Trump and continued complicity in these illegal attacks will only drive harm.  

Take action: demand accountability of our elected leaders. Urge your MP to

  • close the arms export loophole
  • support Bill C-233, and
  • suspend Canada’s role in Operation CARIBBE. 

The Situation 

On September 2, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. military had carried out an airstrike on a vessel in the Caribbean, claiming the boat was being used by the Tren de Aragua cartel to smuggle drugs from Venezuela.9 Since then, at least nine more strikes have targeted civilian boats in international waters in both the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. The death toll now stands at a minimum of 57 people. The Trump Administration has provided no evidence to support their claims of drug trafficking.101112 

While the Trump administration frames these attacks as part of a military campaign against drug trafficking, Human Rights Watch has categorically labeled them extrajudicial executions in violation of international law and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).13 Experts note Trump’s flimsy justification may not be about drugs at all, but rather cover for political interference and regime change in Venezuela.14 

To understand why these strikes are illegal, it’s important to understand that according to legal experts, this situation does not constitute the legal use of military force under international law.15 No armed conflict exists between the United States and states Trump has referenced, like Colombia or Venezuela, nor between the U.S. and the alleged criminal groups involved. The use of lethal force against civilians at sea constitutes a breach of the right to life under Article 6 of the ICCPR.16  

These strikes are the illegal use of military force targeting civilians in international waters, with neither due process nor judicial oversight. According to human rights law, “officials engaging in law enforcement, including military personnel, must seek to minimize injury and preserve human life. They may use lethal force only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat of death or serious injury.”17 Under both international and Canadian law, when someone is accused of breaking the law, they are entitled to be treated according to what in Canada is usually called the principles of fundamental justice, and in some jurisdictions called due process. This includes basic protections like being presumed innocent, facing evidence in a fair trial, and having the chance to appeal.  

The American Civil Liberties Union stated plainly: “Trump’s boat strikes are killing potentially innocent civilians. They must be stopped.”18

Canada’s Involvement 

Evidence demonstrating Canada’s complicity in illegal U.S. strikes is mounting. Canada participates in Operation CARIBBE, described by the Department of National Defence as “Canada’s contribution to U.S.-led enhanced counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.”19 Under CARIBBE, which began in 2006 and expanded through a 2010 Memorandum of Understanding, Canadian Armed Forces ships and aircraft deploy to provide intelligence, surveillance, logistical support, and equipment that enable U.S. military operations. 

The cost? Over $11 million annually in recent fiscal years.20 

While Canada’s Department of National Defence insists that its activities are “separate and distinct” from the U.S. air strikes, such distinctions are meaningless without independent oversight. Evidence indicates that Canada’s participation provides the surveillance infrastructure that makes these strikes possible. 

More damning still, Canadian technology has been directly linked to the strikes. According to in-depth research by Project Ploughshares and independently verified by CBC, Canadian-made sensors likely helped identify targets for recent U.S. strikes near Venezuela.2122 By providing logistical support, intelligence, surveillance, and equipment, Canada is complicit in these extrajudicial killings, regardless of whether it is a Canadian citizen who ultimately fires the weapon. 

The Arms Export Loophole: Legal Cover for Illegal Acts 

Canada joined the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) in 2019, which legally obligates us to ensure that exports of military goods do not contribute to violations of international law.23 Yet Canada continues to exempt the United States from export controls under the Export and Import Permits Act, allowing Canadian-made weapons components to enter U.S. supply chains largely unchecked.24 

According to Project Ploughshares, Canadian components have been found in U.S. weapons systems deployed in Gaza, Yemen—and now in the illegal US military strikes on boats in the Caribbean.25 

General Export Permit No. 47 (GEP-47) streamlines shipments of ATT-controlled items to the United States, where parts can be built into weapons and re-exported with far less Canadian visibility and scrutiny.26 

While Canada claims to champion human rights and a public health approach to drug policy, our export regime is actively enabling use of military force against civilians and ensuring plausible deniability rather than accountability. 

MP Jenny Kwan’s private member’s bill, Bill C-233, would close this loophole by removing country exemptions, requiring end-use certificates, and mandating annual reporting to Parliament on ATT compliance.27 The bill represents a critical step toward ensuring Canada doesn’t enable human rights violations abroad. 

