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The Department of National Defence says it has safeguards in place to prevent intelligence from being shared with elements of the U.S. military that have carried out numerous lethal strikes on small boats in the Caribbean.
In a statement to CBC News, the department said that intelligence gathered during Operation Caribbe is “restricted” to the joint interagency task force running the operation and its partners, and is “caveated to not share with any elements of Operation Southern Spear.”
Southern Spear is the name the Pentagon has given to its militarized anti-drug-trafficking campaign that has seen at least 151 people killed in airstrikes against boats suspected of carrying drugs to the U.S. since last year.
Those attacks have been harshly criticized as illegal killings of people who have not been convicted of any crime. The U.S. says it only strikes drug boats and drug traffickers, although some victims’ families have contested those claims.
Silence until mission was over
Operation Caribbe is an annual event in which a Royal Canadian Navy ship joins with a U.S. flotilla to attempt to intercept shipments of illegal drugs heading for the U.S. mainland and other destinations.
It operates in the same seas, and pursues the same targets, as Operation Southern Spear. But the goal is to seize cargo and arrest crews, rather than blow them up.
The Department of National Defence (DND) did not answer questions about the Operation Caribbe deployment of coastal defence vessel HMCS Yellowknife until the ship was on its way back to Canadian waters.
On March 6, after the Yellowknife left Key West, Fla., to return to Halifax, DND said the ship had “provided support to lawful operations against illicit drug trafficking” in the Caribbean.
“From January to March 2026, the crew of HMCS Yellowknife conducted sustained patrols in international waters, maintaining a persistent presence in key trafficking corridors,” said a DND statement published after CBC News had sent follow-up questions about the mission for over a week.
“Working closely with the embarked United States Coast Guard (USCG) Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET), the ship contributed to multinational efforts to detect and track suspicious maritime activity and uphold international law in co-ordination with regional partners.”
Several killed by U.S. forces this year
HMCS Yellowknife sailed out of Miami on Jan. 29 to begin its mission. On Feb. 13, U.S. forces conducted their first lethal strike in the Caribbean in months, killing three. They followed that up with three strikes in one day (two in the Pacific, one in the Caribbean) on Feb. 16 that killed 11 more people.
The most recent lethal strike in the Caribbean was on Feb. 23. U.S. Southern Command claimed that the vessel was “operated by a designated terrorist organization,” but did not say which one.
Two days after that strike, Canadian Joint Operations Command posted a tweet showing the Yellowknife participating in Operation Caribbe, with photographs of Zodiac-style boats carrying Canadian sailors and members of the U.S. Coast Guard clad in camouflage and wearing masks.
DND has in past years often posted photographs of drug seizures and regular updates of Op Caribbe, including snapshots of life on board Canadian vessels participating.
In the weeks before the U.S. began its lethal strikes, the Canadian Embassy in Washington posted enthusiastically about Canada’s 2025 deployment, saying “the HMCS William Hall seized over 3,400 lbs of cocaine in 3 separate busts.”
“Our sailors showed professionalism and readiness,” said the Canadian Joint Operations Command in another post.
But since the bombings began, the Canadian Forces and the government have had less to say about Caribbean drug operations. In this year’s operation, there was no announcement of drug seizures.
Canadian activities ‘separate and distinct’
When the U.S. lethal strikes began, DND spokesperson Cheryl Forrest told CBC News in a written statement that “Canadian Armed Forces activities under Operation Caribbe, conducted in co-ordination with the United States Coast Guard, are separate and distinct from the activities you describe involving other branches of the United States military.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said in November that Canada “has no involvement” in the U.S. strikes, and that it was “within the purview of U.S. authorities” to determine whether they are complying with international law.
But Canada’s military had not explained until now how it intended to ensure that boats detected and tracked by Canadians were not subsequently bombed by Americans. Since 2012, Op Caribbe has been part of the larger U.S. Operation Martillo, which includes both U.S. navy and coast guard elements.
Martillo and Southern Spear are both under U.S. Southern Command, operate in the same waters and seek the same targets: fast-boat drug runners.
By contrast, CNN reported last year that the British government stopped sharing intelligence on drug boat traffic in the Caribbean with the U.S. over concerns about the legality of the airstrikes.
Also last November, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot expressed his country’s view that the strikes “violate international law” while attending the G7 foreign ministers’ summit in Ontario.
For weeks, U.S. forces have been destroying suspected drug-smuggling boats off Venezuela’s coast, leaving at least 20 people dead. For The National, Eli Glasner explains what’s behind the military campaign in the region and why some experts warn it may violate international law.
Military law expert Christopher Waters told CBC News that, whether viewed through the Law of Armed Conflict or as a simple matter of civilian law enforcement, the strikes on small boats appear to be illegal.
“If at any point, in self-defence, lethal force is required on the part of the American authorities, then so be it,” he said.
“However, simply blowing them out of the water, in my view and I think the view of most international law experts, would be extrajudicial killing.”
Last year, Waters was the inaugural scholar-in-residence at the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Canadian Armed Forces.
He said he was reluctant to give an opinion on the legality of Canadian involvement because of that recent work.
The use of caveats in intelligence, like Canada has in place for Operation Caribbe, means that the country that provides information imposes conditions on how it can be used. The system is based on trust, in that the provider of intelligence typically has no way of knowing how exactly it is shared once it’s in another country’s possession.
The fact that Canada caveated its intelligence could illustrate that the country does not have the intent to aid a potentially illegal attack, even if the U.S. chose to ignore those caveats.
Waters said that merely assisting to locate or track a vessel that was later targeted in a lethal strike would not likely lead to individual criminal responsibility for Canadian sailors.
But for Canada as a nation, Waters said, the calculations could be different.
“State responsibility leads to some different logic,” he said. “Willing participation or complicity in wrongful actions can lead to state responsibility.”
In a report on the lethal strikes published in December, Human Rights Watch named Canada as one of the 14 countries that have participated in Operation Martillo that might have culpability under the United Nations’ Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts.
Those articles state that a country bears responsibility under international law if it “aids or assists” another country to commit an internationally wrongful act “with knowledge of the circumstances.”
“At this point,” said the HRW report, “it would be hard to claim that participants in Campaign Martillo or Operation Caribbe — Canada’s contribution to U.S. counternarcotics efforts in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific — do not have knowledge of the broader circumstances, including the 21 strikes on vessels killing 83 people.”
