National Post (National Edition)
TRUDEAU A PANDA IN THE HEADLIGHTS
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, and so perhaps we shouldn't hold Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to any previously articulated conception of “genocide.” In 2019 he accepted the findings of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that Canada was guilty not just of a historic genocide against Indigenous peoples (for which there is a case to be made) and women and girls specifically (which is a stretch), but also an ongoing one (which is patently absurd).
Things went rather differently on Tuesday when Trudeau was asked whether he believes China is perpetrating genocide against its Muslim Uyghur population.
Those who say “yes” include big-league human rights lawyer and former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler, newly minted U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, and the authors of a 105-page legal opinion from the Essex Court Chambers in London, released late last month.
In October last year, the House of Commons subcommittee on international human rights declared itself “persuaded that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide as laid out in the (UN) Genocide Convention.” In particular members noted reports of forced birth control, abortion and sterilization (as a harrowing Associated Press investigation found last year). Birthrates in Uyghur regions have fallen six times faster than in the general population in recent years.
A particularly compelling Canadian corollary: In 2019, German anthropologist Adrian Zenz published strong evidence that children were being forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.
Trudeau was under no obligation to declare the situation a genocide at a press conference. That's where he declared himself prime minister of a genocidal state in 2019, and one suspects he might regret it somewhat. But he might have done better than he did.
“On determinations of genocide, the principles of international law and the international community in general — I think rightly — takes (sic) very, very seriously the label of genocide, and needs to ensure that when it is used, it is clearly and properly justified and demonstrated, so as not to weaken the application of genocide in situations in the past,” Trudeau told reporters.
“That's why it's a word that is extremely loaded,” he continued, “and is certainly something that we should be looking at in the case of the Uyghurs. And I know the international community is looking very carefully at that, and we are certainly among them, and we will not hesitate from being part of the determinations around these sorts of things.”
Let's just pause for a moment and bask in the didn'tstudy-for-the-test glory of that piffle.
The context of the question and non-answer was the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. Some parliamentarians, including Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, are calling for them to be relocated. Others are calling for Canada to boycott. There are any number of reasons Canada might theoretically stay home; two of them are named Michael.
Canada might never wield more clout in its relations with Beijing than by leveraging its winter athletes. The only good reason to spend what it costs to bid for and host the games nowadays is in search of global prestige, which is why non-megalomaniacal countries are less and less interested. (The only other official bid for 2022 was Kazakhstan. It nearly won!) A winter games without Canada, which placed third in medals in each of the last three Olympics, is definitely a less prestigious games.
But it would be a hell of an unlikely escalation. Bien-pensant Canada still has terrible trouble wrapping its mind around the notion that China is even problematic. “It's not our role to go in and tell someone else they're wrong. Our role is to go in and work with them and learn,” outgoing Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil burbled in a recent Canada China Business Council video, as the National Post's Tom Blackwell reported on Tuesday. “Let's go learn. Let's teach each other.”
“Engagement is better than disengagement” is a perfectly defensible position, and no doubt McNeil didn't have Uygur internment camps in mind for this learning tour of the Middle Kingdom. But that's rather the point. Presumably the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council didn't have internment camps in mind when it recently concluded a deal with Huawei worth more than $4.8 million to fund research at Canadian universities, as The Globe and Mail reported Monday. It might have at least considered Canada's national security. Or failing that, its dignity.
“It boggles the mind that in 2021 we continue to use taxpayer funds to advance China's priorities at the expense of our economy, security and Five Eyes partnership,” Jim Balsillie told the Globe. No kidding.
Even if Canada did boycott the Olympics, when the closing ceremonies finished we would still be just as dependent on Beijing, with no real plan to divest from our trade interests with China or much popular enthusiasm to do so — not if it means washing machines would suddenly cost more. There's not a lot any country of 37 million can do to stand up to a country of 1.4 billion. But plenty of other smaller nations seem to manage the economic and practical necessities of Chinese relations without the ritual humiliations.