Juno News - July 24, 2021


More needs to be done about China's belligerence


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

188.46863

Word Count

681

Sentence Count

52


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So many Canadians are saying they don't want to think about COVID-19 anymore. They want to enjoy
00:00:10.540 their summer. No more restrictions. And in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, they've got just that.
00:00:16.440 Restrictions are over. Mask mandates are done. People just want to live their life. They want
00:00:21.360 to forget about the past year and a half and say, let's just put that behind us. Let's move forward.
00:00:26.480 And look, I don't blame them. I feel the same way. But there's one thing for sure that we shouldn't
00:00:31.520 be putting behind us. One urgent question and issue that still remains, which is accountability
00:00:36.540 for China and their role in the origins of COVID-19 and covering it up. The World Health Organization,
00:00:43.280 to their credit, has said they need a second probe now into the origins of what exactly happened in
00:00:49.020 Wuhan involving the Institute of Virology, that lab where the virus may or may not have escaped from.
00:00:54.600 All of those original questions, they say, we got to return to, we've got to get more
00:00:59.680 accountability on it. China is already saying, uh-uh, we're done. No more probe. No more questions.
00:01:05.360 Look away, folks. That is unacceptable. And we have to hold them to account. And this all brings in the
00:01:11.580 bigger picture questions about Canada's relationship with China. Of course, the U.S.'s relationship with
00:01:16.980 China. China's rising influence and why, after what we've just gone through with COVID-19,
00:01:22.380 such a traumatic experience, all of the harms that were brought to society, we've really got to talk
00:01:28.600 more about the China relationship. Some very interesting posts to social media that I want
00:01:33.220 to draw to your attention that were put forward by David Mulroney, who is Canada's former ambassador
00:01:38.060 to China. Someone who really knows what he's talking about and who has been reflecting on these
00:01:42.000 issues a great deal. Take a look at this. David Mulroney, he writes,
00:01:46.000 China is emboldened because it believes that the West, Canada included, isn't just in retreat.
00:01:53.040 It's collapsing on itself. He says this is an abstract Marxist theory. It comes from reading
00:01:58.500 our papers, listening to our artists, athletes, academics, politicians, especially our politicians,
00:02:05.800 says David Mulroney. In another post, he talks about some of the things that Canada needs to do
00:02:09.840 to remedy this situation. And look, they are big picture approaches, but he's really onto something.
00:02:15.480 Dave Mulroney, he advises that the first steps of a Canadian-China strategy should be moving
00:02:20.640 resolutely against China's influence and interference operations in Canada, reducing our vulnerability to
00:02:27.320 China's economic coercion, and number three, establishing new alliances to push back. Really
00:02:34.480 important stuff. And actually, at the last G7 meeting, Joe Biden sat down with Justin Trudeau and said,
00:02:40.120 look, you guys, you got to do more on this front. We want you to lead the charge to push back
00:02:44.980 against what's going on in the Western provinces against the Uyghur Muslims in China, because we
00:02:49.320 got to have all hands on deck dealing with all of this. And while the liberals, to their credit,
00:02:53.280 they did speak up at the UN and they were sort of the leading voices to say, look, we got to hold
00:02:57.440 China to account on the Uyghur Muslim situation there. But that's just one issue. And COVID-19,
00:03:02.620 well, that's just one issue as well, even though it's a massive issue. There are so many issues when it
00:03:07.780 comes to China right now. And we got to get so much more serious in the way we reflect on it,
00:03:12.500 the way we talk about it. Listen to what David Mulrooney is saying. This is not just some random
00:03:16.360 guy on social media. This is an academic. This is a diplomat. This is a guy who was our ambassador
00:03:22.100 on the ground in China for several years. He knows what he's talking about. More and more experts,
00:03:27.300 more and more people who really understand the issue in depth, they know what they're talking
00:03:30.940 about. And they're urging Canadians and they're urging Justin Trudeau to pay much more attention to
00:03:36.300 this issue.