A Yukon man who says he was convicted of drug trafficking on bad evidence has had his appeal dismissed by the B.C.-Yukon Court of Appeal.

Yao Lin Guan was sentenced to 14 months of house arrest in July 2010, after a Yukon judge found him guilty of trafficking cocaine and trying to evade a police officer.

During the trial, Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale heard that an off-duty RCMP officer saw a man matching Guan's description engaged in what looked like a drug deal outside the McDonald's restaurant on Fourth Avenue.

The officer noted the licence plate of the car the man was riding in, and the next day drove by the house it was registered to. He saw Guan pulling away from the home in the same car and decided to follow him.

As they were driving toward Two Mile Hill, the men made eye contact.

Guan ran a stop sign, so the officer activated his siren and motioned for Guan to pull over.

Instead, Guan kept driving toward the hill. He kept slowing down and speeding up, and turned right through a red light without stopping.

The officer told the court he could see the man fumbling with something on his left side, then lean over to the open passenger window.

The officer finally brought Guan to a stop by pulling his cruiser in front of Guan's car. He searched Guan and the vehicle but found only cash, not drugs, as he had expected.

However, the RCMP's canine unit found a clear plastic bag containing seven "spit balls”, packages contained between 1 ½ and two grams of cocaine, on the road where Guan had passed during the chase.

The officer arrested Guan and seized his cell phone.

The next day, the officer answered a call on that same phone from a man who asked: "Can you do McDonald's?” The man said he needed "three” and when the officer asked him if he wanted "grams” the man replied "spit balls.”

All that evidence taken together was enough to convince Veale of Guan's guilt, but as his lawyer argued in the appeal court, it was all circumstantial and left a reasonable doubt about his client's guilt.

The three justices of the court disagreed.

"On this evidence, it was open to the trial judge to come to the conclusions that he did, and to reject any other explanation that might arise on the evidence,” Justice Catharine Ryan said on behalf of the judges.

The defence lawyer also pointed to evidence, heard in court earlier this year, that Guan's employer, Tai Pang Nipp, was selling cocaine to pay for his own habit, and it was his car and his cell phone used as evidence against Guan. The judges dismissed that argument also.

"It is enough to say that there is no evidence that Mr. Nipp could have been involved in placing the drugs on the street,” Justice Ryan said.

It is unclear now, as it was at the time of Guan's trial, how this conviction affects the Chinese immigrant's future in Canada.