Emerald Haze: How a Health Canada-Licensed Cannabis Firm Linked Politicians, Lawyers, and Convicted Narcos to US Fraud Prosecutions

In October 2020, British Columbia police raided three agricultural properties, targeting Health Canada–regulated marijuana grow operations in Richmond—a once blue-collar farming community that, since the 1990s, has rapidly transformed into a hotbed of transnational narcotics trafficking and money laundering linked to China, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Thousands of U.S. and Canadian records reviewed by The Bureau reveal that Delta Police’s “Big Smoke” raids barely scratched the surface of a corporate structure unfurling from a façade of Hells Angels paraphernalia and Health Canada weed licenses. The investigation suggests an unsettling reality: in modern-day Canada, the boundary between legitimate commerce and organized crime is perilously hazy—especially when political and legal elites, alongside a national regulator, appear complicit.

Beneath these fertile farmlands in Richmond lies a company called Emerald Health, launched in 2013 by two Sikh community leaders, Avtar Singh Dhillon and Yadvinder (“Yad”) Kallu. Photographs of Avtar Dhillon’s niece posing with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—his arm draped over her shoulder—are just one indicator of Emerald Health’s robust political ties.

Commercial grow-op facilities uncovered at 20291 Westminster Highway, 14611 Westminster Highway, and a Sidaway Road property were capable of producing a staggering $18 million in cannabis annually, according to Delta Police. This massive output far exceeded the limits set by the Health Canada licenses that Emerald Health promoted in 2018 through a glossy investor pamphlet featuring Liberal MPs Carla Qualtrough and John Aldag, along with B.C. Liberal and Richmond councillor Alexa Loo.

The fact that convicted heroin trafficker Yad Kallu—arrested in a DEA sting stretching from Los Angeles and Vancouver to the rugged narcotics corridors between Pakistan and Punjab—appeared grinning alongside several Liberal MPs in a 2018 promotional campaign might, in hindsight, have raised alarm bells at Health Canada.