To announce one of the largest drug busts by weight ever in Ontario on Thursday, and the disruption of a sophisticated cross-border smuggling operation, the Ontario Provincial Police and partner forces laid their haul out for the cameras at Windsor’s City Hall.
Here was 1.7 metric tons of illegal drugs, roughly the weight of a mid-sized car, mostly cocaine and methamphetamine, but also some opium and oxycodone, with a retail value of about $139 million. It had been smuggled into Canada in otherwise legitimate commercial truckloads across the bridge from Detroit, in what police called a “broker-style” transportation model with truck drivers who were allegedly in on the scheme and profiting from it.
“This work is never done,” said Windsor Police Service Chief Jason Crowley, but it’s “a very large dent in someone’s business.”
The visual centrepiece of the press conference, however, which also involved federal and local law enforcement agencies, was not the plastic-wrapped bricks of drugs, but a rare antique Finnish anti-tank rifle, the Lahti L-39 .50 calibre, developed for use against Soviet forces in the Second World War, and with no legitimate modern civilian application. It was among 17 firearms seized in recent police raids in the Windsor and Toronto areas.
“The fact it is in the hands of organized drug traffickers is concerning,” said OPP Chief Superintendent Mike Stoddart of the Organized Crime Enforcement Bureau.
More than a dozen other seized long guns were also on display. Police also seized cash, ammunition, prohibited weapons such as brass knuckles, one vehicle, high end jewellery, money counters and electronic devices. One image released by police showed a brick of cocaine stamped “019.”
“It’s an impressive visual,” Crowley said of the drugs haul, and it is physical proof of a crime network with “multiple tentacles throughout North America…. This runs very deep and it’s disturbing, to be honest.”
Crowley said this demonstrates his officers are not just combatting local crime in Windsor, but international organized crime that extends into the rest of Ontario and Canada.
“We are cutting them off at the source,” Crowley said.
The various senior law enforcement officers emphasized the cooperation and mutual support necessary to take an investigation like this from its origin in January 2025 to the celebratory announcement of seized drugs and criminal charges.
They cited operational and tactical support from police forces in Toronto and Peel Region, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Agency.
But the bust also comes at a tense moment for cross border relations at Windsor, a major port city for the transportation of goods to and from the United States. Until now, that trade crossed the border mostly by the Ambassador Bridge, soon to be a century old. Much of that transport traffic is set to switch to the newly constructed Gordie Howe International Bridge, which has been the subject of high-stakes last-minute diplomacy and deal-making over tariffs and tolls with the Trump administration, to which Canada has recently signed a controversial “proposed agreement in principle.”
The new bridge “will certainly change the dynamics,” said Southern Ontario Regional Director General Michael Prosia of the Canadian Border Services Agency. It will be the “most futuristic” in terms of contraband detections equipment, he said, and it will be of keen interest to law enforcement how traffic and smuggling patterns change.
Stoddart of the OPP said much of this haul in drug shipments could be traced back to the southwestern United States, and so it stands to reason that Mexico is a source country, both for the trans-shipment of South American cocaine and the illicit production of methamphetamine, but he declined to detail any information about specific cartel connections.
The Toronto Police likewise declined to provide details on the Toronto-based organized crime group that was involved.
Charges were announced against 21 people, all but two of whom have already been arrested and either released with future court dates or remain in custody, some pending bail hearings, others having been remanded in custody until future court dates. One was already in custody on another matter. Two people remain at large and are the targets of active manhunts in the Windsor area, where they are known to police. The 102 charges against these people include conspiracy to import cocaine, trafficking cocaine and heroin, and various firearms charges including careless storage and possession of restricted weapons.
Stoddart said these charges and seizures represent harm prevented, lives protected, and organized crime disrupted.
“Project Bay is a powerful example of how intelligence-led policing and inter-agency collaboration can deliver significant results. This investigation began as the result of information obtained by the Windsor Police Service and evolved into a complex operation spanning multiple jurisdictions across Ontario. Working closely with our policing partners, we were able to dismantle a network that was moving dangerous drugs and firearms into communities across the province and putting public safety at risk,” Crowley of the Windsor Police Service said.
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