1 year ago, Alberta’s premier sought to lock down a ‘leaky’ border. Here’s what’s happened since

East of the small village of Coutts, Alta., a stone’s throw from the border with the United States, Cindy Bosch’s day-to-day life looks much like it did a year ago.

Calving season on her ranch is still a busy time, with long hours and late nights. Bull sales are important dates. Cows go out to pasture and come home.

It’s not all the same, though.

Look up once in a while and you might see a chopper.

“The cattle … will sit there grazing as the chopper goes back and forth,” said Bosch, who spoke to CBC News from her Angus cattle operation near Coutts.

“If anything, I think the hunters are mad 'cause maybe the deer get spooked.”

Black Hawk helicopters and additional border security became everyday parts of southern Alberta life this year after then president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs on Canadian goods unless Canada stemmed what he claimed was a tide of illegal immigration and drugs — specifically, the synthetic opioid fentanyl — flowing into the U.S.

Trump’s comments sparked a flurry of activity in Canada to bolster its border. And even in Alberta, on a section of the 49th parallel long thought to be quieter than in eastern provinces, the provincial government responded swiftly.

Federal enforcement has also increased this year, with a helicopter patrol that’s sometimes heard several times per week.

Residents of the County of Warner, which surrounds the village of Coutts, raised some concerns to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith directly at an event earlier this year.

Bosch said they wanted to know how life would change with the additional policing, including whether certain roads would close and how invasive choppers would be.

But Bosch said she believes the province didn’t intend to be intrusive in the area.

“If [there are] people jumping the border, we need to do something about it,” Bosch said. “And if this is going to help on the other end of trade partnerships, then it's just something we need to all get along with.”

Now, Smith says her government has learned the Coutts border crossing isn’t a hub of illicit activity — and that could lead to a focus on other areas.

Plugging a 'leaky' border

The Alberta government’s investment in border security was rolled out last December with a $29-million pledge to introduce the Interdiction Patrol Team (IPT).

The team consists of about 51 officers, including K-9 handlers and drone operators. The province also introduced a “red zone,” a two-kilometre area north of the border where the team can make arrests without a warrant.

Smith signalled the team's introduction in late November 2024, when she said Canada needed to address its “leaky border” with the U.S. Before that, Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis’s 2023 mandate letter called for specialized sheriff-led teams at the border.

With an eye to the tariff threat, the province sought to make a big splash and showed off its new team to U.S. audiences when Fox News visited Coutts earlier this year.

“That’s what, I think, the president wants to see — is that we’re taking it seriously,” Smith told Fox Business Network reporter Lydia Hu in January.

“We’re going to stop the flow of drugs and guns and people across the borders.”

But Smith now says Coutts, the busiest border crossing in Alberta, is not a hotbed for trafficking.

“I think what we learned from that is that the border at Coutts is not the huge traffic or transit route for either human smuggling or drug smuggling or trafficking, or even people sneaking across the border either way,” Smith told reporters earlier this month.

“That's a good thing for us to know. But it means that we've got to focus on other things.”

In many ways, Coutts doesn’t look so different from other small, rural Alberta towns. Home to roughly 250 people, it’s often quiet, with residents stopping for lunch at the lone café or popping into the post office to send a letter.

In other ways, the “Gateway to Alberta” stands apart. U.S. border patrol vehicles are a common sight. Signs mark the restricted access at the Canada-U.S. boundary, declaring: “Violators subject to fine and/or imprisonment.”

All of this is “business as usual” for Coutts Mayor Scott MacCumber, who’s lived long enough along the 49th parallel to be unsurprised by the premier’s recent declaration.

The mayor worked for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) for 35 years and sees the value of having officers at the border. There have been major drug seizures in the past year. But as far as people coming across the border?

“I think they would go around Coutts, not through Coutts,” says MacCumber.

That said, the year hasn’t been without its surprises.

The mayor said he met a woman this August he didn’t recognize while on his morning walk. Speaking Spanish and broken English, the woman asked MacCumber how to get to Calgary.

He asked her where she crossed, and she pointed in the direction of the local ball diamond — so close to the border that when one hits a home run, it lands in Montana.

