China ties fate of detained Canadians to Meng case
OTTAWA — Finally. Clarity from Beijing. As pressure grows on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to drop the U.S. extradition case against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, China has publicly dropped any pretense around the fate of two Canadians that it jailed after Meng’s arrest.
On Wednesday China’s Foreign Ministry pointed to a legal opinion commissioned and released by former justice minister and United Nations ambassador Allan Rock, former Supreme Court judge Louise Arbour, and Vina Nadjibulla, wife of Michael Kovrig, one of the Canadian detainees in China.
Written by lawyer Brian Greenspan, it urged Justice Minister David Lametti to exercise his legal discretion and drop the extradition case against Meng in order to secure China’s release of Kovrig and fellow Canadian Michael Spavor from Chinese jails.
It makes the case that Lametti not only can but should release Meng, and lists the political considerations he should rely on to do so.
Citing that high-profile legal advice on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, “Such options are within the rule of law and could open up space for resolution to the situation of the two Canadians.”
It was a stunning acknowledgment that the fates of the two men are tied to Meng’s freedom.
Despite months of publicly denying any link, Zhao’s statement made utterly clear that Kovrig and Spavor are hostages, imprisoned for no other reason than to pressure the Canadian government to withdraw extradition proceedings against Meng. It suggests there is no evidence against them, no basis for spying charges to proceed, and no so-called “independent” judicial organ that will protect their rights, only the whim of China’s Communist Party rulers, subject to negotiation of a “resolution” — or not.
On the other hand, U.S. prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York have at least compiled evidence to support the laying of fraud charges against Meng — whether Canada or China likes it or not. It is evidence that a Canadian court judge said in a preliminary ruling last month would amount to a basis for a fraud case in Canada, meeting the first legal test — “double criminality” — for extradition. And it’s a package of evidence that an independent U.S. judicial system will scrutinize to ensure basic justice is rendered — if the extradition goes ahead — in a system Canada recognizes and respects.
Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer and deputy board chair, is wanted on fraud charges tied to what U.S. prosecutors allege was the company’s attempt to avoid American sanctions against doing business in Iran. She has hired security guards and a crack legal team, and has two other legal challenges to her extradition pending. Meanwhile she is out on bail, living in one of her two luxury Vancouver homes.
Now China is urging Canada to act on a legal opinion that suits its purposes: to put pressure on Lametti and the Trudeau government to allow Meng to get on a plane and out of North America.
In an interview with the Star, Greenspan denied he has told the government how to act, but only outlined the “factors” Lametti could weigh in exercising his political discretion. It’s a familiar list. He argues the U.S. evidence against Meng is “weak and speculative.” He cites the “political undertone of the American pursuit of Huawei and Ms.
Meng as part of the American government’s larger trade war with China.” He says Canada did not endorse the U.S. sanctions at the heart of the case (an argument set aside by the B.C. judge last month). And he says any “global reputational consequences” of letting Meng go would be lessened because Canada has its own foreign policy goals of “normalizing” relations with China and upholding the multilateral Iran nuclear disarmament deal that U.S. President Donald Trump’s sanctions tried to undo.
There’s been no shortage of advice when it comes to the Meng extradition.
Lametti’s got a small army of legal and political advisers, cabinet colleagues, a couple of former prime ministers (Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien) and former Liberal ministers, former judges and many Opposition MPs — all volunteering opinions.
And now, China. Greenspan’s opinion states what few people understand but nobody has ever denied outright: that the Extradition Act explicitly allows the justice minister the discretion to intervene “at any time” in an extradition proceeding to withdraw the case.
But since he became justice minister in January 2019, Lametti has muddied the waters on his role in this extradition.
When asked questions about the case, he has recited talking points that confuse law and policy decisions, and insisted he only has a role after the judicial system decides whether the U.S. has met the threshold for extradition.
In fact, he does have legal authority to weigh in now, as Greenspan wrote. It is merely a policy choice to delegate the decision on whether to take the extradition request to a Canadian court to the Justice Department. In theory, that lessens any perceived conflict between Lametti’s dual roles as the attorney general, whose officials present the U.S. case for extradition in a Canadian courtroom, and the justice minister, who is responsible for weighing the broader legal and political factors.
The bigger question is whether Canada should withdraw the extradition request now, rather than wait the several years it could take before the legal case wraps up in the B.C. court.
David Mulroney, a former Canadian ambassador to China, told the Star’s Douglas Quan that it would be wrong to end the extradition process now. Doing so, he said, would simply show China that Canada will capitulate, and confirm “hostage diplomacy as an effective tool for managing us,” and might also tempt China to detain Canadians in China as “leverage to get us to ship back to China people on their lengthy ‘wanted’ list.”
Mulroney also fears that it would make everyone less safe because “other lawless states will learn from China that kidnapping Canadians is the single best way to secure our capitulation. We effectively cede control over our national interest to other states.”
Lametti still refuses to comment, according to a statement from his office, because the “case remains before the courts, and the Minister of Justice has a direct role in the extradition process.”
Meanwhile, it said, the release of Kovrig and Spavor “remains a top priority” for the government. “We cannot imagine the pain and emotional toll that this entire ordeal has had on them, on their families, and on their loved ones. We continue to call for their immediate release.”
“Other lawless states will learn from China that kidnapping Canadians is the single best way to secure our capitulation.”
DAVID MULRONEY FORMER CANADIAN AMBASSADOR TO CHINA ON IF MENG WANZHOU IS RELEASED