Drug Policy Must Uphold Human Rights Law 

The international legal framework is unambiguous. The UN Human Rights Council’s Resolution 60/26, adopted by consensus in 2025 establishes human rights—not criminalization—as the core framework for international drug cooperation.2829 The resolution calls on states to integrate harm reduction into public-health policy, respect Indigenous rights, address environmental harms, and protect civil-society actors working on drug reform. 

This resolution affirms that drug policy belongs firmly within the human rights system, rather than solely within enforcement bodies like the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. Yet Canada has not fully endorsed or implemented this shift, despite being bound by international human rights treaties including the ICCPR and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). 

Similarly, the August 2023 report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Human rights challenges in addressing and countering all aspects of the world drug problem,” calls on member states to consider responsible regulation of drug markets—a stark departure from the militarized international approach Canada is currently supporting.30 

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health has been equally clear: harm reduction must be central to drug policy, and punitive enforcement approaches that violate the right to health are incompatible with international law.31 

The Hypocrisy at Home 

The contradiction is stark. At home, the federal government touts a public health approach to drugs. In practice, law enforcement and militarization dominate spending.32 In 2025, in failed attempts to appease Trump, Ottawa rolled out a $1.3-billion border plan, appointed a federal “Fentanyl Czar,” and advanced aggressive border laws—moves that significantly increase spending toward enforcement, all while communities still lack stable funding for housing, harm-reduction services, and treatment.33 

Meanwhile, the toxic unregulated drug crisis continues to kill thousands of Canadians each year.34 Every dollar spent on law enforcement and illegal military strikes is a dollar not spent on the things communities need: overdose prevention, responsible regulation, voluntary treatment on demand, and housing—proven interventions explicitly recommended by UN human rights guidance. 

This reflects the global pattern: prohibition fails to reduce drug use but succeeds in driving production underground, strengthening organized crime, and contributing to instability, violence, and human rights abuses abroad while fueling a toxic drug crisis at home. 

What Canada Must Do Now 

To align our policies with our stated values, international law and human rights, Canada must: 

1. Close the arms-export loophole. Pass Bill C-233 to end the U.S. exemption, mandate end-use certificates, and report annually to Parliament on ATT compliance. Implementation should include a just transition plan for workers in defence manufacturing. 

2. Suspend participation in Operation CARIBBE pending an independent legal review of compliance with international law and human rights standards. The review must examine intelligence-sharing, command authority, and safeguards against Canadian-produced equipment, software, and data enabling lethal strikes. 

3. Formally endorse and implement UN HRC Resolution 60/26 within Canada’s national drug strategy. This includes integrating harm-reduction principles, Indigenous rights, and environmental protection into domestic law. 

4. Redirect military and law enforcement funding toward proven community supports. Reallocate wasted and harmful enforcement dollars into supportive, effective measures: overdose prevention, voluntary treatment on demand, housing, responsible regulation, liveable wages, and community-led services. This is exactly what UN human rights guidance recommends. 

5. Support OHCHR reporting on drug policy impacts. Contribute Canadian funding for studies on poverty, race, gender, Indigenous rights, and environmental harms related to drug policy. 

Canada must choose: assert our values or support Trump-ordered murder 

True safety comes from evidence, health, and human rights—not fear and force. Every dollar, every policy choice, and every diplomatic decision should reflect a core principle: the right to life, dignity, and health is non-negotiable.  

Killing civilians at sea breaks international law and perpetuates cycles of harm and violence.  

Canada’s participation in U.S.-led military strikes seems to demonstrate that our sovereignty and values remain conditional on American priorities. To live up to the principles we claim to hold, our elected leaders must take a stand: support the UN’s human rights framework, close export loopholes, and end Canada’s complicity in extrajudicial murder.  

Take Action 

Contact your MP to support Bill C-233, demand Canada withdraw from Operation CARIBBE until an independent legal review is completed, and insist federal dollars go to health and community supports—not warships and airstrikes that kill civilians. 

