Drones and contraband pose everyday challenges in Quebec detention centres

A seagull attacks a drone flying over St. Peter's Square as Cardinals are gathered in the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave at the Vatican, Wednesday, May 7, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Gregorio Borgia

MONTREAL — On any given day, drones buzz in the skies above Quebec’s detention centres looking to drop tobacco, drugs or cellphones to the inmates below.

Statistics from Quebec’s public security minister show staff reported 274 drones flying over provincial centres between January and March — or just over three per day. That doesn’t include the 10 federally-managed prisons in the province.

Corrections spokespeople and a drone expert say the problem is growing, dangerous and hard to stop, despite millions of dollars invested by provincial and federal governments.

Stéphane Blackburn, the managing director for Quebec’s correctional services, described the threat of airborne contraband as “something we face every day.”

The provincial figures show 195 of the 247 drones were seen dropping packages. Most of them — 69 per cent — were reported as seized. The province also seized 896 cellphones.

But the data shows drone sightings have been growing gradually in recent years.

There were 695 drone sightings logged from April 2021 to the end of March of 2022. For the same period between 2024 and 2025, there were 1,175. They’re also increasingly being spotted outside Montreal.

“A few years ago, it was mainly in the metropolitan region that we saw drone events,” Blackburn said. “Montreal has been subjected to the problems for several years now, and now we see a rise in drone events in certain regions.”

Blackburn says the most common forms of contraband are tobacco and cannabis, although cellphones, tools and other drugs are also seized.

In recent weeks, the province has announced an additional $38.5 million worth of measures aimed at curbing contraband smuggling. Those include technological solutions such as drone and cellphone detectors, and physical infrastructure including fencing or netting around windows and courtyards.

Workers will also be using mobile X-ray scanners and body scanners to detect items once they’ve been delivered.

The federal government also announced a pilot project in March that will allow correctional staff to use radio-frequency jammers to block wireless communication to drones and cellphones in federal and Quebec detention centres.

Frédérick Lebeau, the national president of the Union of Canadian Correction officers, said the rise in drone drops in correctional facilities has been “exponential” in recent years.

“We can talk about several drops a day — three, four, it depends,” he said.

He said drops happen often when inmates are in the yard, and packages are quickly snapped up and hidden in body cavities or elsewhere. Sometimes, drones are flown directly to windows where inmates have dismantled the bars.

He said the presence of contraband — including drugs and weapons — can create debts among inmates and allow criminal networks to operate, resulting in increased violence for detainees and corrections staff alike.

“It’s really an ecosystem,” he said. “If there are more debts, there’s more violence. If there’s more drinking, more drugs, there’s violent (incidents) where we have to intervene.”

Lebeau said that while new announcements by the different levels of government are “a step forward,” many of the measures have only been put in place in a few institutions. In particular, he says there’s a need for more jammers to stop drones from reaching jails and prisons, as well as body scanners to catch the drugs once they’re dropped.

“It’s not just detecting drones, we have to catch them,” he said.

Jeremy Laliberte, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ottawa’s Carleton University, says drones are an ideal tool for delivering contraband because they’re “ubiquitous, inexpensive,” and can be launched from kilometres away.

“The folks who want to do this can buy them for a few hundred dollars, modify them, remove any identifying information and launch them and not even worry about getting them back,” he said.

He said the war in Ukraine — as well as domestic concerns about malicious operators — have spurred a growing interest in counter-drone technology, including better detectors that can locate both the drone and the operator. However, these systems are expensive and complex to develop, while “the drones themselves are hundreds of dollars.”

Laliberte said physical barriers such as fencing and netting as well as the detectors, jammers, and scanners can all work to protect detention centres, though he notes determined operators can find a way around any one measure.

That’s why he says a layered model that combines different strategies — the so-called “Swiss cheese model” — has the best chance of success.

“There isn’t going to be just one strategy that’s going to be the magic bullet that stops everything,” he said. “It’s going to have to be a mix of things, because the technology, it’s like an arms race. There’s always going to be people trying to get better at this.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 16, 2025.

Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press