Juno News - August 14, 2021


How will Canada deal with the Chinese regime？


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

193.13792

Word Count

850

Sentence Count

8


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 All the frustrations Canadians have with China rising to the fore again after the news came out
00:00:10.440 that arbitrarily detained Canadian Michael Spavor has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. This is
00:00:17.440 after being held in very bad conditions for almost 1,000 days. Michael Spavor and of course Michael
00:00:24.020 Kovrig both believed to be held as basically hostages in retaliation for the lawful arrest
00:00:29.260 of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. I want to talk today about an issue that I've written about before I've
00:00:35.960 discussed before. I think we need to revisit it and really talk about its importance in light of
00:00:41.040 all of this as we're having renewed conversations about how to deal with Canada's relationship with
00:00:46.040 China particularly now that we're having an election and we're going to be talking about a
00:00:49.920 whole bunch of foreign affairs issues and that issue I want to speak about is document number nine. This
00:00:55.600 notorious document that first appeared a number of years ago right after Xi Jinping first became
00:01:01.040 the leader of the Chinese Communist Party after he started calling the shots. Document nine is this
00:01:06.620 is this document that was sent around to senior bureaucrats and senior officials in the Chinese
00:01:12.680 Communist Party and then the government apparatus laying out the way things are going to roll under
00:01:17.920 Xi Jinping and the values that are to be encouraged and most particularly the ones that are to not be
00:01:24.620 encouraged. The big no-no's all the no-no's that that the chief bureaucrats should not be doing
00:01:29.880 unless they want to run afoul of the way Xi Jinping wants things to operate and what's so interesting is
00:01:35.640 is all of the things in this document that he says don't do they're basically the Western values
00:01:41.100 Western ideals which he really frowns upon and in this document they talk about things like
00:01:46.480 freedom of the press human rights as they are traditionally discussed in the West and
00:01:51.740 here's one key one to understanding what's going on with the two Michaels an independent judiciary so
00:01:58.660 there are all these things that we sort of hold to be given because generally when it comes to our
00:02:03.180 allies and G7 nations and when we have a lot of these sort of global cocktail parties a lot of the
00:02:08.300 main players at those events they are they are political leaders who govern nations that largely follow
00:02:14.040 those same sort of democratic principles key ideals and and when we sit around and we talk about foreign
00:02:19.680 affairs or diplomacy or what have you we're kind of all following the same rules and yet those are
00:02:25.520 all the rules that Xi Jinping says we're not going to do them and guys please do not let them take root
00:02:30.440 in China that's not how they roll so independent judiciary a thing that we take very seriously in
00:02:35.760 Canada as we should the United States UK France all of our other big allies similar things in China
00:02:42.000 under Xi Jinping and under the Chinese Communist Party well there's no such thing I mean the Chinese
00:02:47.260 Communist Party which is the political party that obviously governs uh China in an authoritarian way
00:02:53.180 right now they say well if we want to have a say in the outcome of court processes that's what we're
00:02:58.460 going to do there's not this independent judge thing there's not this sort of this broader ideal
00:03:03.100 of justice that is separated uh from the Communist Party values I mean to us that's kind of crazy to
00:03:08.780 think that that would happen of course you have your liberal your NDP your conservative different ones are
00:03:12.860 in power different times they're bringing in different pieces of legislation but you still
00:03:17.020 have the courts and the Supreme Court and the separation of powers and so forth that's not how
00:03:21.580 it operates under Xi Jinping so one of the challenges when when we have these discussions about what to do
00:03:27.980 with the two Michaels and and you know how to come to their defense in a legal sense or in a sort of
00:03:33.340 rallying our allies to uh to come to their defense uh on the international stage is we have to make sure we
00:03:40.140 don't fall into the trap of of projecting our principles and our ideals onto China into thinking
00:03:46.380 that the way we have these negotiations or just the way we talk about how to deal with China moving
00:03:50.780 forward as you know regular folks and news consumers here in Canada that we don't make the
00:03:55.340 mistake of thinking that they operate the way we do and that's why I think document number nine
00:04:01.340 understanding uh what it's all about what it says and and how it really personifies the Xi Jinping agenda
00:04:08.060 it's a thing that everybody's got to know about and discuss and kind of internalize
00:04:12.380 because well before you get your starting points going in terms of how you respond and react to
00:04:16.540 China you got to know what their starting points are and Xi Jinping pretty transparent articulating them
00:04:21.980 and documents just like that