WHICH SIDE ARE WE ON, ANYWAY?
If you haven't been paying especially close attention to the dysfunctional and abusive relationship Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been cultivating with Chinese strongman Xi Jinping all these years, you might be harbouring the misconception that Canada is free to get up off its knees at last, now that China has returned the hostages Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
But a closer reading of Trudeau's hardwired, and quite possibly ineradicable, inclinations would suggest a couple of questions that might not otherwise occur to you, such as:
How does Trudeau intend to get himself sorted with Canada's allies, now that he can no longer use the predicament of the two Michaels as a pretext for the supine “winwin” policy he was already pursuing with China anyway, long before Kovrig and Spavor were kidnapped? And will the events of the past week finally force Trudeau to abandon his reckless embrace of Xi's police state, which has imperilled Canada's standing as a trusted security and intelligence partner among the world's leading liberal democracies?
The deferred prosecution agreement that Huawei Technologies Company chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou entered into with United States Justice Department lawyers — a confession without a guilty plea — cleared the way for her return to China and for Xi's simultaneous release of Kovrig and Spavor last Friday.
The two Michaels were abducted and imprisoned to extort Meng's release from Canada, where she'd been fighting extradition to face fraud and conspiracy charges in the U.S., related to Huawei's alleged evasions of U.S. sanctions in Iran.
The Michaels had been picked up by Xi's Ministry of State Security in December 2018, only days after Meng's detention in Vancouver.
There are already some odd similarities between the “lessons learned” utterances that are coming from both the Trudeau government and the organs of the Chinese Communist Party, and there's still no inkling there's going to be any about-face in Canada's China policies any time soon. The push now appears to be about putting things back on an even keel.
Foreign Minister Marc Garneau says Canada's approach to China will be to “coexist,” “compete,” “challenge” and “co-operate,” a formulation that replicates talking points the Trudeau government has relied on for the past six years.
Or, if you prefer, a “fair bilateral relationship,” as the Beijing megaphone CGTN put it the other day.
The Trudeau government has remained silent in response to a House of Commons motion last year demanding a thorough and hard-headed response to Beijing's elaborate influence-peddling, harassment and intimidation operations in Canada — operations that now appear to have included malicious disinformation and interference in the just-concluded federal election.
As recently as last week, Garneau said Canada wasn't going to take sides in Beijing's bid to sabotage Taiwan's efforts to join the awkwardly named Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-pacific Partnership, even though the 11-country trade pact is intended as a bulwark against Beijing's growing habit of throwing its economic weight around the Pacific Rim. There's also no word on whether Trudeau will withdraw from his $1-billion pledge to invest in the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was initially set up to finance Beijing's Belt and Road bullying and loansharking.
But for Canada's allies, especially the United States, the litmus test of Canada's reliability will be a decision on whether to permit
Xi's “national champion” telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies to play a part in Canada's 5G internet connectivity rollout.
Earlier this week, Trudeau said Canada's unaccountably long-stalled decision on Huawei will be announced sometime over the next few weeks. In the U.S., both Democrats and Republicans are adamant that if Ottawa lets Huawei in, then Canada can say goodbye to its standing in the Five Eyes intelligence partnership binding Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
The last time the Americans drew a line in the sand like this was in the final innings of the negotiations over a new Canada-u.s.-mexico free trade agreement.
That was three years ago, just weeks before Meng was detained and the Michaels were abducted.
The Americans were intent on ensuring that Canada would not be allowed to sneak China into the deal through a back door. So, the renegotiated agreement contained a clause stipulating that if any of the three signatories entered into free trade talks with a “non-market” command-and-control economy — i.e., China — the other two would have to be clued in. And if any one of the three countries — i.e., Canada — went ahead and signed a separate deal, then the other two would carry on without the China partner.
The clause was incorporated into the final agreement. Beijing was furious.
This time around, the Americans have made it quite clear, again, that Trudeau is dreaming if he thinks he can have things both ways.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, several former Canadian intelligence chiefs, the U.S. intelligence community and the U.S. State Department have repeatedly warned Canada over the years that Huawei has to be understood as a grave security threat. It's an arm of the Beijing regime, the forward advance of a global surveillance state that's ultimately controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Only two weeks ago, Canada was frozen out of a new security pact forged between Australia, the U.K. and the U.S., which is aimed at countering China's emerging threats in the Indo-pacific region. Nobody even bothered to tell Canada about it. The Huawei decision is Canada's last chance.
The American-led “rulesbased” order is collapsing and international relations are rapidly bifurcating, with liberal democracies in one orbit, and China, Russia, Iran and a collection of police-state satellites in the other. Either Canada is a partner with the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, or the best Canada can hope for is a place like, say, Belgium, at the outer edge of the democracies' intelligence-sharing networks.
Because of the rapid global rise of democracy's rule-breaking adversaries, the Five Eyes alliance should be expected to take on new roles and a much greater significance in guaranteeing the security of the old democratic alliance that emerged from the ashes of the Second World War, according to a major study to be released by the Macdonald-laurier Institute this week.
Co-published with the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-pacific Center for Security Studies, the study makes a variety of recommendations: a Five Eyes defence policy bureau to prepare for common action in geostrategic hot spots, like the Arctic and the South China Sea; a central collaborative defence role for Five Eyes operations in economic warfare scenarios involving the degradation and isolation of partner states; an emphasis on supply-chain security in defence and dual-use sectors; the development of common policies to diversify away from an overreliance on China; and a feasibility study on combining all market-economy bilateral and multilateral free-trade agreements.
Huawei is facing several criminal counts in the U.S. involving intellectual property theft, fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy.
The U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., Japan and several European countries have brought in a variety of measures to keep Huawei out of core 5G infrastructure.
Canadian telecoms, not knowing exactly what the Trudeau government intends, have had to decide mostly on their own about whether to find alternatives to Huawei.
This has all gone on too long.
The question the Trudeau government needs to answer is really quite straightforward: are you going to stick with Canada's allies, or are you going to join the other side?
For Canada's allies, especially the United States, the litmus test of Canada's reliability will be a decision on whether to permit Xi's `national champion' telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies to play a part in Canada's 5G internet connectivity rollout. Terry Glavin