Daniel Robson is a Canadian independent journalist specializing in digital extremism, national security, and counterterrorism.In early December, Calgarians learned that a 17-year-old boy had been charged after two suspected fatal overdoses on Tsuut’ina Nation, just west of the city.According to a Calgary Police Service news release, investigators believe the teen was selling cocaine over several months — including during his school lunch break — before two people died in May and June. After a five month investigation, police say they seized cash, drugs, and a concealed weapon, and laid multiple trafficking and property crime charges.The Western Standard’s own report summed it up in a few stark lines: a teenager, a First Nation community, and a pair of overdoses tied to cocaine deals in the middle of the school day. For most outlets, this will be another tragic but forgettable “drug story.” For anyone who cares about public safety in Western Canada, it should read like a three alarm fire.When a high school student can walk out at lunch, sell hard drugs, and return to class, that is not just a health failure. It is a security failure — in the school, in the community, and in the systems that are supposed to protect First Nations youth from predatory markets.The Tsuut’ina case is shocking, but it is not an aberration. Indigenous communities have been on the sharpest edge of Canada’s toxic drug crisis for years. In British Columbia, the First Nations Health Authority has reported that First Nations people make up only about 3.4% of the province’s population but accounted for 17.8% of toxic-drug deaths in 2023, and 19% in 2024, according to recent FNHA data reported by outlets like The Tyee.Nationally, a policy brief from the Canadian Public Health Association notes that death rates linked to the illegal, toxic supply are up to five to seven times higher among First Nations people in provinces such as BC, Alberta, and Ontario than among other residents..Behind those averages are teenagers and young adults. Across the West, unregulated street drugs have become a leading cause of death for young people, with indigenous youth heavily overrepresented among the dead. In Ontario, a recent analysis by the Chiefs of Ontario describes the opioid and toxic drug crisis as one of the most pressing threats facing First Nations communities, with “nearly everyone” affected in some way.Ottawa’s answer has been to lean heavily on the language of health. Health Canada’s overview of the federal response to the overdose crisis reads like a funding catalogue: treatment beds, safer supply pilots, community programs, research grants. In BC, the First Nations Health Authority and harm reduction advocates have credited some of these efforts with modest declines in deaths among indigenous people in 2023 and 2024.But even the most generous reading of the data still leaves one inconvenient fact: the gap between First Nations and other residents is widening. The people who were already at greatest risk are falling further behind.That is where the language we use starts to matter. We still talk about this as an “overdose crisis,” as if the main story were individual consumption and not the deliberate flooding of vulnerable communities with a toxic, profit driven drug supply. We frame it as a “health emergency” and then act surprised when the solutions on offer sound like health policy tweaks instead of a coherent public safety strategy.The Tsuut’ina case cuts through those abstractions. You cannot explain away a teenager selling cocaine at lunch as a simple matter of self medication, even if trauma and neglect are part of his story. A high school dealer operating in broad daylight is a signal that adults — somewhere up the chain — are organizing supply, setting prices, and treating First Nations kids as both customers and labour.None of this is an argument against treatment, housing, or culturally grounded healing. Indigenous leaders have been clear that trauma, poverty, and broken systems are part of the story. But it is an argument against a lopsided approach that pours money into managing the fallout of the toxic supply while leaving enforcement against traffickers fragmented, under resourced, and often blind to the specific vulnerabilities of First Nations communities..So what would a serious public safety response look like?First, it would start inside the communities most affected. That means supporting and, where requested, expanding indigenous-led policing on and near First Nations lands, with dedicated drug intelligence capacity rather than relying on thinly stretched regional detachments. When a Tsuut’ina teenager is moving cocaine around a high school, local officers and school officials should not need five months to connect the dots.Second, it would treat youth dealers as a complex reality — not a convenient shield for the adults who profit. A 17-year-old at the bottom of the ladder may need rehabilitation more than a long sentence. But the existence of that ladder is the real problem. Federal and provincial governments should be tasking RCMP, provincial police, and First Nations services with mapping the networks that sit above these youths, then prosecuting higher level organizers using the same tools we bring to bear against gangs and organized crime groups.Third, it would integrate public health data into public safety planning instead of keeping the two in separate silos. If we know that First Nations people in certain regions are dying from toxic drugs at six or seven times the rate of their neighbours, there should be joint task forces explicitly mandated to reduce that inequality as a security goal — and measured on whether they actually do it..Finally, a serious response would be honest with Canadians about the scale and nature of the threat. The “toxic drug supply” is not a natural disaster. It is a product of criminal markets that adapt quickly, target the most profitable and least protected populations, and will keep recruiting teenagers as long as the risk reward calculation makes sense.Western Canada is often caricatured whenever it demands a tougher line on crime and disorder. Yet cases like Tsuut’ina should remind the rest of the country that public safety is not a right wing talking point. For First Nations parents burying their children after yet another preventable poisoning, it is the most basic form of justice.Canada does not have to choose between compassion and accountability. It does, however, have to stop pretending that an overdose crisis ravaging indigenous communities can be solved by health funding alone.Until the federal government is willing to name the drug trade as a security issue in its own right — and to design policy accordingly — stories like the Tsuut’ina lunch break dealer will keep surfacing. And each one will be less shocking than the last.Daniel Robson is a Canadian independent journalist specializing in digital extremism, national security, and counterterrorism.
