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.
Everything got worse under Trudeau.
