WASHINGTON — A former senior U.S. intelligence official has concluded that an “unprecedented crime convergence” is underway across Canada, involving nearly 700 organized crime groups operating in strategic cooperation and networked into 48 countries—amid virtually no coordinated national response from Ottawa—resulting in potentially hundreds of billions of dollars laundered in the country each year.

Beyond this groundbreaking assessment of the scale of drug money laundering through Canada, the Washington-based expert finds that these expanding criminal operations were accelerated and empowered by the Liberal government’s 2016 decision to drop visa requirements for Mexico.

The hard-hitting study, produced by David M. Luna through the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies, asserts that U.S. government assessments on Canada’s growing role as a transnational hub of poly-narcotics production, trafficking, and—more importantly—money laundering are more detailed and plausible than Ottawa’s own data releases.

The consequence has been ...