“Did you talk to an officer?” the mayor recalled asking the woman.

In his recollection, the woman said: “No, I did not. I’m illegal.”

MacCumber took down her details and called the RCMP, who met her at a vehicle inspection station.

Border officials won’t speak to the particulars of a given case. But they point to the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, which was expanded in 2023, and dictates that people entering Canada across the U.S. land border are not eligible to make a refugee claim and will be returned to the U.S. unless they meet certain exceptions.

Redeployment possible?

Alberta’s premier still believes boots on the ground at the border are worthwhile. But earlier this month, she said it could be worth speaking to Ellis about whether there’s a need to redeploy any of the team’s resources, something she already floated last year.

Ellis’s office confirmed earlier this month the province would consider redeployment if intelligence shows its officers would be more effective elsewhere.

As for how quiet the Coutts crossing has been, Ellis argues that the Interdiction Patrol Team has an ability to deter crime with its presence.

“Bad guys, they don't typically like to go where the police are. So, the officer presence is making a difference at the border,” said Ellis. “And we're seeing them try alternative points of entry as opposed to what you might see at the border."

Ellis’s press secretary Arthur Green says Alberta is seeing signs of more interprovincial trafficking, while areas of the southern border “remain very active.”

CBC Calgary requested an interview with Ellis for more detail on Alberta’s border strategy, but his office declined.

Green says the IPT has apprehended five people suspected of illegally crossing the border, intercepted and disrupted one suspected sex trafficking operation, and seized more than $100,000 in illegal tobacco linked to organized crime. The IPT is also investigating suspected impaired drivers and executing outstanding warrants.

The number of arrests the IPT has made isn’t huge, but it’s a significant increase over what federal forces were doing a year earlier, argues Kelly Sundberg, a criminologist at Mount Royal University. He’s glad Alberta is stepping in, but he argues the border should still be a federal responsibility, especially as provincial responses that aren’t co-ordinated may only displace security threats to other parts of the country.

“If we're looking at addressing border security, the efficacy at a national level is going to be quite low. But from a provincial perspective, you'd be crazy to try and smuggle across southern Alberta,” said Sundberg.

Canadians have known for decades that irregular border crossings are disproportionately concentrated elsewhere in the country, says Christian Leuprecht, while Alberta’s border has long been seen as relatively calm.

The Royal Military College national security expert says while provinces should support federal partners in localized border security responses, he questions Alberta’s approach. Leuprecht argues the same funding could be better used directed at stopping threats before they even arrive at the border.

“In the 21st century, in my view, it doesn't make a lot of sense to put a lot of resources anywhere at the actual border. Because if a threat arises at the border, that is an intelligence failure,” said Leuprecht.

Border security expert Benjamin Muller says it was commonly held, one year and several U.S. tariff announcements ago, that reacting to some of Trump's demands — particularly those related to the border — could lead to a more favourable outcome for trading partners.

“I suppose at this point we recognize that that's not necessarily been the case," said the King's University College professor.

More drugs entering Canada

Inside the border services facility at Coutts, travellers line up at immigration counters, quietly filling out forms as officers review documents behind computer screens.

These facilities go through ebbs and flows of activity. On this day in December, it’s quiet, with rows of empty chairs and stanchioned lanes.

Outside, Ben Tame stands near a Canadian flag blowing in the wind. He’s a district director with the CBSA, which is charged with overseeing the work to monitor specific ports of entry along the Canada-U.S. border.

Tame says his team’s work with the IPT has been limited. The CBSA is only responsible for enforcing what happens specifically at ports of entry, after all.

Tame says the agency has seen large amounts of fentanyl and cocaine crossing the border.

The majority of drugs discovered at the border are moving northward.

“We’ve seen an increase in the number of drugs and firearms that are entering from the United States in the last five years,” said Tame.

“They’re significant numbers. And at the same time, the number of fentanyl interdictions in the U.S. that are linked to Canada is less than one per cent.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows seizures of fentanyl from Canada total less than one per cent of all U.S. seizures of the drug. Specifically in the Havre sector in Montana, officials have so far seized a little more than 320 grams of drugs in the 2025 fiscal year.

