The arrest of Ovidio Guzman, the son of jailed drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has sparked a rampage of violence in the northwestern Mexican city of Culiacan, led by members of his Sinaloa drug cartel.
Gunfire has erupted, vehicles have been torched and roads blocked while cartel members clash with security forces. So far, at least 10 military personnel and 19 suspected members of the Sinaloa drug cartel have been killed.
The violence has prompted government authorities to warn residents to stay indoors. The Culiacan and Mazatlan airports have been closed and all flights had been suspended at the Los Mochis airport until further notice, according to Canada’s Global Affairs. The Canadian government is urging Canadians in Mexico’s Sinaloa state to limit their movements and to shelter in place.
CBC News explains what’s causing the violence, and how it’s impacting Canadians travelling in the area.
Where is the violence taking place?
The violence is centred in northwestern Mexico, in the state of Sinaloa — specifically the state capital of Culiacan. This is about 1,200 kilometres northwest of Mexico City, and the home base of the Sinaloa cartel.
How is the violence affecting Canadians in Mexico?
Canadians vacationing in resorts in that area say they’ve been sheltering inside their hotels until the violence subsides.
On Thursday afternoon, Global Affairs Canada warned Canadians in Sinaloa to take extra care, especially in the cities of Culiacan, Mazatlan, Los Mochis and Guasave, and told Canadians to avoid non-essential travel in those areas.
Canadians in Mazatlan on impact of nearby violence
As the Canadian government encourages people travelling in Mexico to limit their movements in parts of the country due to an outbreak of cartel-related violence, two Canadians talk about how they’re getting through this challenging situation.
Patrick Hayden, a Canadian who is vacationing in Mazatlan, told CBC News that he was bit concerned — mostly because of reports of trouble at the nearby airport, where he had been scheduled to fly out on Friday.
“Also, where I’m staying is a very popular tourist destination and could be that we might be a target, but that doesn’t look like that right now,” he said.
“Today there is a lot of frustration and concern,” about being able to leave, he said. “But at this point we mostly recognize that it’s really out of our hands, so we’re just going to have to prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.”
Who is Ovidio Guzman?
Guzman, 32, who goes by the nickname “The Mouse,” is the oldest son of El Chapo — Mexico’s most notorious drug lord. Guzman and his brothers emerged as leaders of one of the four factions in the cartel following their father’s arrest.
Juan Carlos Ayala, a Culiacan resident and Sinaloa University professor who studies the sociology of drug trafficking, told the Associated Press that Guzman was an obvious target since at least 2019.
This Oct. 17, 2019, frame grab from video provided by the Mexican government shows Ovidio Guzman during an earlier arrest in Culiacan. Later that same day, Mexican security forces were forced to release him after his gunmen shot up the western city of Culiacan. (Cepropie/The Associated Press)
“Ovidio’s fate had been decided. Moreover, he was identified as the biggest trafficker of fentanyl and the most visible Chapos leader.”
According to the U.S. and Mexican governments, Guzman had assumed a growing role among his brothers in carrying on their father’s business.
In December 2021, the State Department announced a $5 million US reward for information leading to the arrest of conviction of Guzman, who has been charged in the U.S. with conspiracy to traffic cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States.
The State Department said Guzman oversees methamphetamine labs in Sinaloa responsible for producing 3,000 to 5,000 pounds (1,360 to 2,268 kilograms) of the drug per month.
He is currently being held in a Mexico City maximum security federal prison.
His father is serving a life-plus-30-years sentence at a Colorado Supermax security prison for a series of drug-related charges.
Wasn’t Ovidio Guzman arrested before?
Guzman was detained in 2019 but was quickly released by orders of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador after hundreds of cartel henchmen overwhelmed security forces in Culiacan.
Obrador later acknowledged he released Guzman to end the violent retribution.
Why has the cartel reacted this way?
Such a show of force is not new in Mexico, said Angélica Durán-Martínez, an associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. She is also an expert in political and criminal violence, drug trade and crime in Latin American politics.
“That’s associated partially with all the changes the political and criminal landscape of Mexico has experienced over the past decade and a half,” she said. “[It’s] basically a situation of political fragmentation and criminal fragmentation which varies across the states. But that creates a situation where criminal actors have become more blatant in their power.”
Security personnel guard the prosecutor’s building where Guzman is in custody in Mexico City on Thursday. (Fernando Llano/The Associated Press)
Javier Osorio, an assistant professor at the school of government and public policy at the University of Arizona, who studies political and criminal violence in Latin American, said that around 20 years ago, cartels began acquiring high-powered military-grade weaponry.
That means they now have the capacity to fight back, “especially when the government strikes a very high target like this one. They will let the government know that they can fight,” he said.
How powerful is the Sinaloa cartel?
While other cartels have fragmented and lost their leader, or even dismantled, the Sinaloa cartel has managed to survive despite a lot of government effort to dismantle them, Osorio said.
In terms of drug-related activities, they control the Sinaloa corridor, which has traditionally been an opium-producing region. But over the last five years, the cartel has focused more on producing fentanyl, Osario said.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers the Sinaloa cartel, along with the the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) to be responsible for most of the fentanyl inside the United Sates.
Federal government warns Canadians in Mexico to limit movement amid erupting violence
Canada’s government is urging Canadians in Mexico’s Sinaloa state to limit their movements and shelter in place amid an outbreak of violence in the country’s northwest following the arrest of Ovidio Guzman, a 32-year-old senior member of the Sinaloa Cartel and a son of jailed kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman.
Since the arrest of El Chapo, the Sinaloa cartel has been composed of four key factions, one that includes El Chapo’s brother and another that includes his four sons, known collectively as Los Chapitos, according to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington.
Durán-Martínez said there are sectors of the population that support the Sinaloa cartel, “because they have received social support from them and that became more blatant in the past few years, like giving food or giving groceries to people or giving money or sponsoring parties.”
But there are many people who are “absolutely tired” of the violence and of the reputation to their city and state from the cartel, and oppose their actions, she said.
What impact will his arrest have on the cartel?
When El Chapo was arrested, the cartel seemed to have a very clear succession plan in place, Osorio said.
“He was arrested and the cartel remains consolidated. They did not fragment like many other cartels when they lose their leadership,” he said.
Firefighters extinguish a vehicle set on fire by members of a drug gang as a barricade, following the detention of Guzman, in Mazatlan, Mexico, on Thursday. (Reuters)
“If they will remain stable within and everybody stays loyal to the El Chapo legacy, then they’re going to keep the cartel intact and without much infighting.”
Durán-Martínez said it’s difficult to predict what will happen next, as incarceration of a major criminal leader can potentially lead to more infighting inside the organization, and therefore, to more violence.
“I think we may see some instability in the short term. The organization is, I think, a little bit more unstable internally than it was in the past,” she said.
“Whether that will lead to the dismantlement of the Sinaloa cartel or of criminal organizations in Sinaloa, I think the answer is no.”
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
