ALLAN:
Since Donald Trump's presidency, the construction of an impenetrable wall at the US-Mexico border has become a common refrain among conservative politicians.
But one Republican presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy, wants to take the idea even further. His proposal: a wall along the 5,500 mile long (8,900km) US-Canada frontier.
At Wednesday's primary debate in Miami, the 38-year-old candidate argued that enough fentanyl crossed the border last year to "kill three million Americans".
His calls to tackle the trade by building a colossal border wall were quickly panned by experts.
Speaking at the Republican presidential debate in Miami, Mr Ramaswamy claimed that the US should "build both walls" to stop the flow of drugs into the US.
His claim follows an earlier visit to the Roxham Road crossing in Quebec, where he claimed the heavily forested border is "wide open for invasion" and easily crossed by traffickers and illegal migrants.
But statistics show that the scale of fentanyl trafficking along the US-Canada border - the world's longest - pales in comparison to the US-Mexico border.
According to data from US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), just under two and a half pounds - about a kilogram - of fentanyl were seized at the Canadian border in the 2023 fiscal year.
The figure represents well under 1% of the 26,718 lbs (12,119kg) of fentanyl seized at the southern border during the same time frame.
- Bernard Debusmann Jr
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