Trudeau needs to change his approach to China
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Summary
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been held for over 550 days, arbitrarily detained, being held hostages, really as a tit for tat for Canada arresting Meng Wanzhou, they have now been formally charged with spying. Both on the same day, in courts that typically have a 99% conviction rate. This is not good news.
Transcript
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An incredibly frustrating development on the Canada-China file. The two Michaels,
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Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have been held for over 550 days, arbitrarily detained,
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being held hostages, really just as a tit for tat for Canada arresting Meng Wanzhou,
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they have now been formally charged with spying on Friday, both on the same day,
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in courts that typically have a 99% conviction rate. This is not good news and all Canadians
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should be dismayed by this and hope that somehow we can get the two Michaels back. There's also a
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lot of lessons in all of this, coming just after Canada has been rejected from the UN Security Council
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seat. Justin Trudeau feeling like maybe if he pulls his punches on a whole bunch of issues around the
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world, that will mean world leaders like him more, that things go his way more. Well, that didn't cut
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it with the UN Security Council and it's not cutting it with China. Word on the street was one of the
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reasons why Trudeau had not made a decision on Huawei entering our 5G grid was because he didn't
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want to further anger China and see negative developments with the two Michaels. You can
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sort of appreciate that, but then you go, well, where does that leave us? Does that mean that then
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they can just hold hostage another couple of Canadians anytime there's something that they want to push in
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their direction anytime they want to get their way? Justin Trudeau still hasn't made the Huawei decision
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and yet here we go. The two Michaels have seen their cases unfortunately develop in the wrong
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direction. Now this comes after last month, one court justice here in Canada did decide that Meng
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Wang Zhu's case can continue, that it's not going to be thrown out as Meng Wang Zhu's lawyers wanted.
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So China clearly unhappy about that and they've made it pretty clear that they are unhappy with this
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in a government way, that these are government spokespeople, they're not just hair lawyers,
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they're not just Huawei executives talking and it seems pretty clear that Michael Kovrig and Michael
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Spavor are being held in retaliation and they pretty much acknowledge that. What can we do to get them
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back? That's one part of the conversation, but what can we do to basically stand up to China,
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which is what more and more Canadians are asking for. The latest authoritative poll showing only 14%
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of Canadians have a favorable opinion of China as a government. A clear sign is the time to act is now.
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We can no longer tolerate their diplomats saying really offensive things about Canadians and Canada
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as they have been doing. If we need to make a decision on Huawei, which we do, all the experts say
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no, you must ban it. The United States basically talking about having alliances where Canada is not
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in on the conversation because we wouldn't be able to be trusted. We've got to ban Huawei. We have to do
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other proactive measures to decouple from Beijing as much as we can. Talking about putting a pause
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or a permanent ban on state-owned enterprises, buying up Canadian firms during the pandemic.
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A lot of action items on the table and this latest situation, well, it shows us that no matter how much
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you appease China, it's not going to work. In fact, it may even go the other way because they learn,
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oh, there we go. We can get leverage on Canada after all. We got to change our approach to all of this.
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And, well, we got to have all of our thoughts and our hopes and our fingers crossed for the two Michaels.