National Post (National Edition)
THE HOUSE REVOLTS
CANADA'S MPS IGNORE THE PM AND TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS TO ACCUSE CHINA OF GENOCIDE
WHAT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS APPEARS TO HAVE FINALLY WISED UP TO IS THAT WHEN IT COMES TO CHINA, THIS IS JUST HOW TRUDEAU ROLLS. — TERRY GLAVIN
Now that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has finally come up against the house of Commons in a long-postponed 266-0 revolt against his signature “golden decade” entente with the Chinese Communist Party, the prime minister's diehard fan base should take no consolation in the procedural classification of the vote as “non-binding.”
Monday's motion declared that the regime of Chinese President Xi Jinping is carrying out a real-life, real-word, real-time genocide in Xinjiang province. The motion also calls for Canada's disengagement from the 2022 beijing Winter Games if the atrocities don't stop.
It's true, it's non-binding, but that's only because Trudeau and his cabinet ministers, who abstained from the vote en masse, have decided they won't be bound by it.
Neither does it do much for the Trudeau brand now that the handsomely leftish Canadian prime minister has pipsqueaked his way into exactly the same squalid situation that Conservative british Prime Minister boris Johnson was thrashing around in this week, for the third time since december.
In the united Kingdom, a cross-party rebellion has united Tory peers with the Labour Opposition in the cause of forcing a “genocide amendment,” with Xi Jinping's China in mind, to prohibit trade deals with genocidal regimes by means of independent judicial inquiries. The uprising is tying up the Johnson government's attempts to pass a post-brexit trade bill.
In Canada's case, Trudeau and his ministers have dodged the question of genocide in Xinjiang by musing about the prior requirement of a judicial-type investigation — while at the same rejecting a proposal by former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler to submit the question by way of a direct reference to the Supreme Court of Canada.
No serious observer will deny that the megalomaniac Xi Jinping is waging what amounts to genocide against the Muslim uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and hui peoples, most brutally in the towns and cities of Xinjiang. but
Trudeau refuses to say the G-word in advance of some sort of legalistic investigation and ruling.
you can call Monday's vote “symbolic,” too, if you like.
you could say it's symbolic of Ottawa's reckless disregard for the intelligence community's increasingly dire warnings about the several national-security threats beijing poses. It's symbolic of the increasing disaffection of the Liberal caucus from Trudeau himself, owing to his moral incoherence and hubris. And it's symbolic of the Trudeau government's contempt for Parliament.
“In the opinion of the house, the People's republic of China has engaged in actions consistent with the united Nations General Assembly resolution 260, commonly known as the `Genocide Convention,' including detention camps and measures intended to prevent births as it pertains to uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims.” So reads the first sentence of Monday's motion, tabled by Conservative foreign-policy critic Michael Chong and supported by every MP from every party, except for a handful of contrarians and Liberal backbenchers who joined Trudeau and his cabinet in their abstentions.
No less a Liberal standard-bearer than bob rae, Canada's ambassador to the uN, has said much the same thing. “There's no question that there's aspects of what the Chinese are doing that fits into the definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention,” rae said last November. This week, rae's candour was too much for Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau, who evaded an explanation for the Trudeau cabinet's abstentions. Nonetheless, Garneau claimed to be “deeply disturbed by horrific reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang, including the use of arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labour, torture and forced sterilization,” all of which, awkwardly, fall within the Genocide Convention's enumerated hallmarks of genocide.
“We have the responsibility to work with others in the international community in ensuring that any such allegations are investigated by an independent international body of legal experts,” Garneau said. The problem with that, as Garneau well knows, is that the relevant investigative body would be the united Nations human rights Council (uNhrC), one of several top-level uN bodies China now either controls or dominates. China was elected to the uNhrC in October 2020, along with russia, Cuba and Pakistan.
While the house was voting on the genocide resolution on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang yi was being warmly received at the uNhrC's 46th session, where he was generously offering some insight into the way Xi Jinping intends to remake international human rights law in his own image and likeness.
In China's new world, “happiness” and “security” are rights that must take precedent over the rights to free thought, free speech and freedom of religion. And of course China is only busy in Xinjiang, Wang explained, to make the people happy, and to provide for their security against “terrorism and separatism.”
So the house of Commons is left to its own devices, and the house has risen to the task, over the objections of Trudeau and his ministers, and the revolt has been a long time coming.
The door to Monday's vote was opened four months ago by the subcommittee on international human rights, led by Liberal Peter Fonseca. The subcommittee decided unanimously to call the tyranny in Xinjiang by its proper name: “based on the evidence put forward during the subcommittee hearings, both in 2018 and 2020, the subcommittee is persuaded that the actions of the Chinese Communist Party constitute genocide as laid out in the Genocide Convention.”
It is only because Trudeau's Liberals are in a minority that the opposition parties managed to establish the special committee on Canada-China relations, in december 2019, by a 171-148 vote. And it's only because of that committee's work that the public learned, for instance, that senior diplomats had warned the Trudeau government its enlistment in the China-dominated Asia Infrastructure Investment bank (AIIb) was a fool's errand.
Canada's commitment of $1.25 billion amounted to an investment in beijing's efforts to “leverage its economic prowess to gain regional influence and export its model of governance around the world,” the foreign service had pointed out, as far back as October 2019. Last week, the standing committee on finance, led by veteran Liberal Wayne easter, finally broke with Trudeau and took up the Conservatives' call to withdraw from the AIIb.
easter was also among several Liberal MPs who voted with the Conservatives on an Opposition motion last November calling on the government to adopt Australian-style legislation outlawing beijing's influence-peddling and intimidation operations in this country. The motion also sought a decision from the Prime Minister's Office to join with Canada's Five eyes intelligence partners in barring beijing's “national champion” telecom huawei from Canada's core 5G internet connectivity infrastructure.
Trudeau was given 30 days to respond. As you'd expect, he didn't.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service opposes any further embrace of huawei and has consistently advised against university research collaborations with the Shenzhen-based behemoth, but Ottawa unaccountably continues to subsidize huawei's research partnerships, and we are constantly invited to surmise that the bizarre accommodations the Trudeau government persists in making for beijing arise from a reluctance to jeopardize efforts to negotiate the release of hostages Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.
Monday's vote took place on the 806th day of the Michaels' abduction and imprisonment, in obvious retaliation for Canada's detention of huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on a u.S. warrant containing 13 counts of fraud and sanctions-dodging.
Sometimes the excuse is that Canada is short of COVId-19 gear and so we're beholden to China's vast stores of personal protective equipment. Sometimes canola exports come into it. Sometimes it's about what an economic powerhouse China is becoming. but it's always something.
What the house of Commons appears to have finally wised up to is that when it comes to China, this is just how Trudeau rolls.
THE HOUSE HAS RISEN TO THE TASK, OVER PM'S OBJECTIONS.