The same Conservative government that dismissed a federal inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada as too costly has allocated $82.9 million over five years in its budget for a high-tech surveillance operation along the Quebec-Ontario-US border in order to find and shut down Mohawk-run underground tobacco operations. The funds were set aside specifically for a “Geospatial Intelligence and Automatic Dispatch Centre,” which will rely on a number of different and costly surveillance technologies.

“Law enforcement partners need to have a clear understanding of the border environment in order to identify potential threats. This is most effectively and efficiently accomplished through the use of technology, including sensors, radar, cameras and underwater acoustics,” a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) media relations officer told VICE.

The RCMP’s costly new policing and surveillance initiative will continue to target the Mohawk border community of Akwesasne, from which black market tobacco is moved up and along routes to Kahnawake near Montreal and Tyendinaga near Belleville, and where a Mohawk blockade was held recently calling for an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women. It was at this protest that the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) deployed camera drones, technically referred to as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), as just part of a package of expensive technology and weaponry used to monitor and disperse the blockade.

The OPP have defended their use of drones — that run the government around $30,000 apiece — explaining that UAVs are an inexpensive way to conduct necessary investigations. The legal status of UAVs remains murky, but it seems their use is not permitted over populated areas. You can’t fly drones over people, according to Transport Canada. At the protest itself, the cadre of police and their seemingly endless supply of manpower, vehicles, and equipment greatly outnumbered the handful of Mohawk protesters and journalists on site. With this new use of drone cameras and the allocation of a large chunk of funding for further RCMP surveillance and crackdowns on contraband tobacco, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has shown that his government financially prioritizes policing indigenous communities, instead of getting them justice.

The government war on contraband tobacco has been in motion for some time now. Between 2007 and 2011, the RCMP seized nearly four million cartons of First Nations contraband cigarettes, with a retail value of about $72 million. In 2013, the Conservative government introduced a series of laws, packaged in the omnibus bill C-10, imposing mandatory minimums for people who get caught smuggling tobacco (with cigarettes, 50 or more cartons). According to police, cigarettes are not only smuggled across the border (since the territory at Akwesasne spans beyond the border on both sides) but the cigarettes are then sold at a cheaper price to largely non-indigenous clients looking to circumvent costly federal and provincial taxes.