Juno News - November 23, 2019
Will Justin Trudeau continue to be silent on China?
Episode Stats
Words per minute
182.1539
Harmful content
Hate speech
6
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Summary
China is just getting more brazen and brazen and the Liberal government needs to answer. Now that they ve been re-elected, now that they've cobbled together their new variation of their cabinet, what are they going to do about it? Are you going to keep taking all the hits from China?
Transcript
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China is just getting more and more brazen and the Liberal government needs to answer now that
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they've been re-elected, now that they've cobbled together their new variation of their cabinet,
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what are you going to do about it? Are you going to keep taking all the hits from China?
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Now we are almost at the one-year anniversary of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor being
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arbitrarily detained in China, two Canadians being held hostage. Yes, let's use the word because that
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is what it is. Now the previous ambassador from China to Canada, Lu Shay, he wasn't a particularly
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good fit for us. He said some pretty outlandish things and he had the nerve to accuse Canadians
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of being rooted in white supremacy because of their attitudes on this file, because they dared to ask
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can you please return these two Canadians, because we dare to be critical of a lot of the things that
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China is doing to us right now. Well, there is hope that perhaps the new ambassador would be a little
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better. Not so much. The new guy, Ambassador Kong Pei Wu, he gave a media interview to a roundtable
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of people on Friday and, well, he said some pretty interesting things. For starters, he encouraged
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Canadians to speak out and be opposed to the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. Really
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unbelievable stuff, particularly given that you already have people on the ground in Canada right
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now in places like Vancouver and Markham who are speaking out against the Hong Kong pro-democracy
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activists. It's really alarming and disappointing to see that happen. And now the new ambassador is
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goading them along, encouraging more of that to happen. But here's what he also said. It was very
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interesting. He said that the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, well, that had caused some of the
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severe difficulties that the Canada-China relationship has now. Really? So this guy's
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pretty much admitting now, almost admitting publicly and unashamedly, that Michael Kovrig and
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Michael Spavor were just arrested, detained, arbitrarily being held for a year just because
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of Meng Wanzhou, who is facing the legal system, the above-board legal system in North America in the
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same way anyone else would be. Meanwhile, the two Michaels are not facing anything resembling a fair
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and accessible justice system. That is not what's happening at all. So we cannot continue to play
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their game. You know, we heard that when the new ambassador, Dominic Barton, first got into his
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position, he actually went there and he met with them when consular assistance was provided for them.
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They've had very few meetings, very few interactions in the outside world, but Dominic Barton went and
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saw them. Okay, that's great. Good to see that. And now we, of course, learned that the pork ban has been
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lifted. So Canadian pork products now have access to the Chinese market. And Justin Trudeau thanked
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Dominic Barton for playing a role in that. Okay, that's great. We'll take it where we can get it.
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However, as a lot of observers have noted, there was a major pork shortage going on in China. It's a
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very popular consumer product and they had swine flu and they had to kill off many, many, many pigs
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there in that unfortunate swine flu they had. So they probably lifted the pork ban because they needed
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to, to get access to pork products, not because of anything that we were doing, any superior
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negotiating. So what's going to happen? How are we going to advance this file? Because clearly from
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what the new ambassador is saying, they just don't care anymore. They're going to continue to prod us.
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They're going to continue to practically laugh in our faces about this, doing it their way or the highway.
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And that's the question this government's going to face and the new cabinet is facing. Are you going to do
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it the Canadian way or are you going to do it the Chinese communist authoritarian way? Because they're
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saying it's got to be that way. I think if you ask regular Canadians, they're going to say,
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uh-uh, not a chance, no thanks. So the ball is right now in Justin Trudeau's court.