While opioid deaths are down, the societal harms caused by organized crime appear to be on the rise in the Yukon, according to the RCMP sergeant who oversees crime reduction.
“Organized crime is alive and well in Yukon,” Sgt. Ian Fraser said.
“There's money to be made here.”
Fraser spoke with the News by phone on March 18 about a second report on organized crime in the territory. Although the first report was provided to the News in 2022, the second report, which was recently done, hasn't been made public or provided to media.
Fraser said a number of factors are contributing to a more expansive and lucrative organized crime scene in the territory. He said Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are seeing similar trends.
“Access is getting easier to the territory, with daily flights, the roads are good, and as our population increases, so do the financial opportunities for these organized criminals,” he said.
“When you increase dramatically the enforcement activities, then you're going to dramatically increase the results, and it may look like we have more crime that was just likely previously going on undetected.”
Fraser is in charge of the Yukon RCMP’s crime reduction unit, which started in 2019 to proactively conduct shorter, higher volume street-level drug investigations, the primary activity that funds organized crime.
That compares to the RCMP nationally, which he said has shifted to more global priorities around transnational organized crime, foreign interference and border integrity. With the shift away from longer-term drug investigations at the national level, that work has fallen onto the lap of the crime reduction unit.
“We want the most bang for our buck when we decide who we are going to target,” he said.
Fraser commented on the resilience of organized crime given the resources and money available to them.
“It is sometimes hard to tell what the broader impact of our work is,” he said.
“How many overdoses may have we prevented, or if we seize firearms, I mean, have we prevented certain crimes from being committed? It's quite possible, but it can be hard to really put your finger on numbers.”
Anecdotally, police will hear that after a seizure of fentanyl, emergency room visits go up because drug users are unable to find the drug and they go into withdrawal.
Fraser said he has a better idea of who the players are in the Yukon now. He declined to name the five organized crime networks determined to be active in the territory, but he pointed to reports coming out of the Lower Mainland in British Columbia specific to gang conflict and groups there.
“Sometimes it's hard to know, well, who do they actually work for because the groups are cooperating,” he said, adding police are seeing coordination between organized crime groups in Ontario and southern British Columbia.
“You'll find people together that you believe are associated with different groups that were traditionally believed to be in conflict, and yet they're in the Yukon together. So, it's sometimes a head scratcher.”
Fraser said there’s representation involving individuals in the Yukon that are connected to groups down South.
“But what we're seeing in the Yukon is associates of various groups rotate in and out of Yukon on a regular basis. So, the players, the faces will change frequently,” he said.
“They'll use Airbnbs or residences of other local Yukoners, often drug users that they either pay or exploit the addictions, extort at times for their benefit, and then they'll run shifts. The primary drug dealing operation we see up here is a dial-a-dope.”
Dealers will resort to rental vehicles or using local’s cars, he continued. Police refer to locals that assist in organized crime as “nominees,” per Fraser. “They may pay them to store things at their, drugs or other contraband, at their residences. They may use their addresses to have packages shipped up,” he said.
Fraser said Canada Post is one of the most common ways to get drugs into the Yukon. Cash leaves via the post.
He said the report wasn’t a surprise to RCMP.
“We're kind of that little city, but we've got big city problems,” he said.
“We're doing what we need to do.”
Fraser indicated the report won’t affect or alter police operations, noting RCMP is flexible with its targeting. And they have to be strategic, Fraser emphasized, because on any given day in Whitehorse, multiple people are on the road selling drugs and there's only one unit to investigate them.
He believes the report is more fulsome as a result of the crime reduction unit’s work.
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com
