A B.C. man found guilty of nine counts of trafficking cocaine, fentanyl and carfentanil will spend four years in prison, a Surrey provincial court judge ruled April 14.
Judge Kimberly Arthur-Leung found Harniel Singh Singh guilty in June 2022.
“Mr. Singh sold 97.57 grams of cocaine, 95.46 grams of fentanyl and 3.32 grams of a mixture of both fentanyl and carfentanil to the same undercover officer,” Arthur-Leung said in the decision. “The percentages of the fentanyl and carfentanil were lethal.”
She said he trafficked drugs in the Fraser Valley and Richmond.
The Crown sought a global sentence of 10 years of imprisonment while the defence counsel asked for a conditional sentence order of 24 months less one day followed by 36 months of probation.
In her decision, the judge noted there were 2,272 overdose deaths in B.C. in 2022.
“These numbers are horrifying and at the very basic core are foundational to the basis for the consideration of both deterrence and denunciation to every dealer, trafficker, producer and importer in this province,” she said.
Arthur-Leung said an undercover police officer testified Singh was under surveillance while visiting an address on Vancouver’s Hornby Street where he met with a high-level member of the Brothers Keepers gang.
The judge found Singh was very entrenched in drug trafficking. The court heard he was not a low-level trafficker; at the very minimum, he was a mid-level to lower high-level trafficker with men under his supervision and management.
“He was, in essence, a territorial boss that answered to a larger area boss,” she said.
The judge said Singh had authority and oversight over individuals working a dial-a-dope line. She said he had access to larger amounts of drugs and knew the quality of drugs and, thus, was more than a mere street-level trafficker.
The judge noted Singh repeatedly refused to answer questions about Brothers Keepers, gang member names and addresses.
“His refusal to answer those questions should be deemed an admission,” Arthur-Leung said. “His behaviours and answers throughout are consistent that Mr. Singh was a local area drug trafficking boss.”
