Toronto-area drug dealers’ push north leads to ‘tragedy’ in First Nation communities

First Nations leaders and police in northern Ontario say they have seen an increase in violence and arrests related to drug trafficking as Toronto-area gangs exploit vulnerable community members and youth recruited from southern parts of the province.

While gangs from the south have long cashed in on the illicit drug market in northern Ontario, they continue to expand their footprint in communities struggling with addiction and are increasingly using teens from the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas in the process, officials say.

Traffickers use cities such as Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Sault. Ste Marie as hubs to supply drugs for locals and smuggle them into neighbouring Indigenous communities, according to police officials, First Nation chiefs and experts who spoke with The Canadian Press.

In Wikwemikong First Nation on Manitoulin Island, southwest of Sudbury, tribal police Chief Ron Gignac said drug-related charges laid against suspects from the GTA increased by 360 per cent in 2025 compared to the year before.

“We started seeing a pure product – and I mean really high-quality cocaine and fentanyl – predominantly coming into the territory,” he said.

It’s part of an “escalation” in drug trafficking over the last year that has also infiltrated the territories of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 First Nations in northern Ontario, said Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler. Drugs are also coming into the communities across the Manitoba border, he said.

“That seems to be the pattern that our communities are seeing more and more, is the drug pipeline coming in,” Fiddler said. “People are worried about the level of violence that they’re seeing in their communities.”

The Anishinabek Police Service, which serves First Nations communities in both southern and northern Ontario, said while the influx of traffickers from the south is nothing new, the force is now intercepting drugs from the GTA “with increasing frequency.”

The police force said it has conducted more than a dozen investigations in the past five years that led to drugs and weapons seizures and arrests of suspects from the Toronto area, including one last May that led to the arrest of two youths and the seizure of a quarter kilogram of fentanyl.

“Some of these individuals are suspected to have gang ties and carry or have access to firearms, and some have extensive criminal backgrounds involving the trafficking of illicit drugs as well as very violent crimes from assaults to homicide,” the force said in a statement.

Anishinabek police said the human impact of the illegal drug trade has been immense in the 16 Indigenous communities it serves, noting that some have declared a state of emergency over the opioid crisis.

“This ongoing trend is particularly concerning as we know from experience that illicit drugs are drivers of violence and tragedy in our communities,” it said.

Mark Mendelson, a former Toronto police detective who runs a consulting firm, said some Toronto-area drug traffickers are setting up “pop-up” stores in northern communities by overtaking the homes of local people who struggle with addiction and often live in subsidized housing. That allows dealers to stay out of sight, he said.

“They set up these shops in these individuals’ apartments and they provide them with free drugs as a form of payment of rent,” he said.

He said the dealers often overstay and the host cannot do anything to remove them from their home.

“It’s almost like a form of extortion for these guys,” he said. “Either you’re going to go to jail for being part of this drug conspiracy, or at the very least you’re going to lose your apartment.”

Thunder Bay in particular has become a magnet for drug traffickers and their dens due to its geographical location and proximity to the Trans-Canada Highway, police say.

Dennis Vincent, a detective with the Thunder Bay police intelligence unit, said 60 search warrants executed by the force in 2024 involved home takeovers by drug dealers, calling the number “quite significant.”

He said around one-third of suspects arrested on drug-related charges in the city are from the GTA, with their numbers jumping from seven in 2023 to around 20 in 2025.

The ripple effect of drug-related crimes is devastating, he said. “This would lead to other societal problems, everything from overdoses to property crime, to retail theft to pay for such habits.”

Youth from southern Ontario, and especially the GTA, are also increasingly getting sucked into the expansion of drug trafficking operations in the north, police and community leaders say.

“They’re almost used as pawns,” Vincent said. “We’ve seen many times where it’s difficult sometimes to find that higher level dealer, but these youth would be arrested when we conduct a search warrant.”

Fort William First Nation, a community adjacent to Thunder Bay, has seen an increased presence of young men from southern Ontario in recent years, Chief Michele Solomon said.

They are from marginalized communities and are being exploited by gangs, she said.

“They’re young racialized people that are not from this community, have no connection to this community other than through illicit drug involvement,” Solomon said.

Last October, two teenagers from Brampton were charged with second-degree murder after a deadly shooting in Ginoogaming First Nation, about 300 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. Nishnawbe Aski Nation has said the shooting was drug-related, prompting leaders to re-declare a state of emergency related to illegal drugs and deaths in the community.

Poverty, lack of addiction supports and inadequate funding for First Nations police forces fuel the issue, community leaders say.

Gignac, the chief of Wikwemikong Tribal Police Service, also pointed to another factor that he believes contributes to the rise in drug-related charges in his community.

Wikwemikong is among 21 First Nations in northeastern Ontario that received per capita payouts as part of the $10-billion Robinson Huron Treaty settlement with Ottawa and the province — retroactive payments for access to natural resources on the members’ traditional territory. Those First Nations are distributing between $100,000 and $220,000 to their members, depending on which community they belong to, according to local media reports.

“(Drug dealers) are making more money on the residents here,” Gignac said. “They’ve seen the per capita distribution and we know this from speaking with people who have been arrested.”

But Chief Solomon of Fort William First Nation, which also received part of that settlement, disagrees.

“Many people in this community have done really great things with their financial distributions that they’ve received,” she said.

“We’ve seen the building of new homes, we’ve seen beautiful renovations to homes, we’ve seen the purchase of new vehicles … I don’t want it to be portrayed like … these funds have just contributed to the dire situation of a community.”

Gignac said his police force has secured funding from the federal and provincial governments to add more than 20 officers until 2030, and it recently started using licence plate recognition technology and mobile workstations inside police cruisers — resources that are not typically available to most Indigenous police services.

Those measures will help in the fight against drugs and gangs, Gignac said, but he noted that Indigenous policing is not considered an essential service, meaning they operate as programs and often lack resources.

That needs to change, he said.

“If we’re not an essential service, what are we? If we were to just pack up and leave, what would happen here in our community?” he asked. “We’re absolutely essential, we’re just not designated as essential yet, but we need to be.”

Fiddler, the grand chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, said he and other First Nations chiefs have been calling for changes to the “outdated” funding model for Indigenous police. Enhancing First Nations’ peacekeeping force capacity to guard their borders 24-7 would also help, he said, but that measure is currently sporadic.

Northern communities also need more funding to build addiction treatment centres, he said.

“The example that I give sometimes is that in the southern part of the province, people talk about a waiting list, while up here there is no waiting list,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 27, 2026.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press