RCMP shuts down largest superlab in Canadian history, a 'supermarket of criminality'
A 50-calibre machine gun, a "war weapon," was among 87 firearms seized October 25, proof that superlab operators were ready for anything to protect $485 million in profits
The 50-caliber machine gun, with its telescopic sight looming over mountains of fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, $500,000 in cash, a score of assault rifles and dozens of handguns, made it clear that last week’s RCMP news conference was no ordinary drug squad briefing.
The Pacific Region RCMP Federal Policing program had delivered “a decisive blow to a major transnational organized crime group,” the RCMP announced October 31, seizing sufficient fentanyl and precursors to produce 95.5 million potentially lethal doses, enough to kill every Canadian twice over.
“This is a war weapon, right?” said RCMP Assistant Commissioner David Teboul, pointing to the machine gun. “This amount of weapons seized in one single investigation is unbelievable. Look at the volume of drugs, left and right. This place that our investigators took down was a supermarket for organized criminality.”
Throughout the news conference at the RCMP’s Surrey headquarters, Teboul struggled to convey the magnitude of the criminal enterprise dismantled by a province-wide police investigation that shut down “the largest and most sophisticated fentanyl and methamphetamine drug superlab in Canada” in Falkland, BC, a rural community east of Kamloops.
Search warrants executed October 25 at Falkland and various locations in Surrey and across Metro Vancouver resulted in the seizure of 54 kilograms of fentanyl, massive amounts of precursor chemicals, 390 kilograms of cocaine, 15 kilograms of MDMA and six kilograms of cannabis.
Police estimate the enforcement action denied the crime network $485 million in profits, suggesting a money-laundering requirement that only an institution the size of TD Bank could accommodate.
Equally disturbing was the massive haul of 89 firearms seized in Surrey, including 45 handguns, and 21 AR-15 assault rifles and submachine guns, many loaded and ready for use, as well as massive amounts of ammunition, two small explosive devices, silencers and body armour.
Lost in the numbers was the sobering reality that this criminal organization was ready for war, as Teboul implied, literally locked and loaded in anticipation of a deadly conflict. Forensic investigators are checking every weapon to see if it is linked to targeted killings.
The only man arrested so far is Gaganpreet Randhawa, still in custody and charged with six firearms and narcotics offences, but Teboul insists the investigation is far from over.
In addition to its unprecedented size, Teboul emphasized the sophistication and complexity of the lab operations, which included unregulated chemicals required for the P2P (Phenyl-2-Propanone) process for crystal meth production, which is the hallmark of Mexican cartels.
Mexico was not the destination for these drugs, Teboul said, nor would the RCMP attribute the project to a single gang.
“This is transnational organized crime,” Teboul told reporters, “and the allegiances within transnational criminal organizations are very fluid. This is all about making money. These are individuals who operate by way of convenience and opportunities. They're not necessarily associated with one group . . . These are highly motivated, highly sophisticated criminals whose allegiances change.”
As previously reported on Lotusland, the RCMP has dismantled a number of superlabs in the past three years, but none on the scale of Falkland. Teboul estimated the Falkland operation had sufficient inventory to run for months without resupply, producing as much as six kilograms of fentanyl and 50 kilograms of MDMA weekly.
Superlabs are often a joint venture by regional, national and international criminals whose production can be exported or even sold to rival gangs fighting for the same territory in Canada. The cocaine in Falkland was obviously imported, making that lab a distribution hub for a range of illicit drugs.
The chain of events that led to the RCMP’s October 25 raids seems to have begun with the June targeted killing of Princeton mechanic Donny Lyons, a founding member of both the International Soldiers and the Wolfpack gang, a fluid alliance of elite Canadian criminals with transnational connections.
When the RCMP seized 30 tonnes of precursor chemicals from an Enderby warehouse in September, they were careful to note the discovery of a vehicle registered to Lyons parked outside.
“Let me be clear,” Teboul told reporters, “this [superlab] investigation has unequivocal connections to events that occurred in Enderby.” The Enderby precursors, along with supplies found at the Falkland superlab, were sufficient for months of production at industrial levels, with plenty of capacity to produce for export.
In fact, the investigation included joint action by the RCMP and the Canadian Border Services Agency that “interdicted 310 kilograms of methamphetamine” prior to export.
The clean-up in Falkland has already cost the RCMP some $500,000.
The BC RCMP have had a run of enforcement successes since Labour Day, all underlining the pervasive presence of organized crime in the province.
A Surrey man driving on the Trans-Canada Highway west of Revelstoke was arrested October 8 after police allegedly found 73 kilograms of cocaine, worth about $3 million, in his car.
On October 30, the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU-BC) announced charges have finally been laid against 19 individuals in connection with an investigation started in 2022 that resulted in the seizure of drugs, weapons and firearms in the Peace River District.
Just a day earlier, the RCMP announced the arrest of six suspects on Vancouver Island believed to be involved in the distribution of illicit drugs, unregulated cannabis, contraband tobacco and “counterfeit cannabis-laced edibles, including chocolate bars, candies and chips with packaging resembling popular name-brand snacks.
“Although the contraband cannabis-laced candy bars and chips resembled professionally manufactured, packaged, and quality-controlled products,” the RCMP reported, “they were discovered to have been produced in [the] highly unsanitary, and heavily contaminated modular trailers. A preliminary assessment of the edibles also indicates that they had been treated with unknown amounts of THC, and likely cross-contaminated with other drugs and substances present in the trailers where they were being produced and packaged.”
These were routine fare in BC’s busy drug enforcement cycle, but the Falkland lab is something else, a sign of Canadian criminals operating at an international scale where 50-calibre machine guns are a weapon of choice.
The Falkland enforcement action came the same week that the BC Coroner’s Service reported an eight per cent drop in the overdose death rate to 1,749 in the first three quarters of 2024, the lowest since 2021, but still a staggering six a day on average. The Falkland lab produced all the drugs associated with overdose deaths, including huge volumes of the fentanyl now detected in 82 per cent of the cases.
Despite the frenzy in Conservative media circles about the diversion of prescribed safe supply, especially hydromorphone, that substance was found in only three per cent of deaths. Organized crime is overwhelmingly the source of the toxic drug supply.
Another inconvenient truth for those determined to stamp out public drug use: 81 per cent of unregulated drug deaths occurred inside, almost half in private residences. Street sweeps will not eliminate public drug use nor reduce the death rate. They may, in fact, increase it.