The Department of National Defence (DND) says Canada has placed a ‘caveat’ on U.S. intelligence-sharing for small-boat strikes.
The DND says it has safeguards in place to prevent intelligence from being shared with elements of the U.S. military that have executed 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 a joint interagency task force running the operation and its partners. It is a caveat not to share any elements of Operation Southern Spear.
Southern Spear is the name the Pentagon assigned to its militarized anti-drug-trafficking campaign. It has witnessed at least 151 people killed in airstrikes against boats suspected of carrying narcotics to the U.S. since last year.
Those attacks had been harshly criticized as illegal killings of people who had not been convicted of any crime. The U.S. says that it only strikes narcotic boats and narcotic traffickers, although some victims’ families have contested those claims.
Silence until the end of the mission
Operation Caribbe is an annual event in which a Royal Canadian Navy ship joins with a U.S. flotilla. It is an attempt to intercept shipments of illegal narcotics heading for the U.S. mainland and other destinations.
It operates on the same seas while pursuing the same targets, titled Operation Southern Spear. However, the goal is to seize cargo and arrest crews rather than blow them up.
The DND did not answer questions about the Operation Caribbe deployment of coastal defense vessel HMCS Yellowknife until the ship was on its return to Canadian waters.
After the Yellowknife left Key West, Fla., on Friday, March 6, to return to Halifax, DND said the ship had provided support to lawful operations against illicit narcotic trafficking in the Caribbean.
‘During the 3 months from January to March ’26, the crew of HMCS Yellowknife conducted sustained patrols in international waters. They maintained a persistent presence in key trafficking corridors. This sentence was said in a DND statement published after CBC News had sent follow-up questions about the mission that was sustained for over a week.
