Andrew Coyne: McCallum may have revealed Canada's risky plan to play U.S. and China off against each other
“I regret that my comments with respect to the legal proceedings of Ms. Meng have created confusion. I misspoke. These comments do not accurately represent my position on this issue.”
So now repents John McCallum, ambassador of Canada to the People’s Republic of China, in a statement issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Plainly he did not misspeak: the now-infamous comments to Chinese-language media earlier this week, questioning whether the Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou should be extradited to the United States to face charges of bank fraud, were delivered at length and with evident forethought.
Whether they represent his position, however, is another matter. Perhaps they represented someone else’s.
There are three possibilities. One, the ambassador was publicly contradicting the government that employs him, at the most sensitive possible moment, with two Canadians held hostage by the Chinese government, plus another under sentence of death, in obvious retaliation for Meng’s arrest. This is conceivable — McCallum has a history of saying odd things — but unlikely.
Two, the ambassador was speaking for the government and at its behest, deliberately signalling a change in position on an issue on which the government has until now been adamant: that Meng’s arrest was entirely by the book, under the terms of the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty, and that the government could do nothing to prevent it or to free her, at least at this stage of the extradition process. Again, this seems unlikely, and in any case the government has denied it.
Or three, the ambassador was inadvertently revealing government thinking. It might have preferred his comments had not been made in public, but it cannot disavow them, or him, now that they have been — for whatever it was they signalled, even unwittingly, the government would not wish to send the opposite signal.
Evidence for this last possibility can be found in the prime minister’s refusal to fire him; in his refusal to deny that his views represented the government’s; and, perhaps of greatest interest, in the selective nature of McCallum’s retraction.
For his comments did not only dwell on the “strong arguments” Meng could make against her extradition. Neither did he confine himself to observing that her extradition “would not be a happy outcome.”
He also noted a “second option,” wherein “the United States made some kind of a deal with China, and part of the deal would be that they would no longer seek her extradition. And we would hope, if the U.S. made such a deal, part of the deal would also be to release the two Canadians.” Whether commuting the third Canadian’s death sentence might also be part of the “deal” is unclear.
But hardly had these comments come to light before a “senior government official” was confiding to the Toronto Star that the government had made strenuous efforts to arrange just such a deal. Even as it was publicly denouncing Donald Trump for suggesting he might intervene in her case if it were necessary to secure a trade deal with China — Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland publicly reminded “our extradition partners” not “to politicize the extradition process” — behind the scenes the government was angling to get in on the politicization.
Indeed, the prime minister personally implored Trump, according to the Star, that if he intended “to use Meng’s extradition as a bargaining chip … to make sure that the two Canadians who were taken in retaliation by China are released.”
As ever, what is extraordinary about this is not just that it happened, but that the government should now choose to tell us about it. What seems to be implied is a three-corner deal, of a kind Canadian governments have negotiated in the past so as not to be seen to be paying ransom for hostages. In effect, the U.S. would pay the ransom on our behalf.
Why would the U.S. agree to look after our interests as part of a bilateral trade deal with China? Sure, they owe us one, having arrested Meng for them, and taken the heat from China for doing so. But this is the Trump administration, remember, for whom moral obligations are for losers.
Perhaps, rather, it might be in response to some inducement we might offer — for example, to adapt a suggestion by the columnist Tom Parkin, barring Huawei, at long last, from supplying equipment to Canada’s 5G networks, as the U.S. and other nations, acting on the advice of their intelligence agencies, have done. We ought to have done this long ago, in our own national interests. But perhaps it is also a card that can now be played.
And if the U.S. still refused to co-operate, or struck a harder bargain? If there was any signalling going on at McCallum’s press conference, perhaps it was aimed at the Americans: we have options. Maybe not in court — we are a rule of law country, after all — but at some later time, as the ambassador noted, “when the justice minister is required to give a view” — the minister having the final say on extradition requests under Canadian law.
The Extradition Act does not give the minister unlimited licence to refuse an extradition once the courts have approved it. He can do so where to surrender a prisoner would be “unjust or oppressive,” or where the crime for which they were sought constituted “a political offence,” among about a dozen specified circumstances.
The minister may, however, “subject the surrender to any conditions that the minister considers appropriate,” and refuse to proceed with it until these have been met. In that event, “the minister shall order the discharge of the person,” meaning Meng would be on her way back to China.
If that is what is going on here, it is an exceedingly risky game: playing one superpower off against another. Still, as ransom payments go, this would be less objectionable than most. Yes, China would get Meng back. But they would also suffer a major setback for Huawei, widely seen as an agent of the Chinese state. On balance this seems a net loss. |
