He's 31 years old and calls himself a career criminal.  Alex Hanson says his latest "job" was working as a so-called "chemist" in illegal drug labs in B.C - producing the highly addictive drug crystal methamphetamine.  A few weeks ago, Hanson says he decided to quit.

Then he contacted CTV's Whistleblower unit with a plan to expose the dirty "business" he's been involved in and how big and dangerous it's become. He told us the "labs" in Canada are now more lucrative than most Canadians could imagine. 

"You can pull off these extremely large quantities -- up to a metric tonne inside of a month or inside of 60 days," Hanson said. "If I was working right now that would be my target. About a metric tonne of crystal methamphetamine a month," he told CTV.  "I could easily just myself stuff in my own pockets in a 12-month period nothing short of 10 million dollars easily. Just myself and the two or three guys who would partner up with me."

"Super labs" are what he calls the B.C. operations, and they are much bigger than any illegal drug labs in the United States, he said.

"There are all kinds of (super) labs springing up. Because it's just so easy to get the precursors and the chemicals and there are large criminal organizations that have huge amounts of money that can bring in the types of materials from other countries that you need to make these kinds of things on a large scale."

"World production is going to center around Canada," Hanson predicted. "Inside the borders of Canada. Everything is being sent here and it's being shipped off worldwide. Also it's being sold in our own country. So Canada is looking pretty much like the bad guy at this point."

Hanson grew up in Alberta but got his first drug conviction in the United States.  He was caught trying to smuggle in approximately 100 pounds of B.C. marijuana, by boat. He did time in U.S. prisons, and was then transferred back to Canada under the prisoner transfer treaty.  After that, he said, he got involved in chemical drug "labs" -- producing ecstasy and then crystal meth.

"The current climate legally in Canada allows us to pretty much do whatever we want," Hanson said. "Criminals have free rein in Canada.  There's no doubt about it.  This is the most awesome place on earth. If you want to run your criminal organization on a global scale, Canada is just perfect. You've got huge borders and you've got lax laws and you've got a cross section of people from all around the world and they are all congregating in Vancouver."

Hanson told CTV the crystal meth business in British Columbia is huge and growing very fast.  The manufacturers bring in the precursor chemicals from abroad and then produce the drug in homes no one lives in -- they are outfitted strictly as high production labs.

He told CTV the group he worked for brings in the precursor ephedrine from China  in containers coming into Vancouver's port.  He claims criminals can get a container of chemicals delivered for about $400,000.

"Whether it's people from China, whether it's precursors or whether it's a stackload of AK47s from the Taliban -- $400,000 will pass you right through."

All the while, he claims, the RCMP stand by and watch. In fact, the police have been watching Hanson for years -- but he's never been convicted in Canada, on any drug charge.

CTV has RCMP documents that prove police have been monitoring Hanson and his associates since 2003.  The RCMP confirmed that investigation is still active.

"I've actually worked inside or been inside places that were under surveillance and we just laughed because we knew they were outside watching us," Hanson said. "But they weren't trying to bust us for what we were doing. They were trying to put together that flow chart where this is the head of this organizations and this guy works for that guy. They're trying to do that whole FBI thing with the mob but it doesn't really work because it's a fluid market."

CTV asked him, "What's the difference between the flow chart that the police are drawing and the reality?"  Hanson answered: "Well there really is no flow chart.  It's a free-for-all out there right now and there's many, many people doing this."

We asked him why he didn't just turn himself into the police and tell them what he knows instead of going public. He laughed. "I didn't really consider that an option because the police don't want me. The police want me to keep working. They actually want to follow me around in their little planes and do their investigations and catch everybody all at once and they will never do it. It's the most interesting thing I've ever seen in my life."

The RCMP told us most of what Hanson said is absolutely true.

"It's correct," said Scott Rintoul, an RCMP spokesman who worked drug enforcement for 15 years in B.C. "We are a haven for organized crime.  We have been too apathetic as a country."

"You hear the rhetoric all the time that the war on drugs in Canada has failed.  Well, there is no war on drugs," Rintoul told CTV. "There never has been. We don't have the resources allocated -- toward law enforcement, towards prevention, towards treatment, towards harm reduction -- to even say we are in the battle. We have little piecemeal bits of money going to certain individuals and that, in my opinion, is not a war.  A war is when you have everyone with a common cause and these people or these groups or these organizations are funded properly.  And we don't have that and there is no war."

Rintoul admits the police are often far behind the well-funded criminals.

"It's not easy to sort of be on the outside looking in and trying to build your case. It takes months and months. Years in some cases," he told CTV. "To simply take down a lab and you have the chemist or underground cooks and you don't have any of the major players perhaps in some circles, that would be a waste of time."

"To build a case on an organized crime group is going to take a lot of time," Rintoul said, "We are not talking two or three months; we could be talking two or three years."

Hanson said those long probes help criminals like him get away with making millions.

"The police, by having these massive investigations, they show their hand on how they are doing all of this. So they are really just doing nothing. In my opinion, they are doing nothing," Hanson said. "I would like to see some responses from the police department. Why aren't you guys doing anything about this? What's up with your huge investigations?"

Hanson told us he will keep talking publicly -- to anyone who will listen - and keep trying to expose the scope of the problem.

"After 31 years of living completely in the wrong this is my first shot at doing something right."

We asked Hanson how he would respond to people who think he has another agenda - another reason for speaking out. He responded: "Who would quit their job which pays millions of dollars and give up everything including their own life to put a stop to a problem because they believe in it so much?  That is where I am coming from.

When CTV asked the RCMP's Rintoul what he thinks of Hanson's campaign to go public, he said this: "I thank him. I've talked to many of those who are involved in high-level drug organizations that have said the same thing. That's why they operate. They understand that Canada, in some instances, can be a haven for organized crime groups to operate. And that's why it just can't be the police out there. We (all of Canadian society) need to go after them."

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