Juno News - When will Canada stand up to China？

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 we will move on to the big picture issue of our time canada's relationship with china and uh this

00:00:15.580 has finally reached a point where it looks like the government is maybe trying to be a little bit

00:00:22.640 more serious about this i mean that's a bit of an if china has expelled a canadian diplomat

00:00:30.100 after canada expelled a chinese diplomat but the diplomat that canada expelled was one that was

00:00:37.080 implicated in a plot to intimidate michael chong's family overseas that's a conservative member of

00:00:43.840 michael chong and the liberals still need to answer for a few aspects of this such as uh you know

00:00:50.620 exactly how much they knew why michael chong wasn't informed of it until this week why the

00:00:56.680 intelligence reports that said this was known a year ago never managed to make their way to the

00:01:01.460 person who was the subject of them and why justin trudeau claims that he had no idea but everyone

00:01:06.780 around him seemed to it's a bit of a weird dynamic there in which i think you know canada has more

00:01:12.340 to answer for than china uh but then we have some other dimensions of this that we have to talk about

00:01:18.100 i want to welcome into the show brian lee crowley who is the managing director of the mcdonald laurie

00:01:23.620 institute brian good to talk to you thanks for coming on today on the show andrew i really appreciate

00:01:29.560 the invitation well let's let's start first off with the idea of i mean canada and china which is i know

00:01:36.400 a big question and the idea that you know this stuff was known it was in the intelligence community

00:01:41.840 the national security advisor knew about it and then only this week do we get this expulsion

00:01:47.640 of a chinese diplomat uh that was again not just you know representing china but but doing so in a way

00:01:54.880 that was very much working against canada well uh look you're absolutely right that uh you know a lot

00:02:02.660 of people in the media seem to be giving the impression that uh this is something that's been known

00:02:07.500 for maybe a week uh but on the contrary this was in reports from cesus reports that reached the

00:02:15.940 political level that reached the the national security advisor to the prime minister that said

00:02:20.920 that there were chinese diplomats in canada working to intimidate an elected member of canada's

00:02:26.620 parliament uh and it's only now uh two years later that we're taking action and of course the you know

00:02:33.980 the prime minister having kicked a diplomat out i in my view not because he thought that it was

00:02:40.380 important to kick the diplomat out but because he thought it was important to uh respond to public

00:02:45.900 opinion once it became known he said well i bet i guess i better take some action but the the fact

00:02:51.100 is that the people at least the people around him if not the prime minister himself uh knew all about

00:02:57.180 this two years ago and the fact that it's taken them this long to react to say to china you know

00:03:04.540 you can't actually ask us to accredit diplomats to represent you in our country and then have them

00:03:11.420 break our laws try and intimidate our elected representatives uh uh uh and we are not going to

00:03:17.980 allow that your your diplomats who do this are going to be sent home uh i i i i'm i'm kind of speechless

00:03:25.020 that uh the prime minister uh has taken so long and uh uh before he made the decision made it very

00:03:31.660 clear that he was hesitating quite a lot uh because he worried about what the chinese might do in

00:03:37.420 response which i i i think is pathetic behavior by the prime yeah yeah no and melanie joe lee the

00:03:45.340 foreign minister had made some comments and i don't have the exact quote but it was something along the

00:03:49.420 lines of you know we we want to talk through china what our options are i'm like why are you talking this

00:03:54.300 through with china for you i mean for starters i think there's only one option but secondly it

00:03:58.540 shouldn't be part of a consultation at that point i mean it was still from when this news became public

00:04:03.900 even if we give the government the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know before that which i i

00:04:08.460 don't but even from when the news went public we're talking about a significant period of time

00:04:13.020 before this guy was on a plane back home well and there there is no better way to telegraph to the

00:04:20.860 chinese that the government of canada is frightened of them and is frightened uh to take actions that 0.91

00:04:27.420 would protect the interests of canadians because they're afraid of what the chinese will do in 0.99

00:04:31.900 response and frankly you know this is exactly the reason why so many of us said with respect to the two

00:04:38.220 michaels uh when when china uh basically kidnapped two canadian citizens to punish us for the arrest of

00:04:46.460 meng wenzhou uh the uh the cfo of huawei the chinese telecoms company uh you know we we were saying to

00:04:55.100 the government of canada over and over again don't let this affect the way that you behave towards china

00:05:00.780 you cannot say to china well as long as you're holding two of our citizens we won't do anything that 1.00

