Juno News - November 23, 2019


Will Justin Trudeau continue to be silent on China？


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

182.1539

Word Count

707

Sentence Count

37

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 China is just getting more and more brazen and the Liberal government needs to answer now that
00:00:10.840 they've been re-elected, now that they've cobbled together their new variation of their cabinet,
00:00:15.540 what are you going to do about it? Are you going to keep taking all the hits from China?
00:00:21.900 Now we are almost at the one-year anniversary of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor being
00:00:27.460 arbitrarily detained in China, two Canadians being held hostage. Yes, let's use the word because that
00:00:34.960 is what it is. Now the previous ambassador from China to Canada, Lu Shay, he wasn't a particularly
00:00:42.120 good fit for us. He said some pretty outlandish things and he had the nerve to accuse Canadians
00:00:47.180 of being rooted in white supremacy because of their attitudes on this file, because they dared to ask
00:00:53.360 can you please return these two Canadians, because we dare to be critical of a lot of the things that
00:00:58.740 China is doing to us right now. Well, there is hope that perhaps the new ambassador would be a little
00:01:02.920 better. Not so much. The new guy, Ambassador Kong Pei Wu, he gave a media interview to a roundtable
00:01:10.160 of people on Friday and, well, he said some pretty interesting things. For starters, he encouraged
00:01:15.060 Canadians to speak out and be opposed to the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. Really
00:01:20.740 unbelievable stuff, particularly given that you already have people on the ground in Canada right
00:01:26.120 now in places like Vancouver and Markham who are speaking out against the Hong Kong pro-democracy
00:01:32.700 activists. It's really alarming and disappointing to see that happen. And now the new ambassador is
00:01:37.620 goading them along, encouraging more of that to happen. But here's what he also said. It was very
00:01:42.780 interesting. He said that the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, well, that had caused some of the
00:01:49.620 severe difficulties that the Canada-China relationship has now. Really? So this guy's
00:01:55.220 pretty much admitting now, almost admitting publicly and unashamedly, that Michael Kovrig and
00:02:01.620 Michael Spavor were just arrested, detained, arbitrarily being held for a year just because
00:02:07.240 of Meng Wanzhou, who is facing the legal system, the above-board legal system in North America in the
00:02:13.660 same way anyone else would be. Meanwhile, the two Michaels are not facing anything resembling a fair
00:02:19.260 and accessible justice system. That is not what's happening at all. So we cannot continue to play
00:02:25.240 their game. You know, we heard that when the new ambassador, Dominic Barton, first got into his
00:02:29.920 position, he actually went there and he met with them when consular assistance was provided for them.
00:02:34.200 They've had very few meetings, very few interactions in the outside world, but Dominic Barton went and
00:02:38.640 saw them. Okay, that's great. Good to see that. And now we, of course, learned that the pork ban has been
00:02:44.620 lifted. So Canadian pork products now have access to the Chinese market. And Justin Trudeau thanked
00:02:49.800 Dominic Barton for playing a role in that. Okay, that's great. We'll take it where we can get it.
00:02:53.620 However, as a lot of observers have noted, there was a major pork shortage going on in China. It's a
00:02:58.940 very popular consumer product and they had swine flu and they had to kill off many, many, many pigs
00:03:04.280 there in that unfortunate swine flu they had. So they probably lifted the pork ban because they needed
00:03:10.460 to, to get access to pork products, not because of anything that we were doing, any superior
00:03:15.760 negotiating. So what's going to happen? How are we going to advance this file? Because clearly from
00:03:21.760 what the new ambassador is saying, they just don't care anymore. They're going to continue to prod us.
00:03:25.960 They're going to continue to practically laugh in our faces about this, doing it their way or the highway.
00:03:32.240 And that's the question this government's going to face and the new cabinet is facing. Are you going to do
00:03:37.640 it the Canadian way or are you going to do it the Chinese communist authoritarian way? Because they're
00:03:42.780 saying it's got to be that way. I think if you ask regular Canadians, they're going to say,
00:03:47.100 uh-uh, not a chance, no thanks. So the ball is right now in Justin Trudeau's court.