While Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was in Europe attempting to bolster international support in Canada’s diplomatic tiff with China, events back in Canada may have put a new obstacle in the government’s path.
Freeland was in Davos, Switzerland this week for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. She said in a statement that she raised the issue of the dispute with China in one-on-one meetings with her counterparts from several other countries, including Italy, Japan and South Korea.
The issues between Canada and China began last month, when Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver. Meng is the chief financial officer of tech giant Huawei, and U.S. authorities allege she disobeyed American economic sanctions on Iran.
Two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, were arrested in China within days of Meng’s arrest in Canada. A third Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, found himself facing a hurried second trial for being an accessory to drug-smuggling, which ended with him being sentenced to death.
The Chinese government has maintained that there were no political motivations behind the arrests of Kovrig and Spavor or the sentencing of Schellenberg, and accused Canada of being politically motivated in arresting Meng.
Canadian government officials, including Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have argued that China’s actions were in retaliation for the arrest of Meng. They have said Canada could not have refused the Americans’ request to have Meng arrested due to the extradition treaty in place between the two countries.
While in Davos, Freeland took the government’s position to a new audience in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria which aired Sunday morning.
“We have looked into those detentions, and we believe them to be arbitrary, and we’re calling for their release,” she said, adding that the government considers the death penalty Schellenberg is facing to be “cruel and inhumane” and has requested clemency in his case.
On the subject of Meng’s arrest, Freeland reasserted that Canada had no choice but to arrest her given the U.S. request.
“This is not a political decision Canada has taken. She is not accused of any crime in Canada. Our government has made no case against her,” Freeland said.
While the government response to Meng’s case has typically been along those lines, John McCallum was fired as Canada’s ambassador to China Saturday after presenting a more opinionated stance in two media interviews.
McCallum first told Chinese reporters in the Toronto area that he felt Meng had “strong arguments” she could make against her extradition. After walking back those comments, saying he misspoke, McCallum told StarMetro Vancouver that it would be “great for Canada” if the U.S. dropped its extradition request, and that it could lead to Kovrig and Spavor being freed.
McCallum’s comments were apparently received with “cautious optimism” in China, according to one Canadian expert on the country.
Lynette Ong, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said reports in China appeared to be encouraged that a senior Canadian official was suggesting an element of politicization to Meng’s arrest, backing up the Chinese government’s claims.
“We will never really know what the Chinese government is really thinking, but if what appears in the Chinese social media is a gauge of the sentiment in that country, I think overall it has been received well,” she told CTV News Channel on Sunday.
While McCallum’s remarks might have played well in China, Ong said, they presented a problem for Freeland and other Canadian officials portraying Meng’s arrest as strictly a legal affair.
“From the outside, this whole situation looks like a mess, like Canada somehow cannot get its act together,” she said.
“We keep on sending inconsistent messages to the Chinese authorities and to the world about what our position is.”
Ong said one way Canada might look to repair its relationship with China would be to replace McCallum with someone more familiar with China and its culture.
“If Canada wants to negotiate with China, we need to send someone that [China] thinks they can trust,” she said.
