David Asher, a long-time U.S. advisor on national security, appeared on Canada’s state-funded CBC news on Sunday to defend Trump’s efforts to force Canada to secure its borders, citing the largest fentanyl lab in the history of the world busted in October.

“Several months ago you had the biggest lab in the history of the world, said Asher, “It made Breaking Bad look like, you know, minor league.”

During the interview, Asher argued that President Donald Trump’s thus far effective threats to impose a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods unless they stop the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. are justified.

The Canadian news anchor, Rosemary Barton, suggested that an insignificant amount of fentanyl passes into the U.S. through Canada.

In response, Asher pointed to the massive lab busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in the small, unincorporated town of Falkland, British Columbia.

Law enforcement believed that the lab had ties to an unspecified transnational organized crime group connected to the distribution of fentanyl and methamphetamines across Canada and abroad.

During his interview, Asher claimed that the lab was “definitely” connected to Chinese organized crime and also pointed to possible links to Iran and ties to violent biker gangs.

The RCMP raid on the lab, a two-story building with ten rooms, led to the seizure of 54 kilograms of fentanyl, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, and 35 kilograms of cocaine, along with 89 firearms, multiple small explosives, and half a million dollars in cash.

Authorities claimed that the value of the products seized amounted to $95,500,000 and could have generated $485 million worth of street-value profit for the criminal organizations involved.

RCMP Inspector Jillian Wellard claimed that the drugs were not intended for distribution in the U.S. but could not provide any information on where they were headed.

The massive bust led to charges against 19 suspects and was linked to another British Columbia site where officials seized over 30,000 kilograms of chemicals intended to produce methamphetamines.

In defense of Trump’s tariffs, Asher cited the Canadian government’s reluctance to comment on the drug enterprise and the lack of an accurate estimate of the drugs crossing into the U.S. due to inadequate enforcement.

He said that the Canadian government’s claim that only 42 kilograms of fentanyl were trafficked into the U.S. through its northern border was a “nonsensical number.”

“Most of the drugs are going from Mexico to Canada and then being brought south into the northwest United States on ships. You have almost no port enforcement with police,” said Asher.

Asher pointed out that the Canadian people have no way of knowing how many other massive drug labs tied to Chinese organized crime are operating across their rural communities.

Mainers have been well-acquainted with the impact of Chinese organized crime on rural communities. As the Maine Wire has documented, hundreds of Chinese-operated illegal marijuana trafficking sites have sprouted across the state since 2019.

Despite drawing outrage from the American left and the Canadian government, Trump’s tariff threats have proven successful, leading Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to promise to work with the U.S. to combat fentanyl and to establish a national fentanyl czar.

Currently, Trump’s Canadian tariffs are on hold until March in response to the Trudeau administration’s promise to work against fentanyl trafficking.