  1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/10/u-s-airstrikes-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-are-murder-congress-must-stop-them-now/  ↩︎
  2. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/us-airstrikes-caribbean-drug-smugglers-9.6932751 ↩︎
  3. https://ploughshares.ca/targeted-from-above-canadian-sensors-facilitating-unlawful-u-s-airstrikes-in-the-caribbean/  ↩︎
  4. Prohibitionist drug policy, also frequently referred to as criminalization-based approaches, or the ‘war on drugs’, broadly refers to a series of policies, practices, and laws introduced throughout the 20th century that criminalize drug consumption and activities associated with it. While its stated aim is generally to reduce or eliminate drug use and availability, it is now widely recognized not only to have failed to achieve this despite massive, sustained public investment, but also to have driven severe negative consequences, disproportionately felt by marginalized communities. ↩︎
  5. There is a lack of data demonstrating the efficacy of enforcement efforts in Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/corporate/transparency/corporate-management-reporting/evaluation/canadian-drugs-substances-strategy.html ↩︎
  6. A 2020 report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy found that there is “no solid evidence that increasing the intensity of enforcement raises the actual costs for drug traffickers” ↩︎
  7. https://www.healthpovertyaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/REPORT-Revealing-the-Missing-Link-to-Climate-Justice-Drug-Policy.pdf  ↩︎
  8. A 2024 scoping review published in the International Journal of Drug Policy found “consistent evidence that fentanyl-related seizure measures” were associated with higher overdose mortality https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2024.104321 ↩︎
  9. https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1962955342523879613  ↩︎
  10. Guardian, “Colombia urges US to halt strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats: ‘It is murder’” (Oct 23, 2025)  ↩︎
  11. ABC News, “Trump administration conducts military strikes on suspected drug-courier boats in the Pacific” (Oct 23, 2025) ↩︎
  12. WOLA, “Lethal U.S. military strike on alleged drug traffickers sets a dangerous precedent in the ‘war on drugs’”   ↩︎
  13. https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/18/us-maritime-strikes-amount-to-extrajudicial-killings  ↩︎
  14. https://www.npr.org/2025/10/24/nx-s1-5584173/trump-drug-boats-venezuela-maduro  ↩︎
  15. https://www.justsecurity.org/119985/labels-ustify-lethal-force-venezuelan-boat-strike/  ↩︎
  16. Human Rights Watch, “US: Maritime Strikes Amount to Extrajudicial Killings” (Sept 18, 2025)  ↩︎
  17. https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/09/18/us-maritime-strikes-amount-to-extrajudicial-killings ↩︎
  18. ACLU/MSNBC Opinion, “Trump’s boat strikes are killing potentially innocent civilians. They must be stopped” (Oct 15, 2025)  ↩︎
  19. Government of Canada, Department of National Defence, “Operation CARIBBE” ↩︎
  20. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/departmental-plans/departmental-plan-2025-26/planned-costs-major-caf-operations.html  ↩︎
  21. https://ploughshares.ca/targeted-from-above-canadian-sensors-facilitating-unlawful-u-s-airstrikes-in-the-caribbean/  ↩︎
  22. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-miliary-technology-1.7650129  ↩︎
  23. https://www.thearmstradetreaty.org/hyper-images/file/TheArmsTradeTreaty1/TheArmsTradeTreaty.pdf  ↩︎
  24. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-19/  ↩︎
  25. https://ploughshares.ca/targeted-from-above-canadian-sensors-facilitating-unlawful-u-s-airstrikes-in-the-caribbean/  ↩︎
  26. https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2019-230/index.html  ↩︎
  27. https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/45-1/c-233  ↩︎
  28. https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/RES/60/26 ↩︎
  29. https://idpc.net/blog/2025/10/the-human-rights-council-asserts-its-role-in-drug-policy-at-a-time-of-global-change  ↩︎
  30. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5453-human-rights-challenges-addressing-and-countering-all-aspects  ↩︎
  31. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5652-drug-use-harm-reduction-and-right-health-report-special  ↩︎
  32. The 2023 Horizontal Evaluation of the Canadian Drugs and Substances Strategy (CDSS) found that even before recent funding announcements, enforcement already consumed 58% of federal funding, compared with only 18% for prevention, 13% for treatment, 8% for harm reduction, and 3% for research. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/corporate/transparency/corporate-management-reporting/evaluation/canadian-drugs-substances-strategy.html  ↩︎
  33. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/12/the-government-of-canadas-border-plan-significant-investments-to-strengthen-border-security-and-our-immigration-system.html  ↩︎
  34. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/substance-related-harms/opioids-stimulants/  ↩︎

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