Officials with the U.S. Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to  requests for comment from CBC News.

A curious trend

Just a few kilometres north of Carway, a small border crossing 100 kilometres west of Coutts, Jim Ross can see the Alberta-Montana border from his ranch. He’s lived his whole life either just north or just south of the 49th parallel.

Ross pays close attention to news about the border and welcomes the provincial intervention into its security.

“I'm glad that something happened, because the guys in Ottawa, they weren't doing bugger all,” said Ross.

But he doesn’t know exactly how much the team has accomplished.

While the CBSA monitors specific ports of entry, the RCMP patrols border areas in between them.

For years, law enforcement officials were largely focused on southbound crossings into the U.S., but they noticed a curious trend earlier this year.

“After last winter, we saw that rush of people crossing the border [coming north]. We thought that was going to be the new normal,” said RCMP Staff Sgt. Ryan Harrison, who leads the Integrated Border Enforcement Team.

“But that aberration at the start of the year has certainly let off.”

What led to that downturn is anyone’s guess.

Harrison attributes it to successful messaging around how dangerous it is to cross this section of the border — 298 kilometres across wide open fields and more mountainous terrain, sometimes in frigid weather.

Some treacherous crossings have made headlines, like when a group of nine — four adults and five children — walked through deep snow in the early morning hours in February near the Coutts rodeo grounds, along a wind screen.

One year later, Harrison said the RCMP’s working relationship with Alberta Sheriffs has been a good one, even if intelligence sharing between the national police service and its provincial counterparts is “still under development.”

“There’s obviously some stuff in the RCMP national security space that’s a little different than the provincial jurisdiction … We’re all working together to try and find a way to best leverage each other.”

Cross-border communities feeling a chill

Across the border, Mark Pirrie often sees Canadians reminiscing in his western apparel shop.

At Western Outdoor in Kalispell, Mont., Calgary Stampede posters dating back to 1972 line the walls. Pirrie says Canadians love seeing the posters, pointing out which events they attended and faces they recognize.

The splash of Canadiana in Kalispell is a sign of how similar people who live in the region are, Pirrie says. The city sits in Flathead Valley, where Canadians often visit friends, family, ski hills and summer homes.

"I get the Canadian customers looking for the same stuff that my customers that live here in the valley are looking for,” said Pirrie.

“As far as the type of western lifestyle they're living, we're pretty much the same.”

Pirrie is seeing his Canadian neighbours less often, which reflects a concern residents raised earlier this year that new border rules could break up long-standing interconnected communities.

Border security, Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state and a steep exchange rate have all combined to chill Canadian tourism to Montana. In November, Discover Kalispell cited data showing border crossings dropped between 15 and 25 per cent, and credit card spending from international visitors is down 39 per cent.

In the small city of Cut Bank, Mont., 40 kilometres south of the border, Lisa Cline is feeling that chill at Marketplace on Main. In the local gift shop, Cline saw significantly fewer Canadian customers this summer.

She says Canadians feel insulted and unwelcome in the U.S. Most of all, she’s disappointed how difficult crossing the border has become in both directions.

“It used to be easy. We'd pop up to Lethbridge to see a movie at The Movie Mill, and those types of things just don't seem as accessible to us anymore,” Cline said.

“The border just seemed like more of a suggestion than a hard line. And now it seems like a hard line.”

'Maybe there's a chopper coming'

Back in Coutts, there’s no denying life has changed in some ways.

Alberta residents along the border have long freely used a remote stretch of road even though it is located in Montana. Americans supplied the gravel, and Canadians maintained the road. But all of that’s changing next July, when the U.S. will block access.

Perhaps the most prominent loss, though, is more ephemeral. It’s difficult to quantify how long-standing ties between interconnected communities will be impacted, and whether they will persevere.

Bosch, sitting at her ranch near Coutts, remembers some of those worries being expressed during the early days of the border policy rollout.

Her neighbours wanted to know: could they still run across the border and go for a dip in the creek?

“Because," Bosch said, "maybe there’s a chopper coming."