00:05:07.100 upsets you this is exactly why you know uh countries say for example they won't negotiate with terrorists

00:05:13.420 because as soon as you say oh you you're going to hurt my people well then i will do whatever you

00:05:19.580 tell me to do uh you create incentives for bad actors to do bad things because they know that you

00:05:26.460 will let them get away with it and so you know uh the the the whole behavior of canada not just towards

00:05:33.660 this uh diplomat who was intimidating uh michael chong through his family but the behavior with respect to

00:05:39.900 the two michaels and many other ways we have sent the message to china you can walk all over us and 0.93

00:05:46.700 we will do everything we can to avoid responding i want to put a picture up this was a picture

00:05:53.820 tweeted by the royal family on may 5th shortly before king charles's coronation and it says the

00:06:00.700 king meets with commonwealth leaders at marlborough house his majesty is head of the commonwealth a

00:06:05.260 voluntary association of 56 independent and equal countries and if you look i'm not going to get

00:06:11.100 you to zoom in but if you look through the picture you see his majesty the king you see the prime

00:06:15.340 minister of australia the prime minister of new zealand the prime minister of the united kingdom

00:06:19.980 leaders from the caribbean and africa and in the commonwealth realms in asia nowhere in that picture

00:06:26.700 is any canadian delegate and that includes justin trudeau who was at the time on his way or speaking at

00:06:33.260 the liberal convention but then you juxtapose it with this this is a picture from a panel discussion

00:06:39.980 with harjit sajan formerly the defense minister in canada from the liberal convention uh that says

00:06:46.700 everywhere we go meeting our partners helping those in need and protecting the vulnerable there's always

00:06:51.660 one message we need more canada and the the message there is that the world needs more canada so i i

00:06:58.940 like the juxtaposition of the world needs more canada and justin trudeau skipping the commonwealth

00:07:04.140 meeting but there's a serious point in that i think brian which is that the liberals generally

00:07:10.140 talk about this very lofty and aspirational place for canada in the world but when you get down to

00:07:16.460 brass tacks and you talk about the situations that matter where a decisive position is expected of

00:07:23.180 canada like on china they're nowhere to be found well andrew i i think this is absolutely right you

00:07:30.140 know the government of canada always prides itself on being uh you know a calm reasoned voice of uh of

00:07:37.020 diplomacy and so on but people forget that diplomacy isn't an end in itself talking is not an end in

00:07:43.260 itself a country must effectively defend its real interests and uh uh you know simply saying well

00:07:51.980 you know we we're friends to everybody everybody likes canada so uh you know as as long as we're here 0.95

00:08:00.380 everyone will behave themselves it's it's complete rubbish the chinese laugh up their sleeve at this kind 1.00

00:08:06.860 of rhetoric because they are completely unapologetic about defending their interests i mean that's that's 0.95

00:08:13.020 what we're discussing here they say to their diplomats uh oh you're in canada make sure that

00:08:17.980 you punish canadian politicians who do anything contrary to canada's to china's interests now i'm

00:08:24.220 not saying that we should behave that way in china what i'm saying is uh uh china makes no bones about

00:08:30.860 the fact that the purpose of their diplomacy is to defend the interests of china completely unapologetically

00:08:36.860 and canada's response is oh well we don't want to offend you so even though you've done things that

00:08:42.860 break our law that break the geneva convention that are completely inappropriate for your diplomats

00:08:48.140 um let's have a conversation about how we might uh you know resolve this problem i i think that this

00:08:55.900 simply encourages the chinese to think that canada will not do anything to protect its own interests

00:09:01.420 and therefore china can walk all over us yeah and i i think it was noteworthy when whenever the 0.98

00:09:07.180 AUKUS alliance came to fruition between the uk the us and australia that this wasn't really a new

00:09:13.740 partnership it was the five eyes minus new zealand and canada and i think new zealand is well known

00:09:19.740 especially among indo-pacific countries to be very pro china relative to other uh western nations and then

00:09:25.820 you had canada and when when people were pointing out why is canada excluded from this alliance it was

00:09:30.460 well you know it's mostly about nuclear submarines we don't have any of those and uh you know there were there

00:09:35.900 were a lot of excuses for why canada didn't need to be involved and then you fast forward to this

00:09:40.540 week when the trudeau government decides it needs to get tough on china and a story in the globe and

00:09:45.420 mail canada seeks to join non-nuclear pillar of AUKUS alliance so this thing that the government

00:09:50.940 said we didn't really need before is now a big part of our china strategy somehow well it's interesting

00:09:56.380 that you uh you talk about AUKUS i think this is a terribly important organization and i think

00:10:02.220 the reason why canada is not at the table uh and is you know that this organization was what has been

00:10:08.300 founded it's been started uh uh you know Australia the united kingdom the united states are spending

00:10:14.540 billions of dollars to prepare themselves for this partnership to to stand up to china in the indo-pacific 0.99

00:10:21.100 uh why was china why was canada not there well i think the part of the answer is to be found you

00:10:26.140 you might remember andrew that just a few weeks ago uh a massachusetts national guardsman released

00:10:32.540 a whole bunch of secret national security papers from the united states government and these were

00:10:39.180 you know made a huge splash in the media and so on if you read those documents and see what they say

00:10:44.700 about canada these these were internal intelligence and national security assessments by american government

00:10:51.900 authorities of canada and what they said unambiguously is canada is no longer a trustworthy

00:10:57.900 ally uh you know if we're going to be sharing intelligence if we're going to be building military

00:11:03.740 alliances if we're going to be uh building economic uh uh organizations to respond to china's rise 0.99

00:11:12.300 basically the argument was uh let's not bother with canada because they're not trustworthy uh we don't

00:11:18.220 want to share intelligence with them we can't be confident that it won't find its way into chinese 1.00

00:11:22.620 hands we have essentially not only uh turned ourselves into a doormat for china but we have

00:11:28.780 offended our own allies in doing so yeah it's quite shameful and i i guess i want to ask you a question

00:11:35.980 that perhaps you can't answer but it's an open opportunity if you do want to seize it brian which is

00:11:40.700 how easy is it to repair this because i think domestically we know that when you have a change in

00:11:46.780 government things change when you have a change in government there can be some drastic uh

00:11:51.340 deviations uh domestically but on foreign policy it's not like it's not always like that i mean across

00:11:56.460 the you know across the atlantic across the pacific uh canada is canada and whether there's

00:12:01.740 a liberal or a conservative there uh the dynamics of the relationship might change but it's largely

00:12:06.940 the same bureaucrats that are going abroad it's so so i'm curious if we have a government led by

00:12:12.780 someone else i mean right now it's pierre polyev who's the the leader of his majesty's loyal opposition

00:12:17.820 how easy is it to flip that reputation well you see part of what concerns me so much andrew is that

00:12:24.860 it's not just the liberal party and liberal governments that have been tainted by uh the

00:12:29.900 relationship with china i think it's the entire political class you know there are people in the

00:12:35.260 conservative party who are just as close to china as some of the worst offenders in the liberal party 0.98

00:12:41.020 uh just on that i mean it was the conservatives that really tried to put a lot of hope in free

00:12:46.300 trade with china as being a a positive economic policy absolutely there so you know there's there's

00:12:53.260 nothing to uh to reassure our allies in a simple change of government what we need is a change of

00:13:01.340 government and and a new government that says we are going to rid our institutions and our political

00:13:07.580 political class uh of this uh uh this malevolent chinese influence we are going to make it very 1.00

00:13:14.780 clear that we have rejoined uh the western liberal democratic alliance uh that we will not

00:13:21.340 be intimidated we will not be a a place where information shared by our allies will find its way to

00:13:27.740 china uh and we're going to clean house uh and by the way i i i have to say that you know the

00:13:34.940 the the the trudeau appointment of a special rapporteur and so on with strong ties to china

00:13:40.140 himself isn't getting that job done so everything will depend uh on whether in the event of a change

00:13:47.820 of government that government signals very clearly to our allies that there is going to be a change of

00:13:53.020 orientation a change of commitments a rejoining of the the western alliance and end to our what i call our

00:13:59.900 uh slow motion defection uh and uh um uh we win back the trust and confidence of our allies including

00:14:09.420 by doing what we promised nato we would do which is to spend two percent of our gdp on uh on national

00:14:15.580 defense and national security if we take those steps uh uh following a change of government uh i i think

00:14:22.780 it is possible to win back the confidence of our friends and allies but a simple change of government alone won't get the job done

00:14:30.460 brian lee crowley managing director of the mcdonald laurie institute always a pleasure sir thanks for

00:14:35.340 coming on today i'll look forward to the next time thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show

00:14:39.980 support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - February 15, 2021

When will Canada stand up to China？

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