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Under
the fearless leadership of our great Minister of Foreign Affairs, Canada’s
foreign policy appears to have been reduced to an endlessly repeated pathetic
bleating.
“We are a country of rule-of-law,"
they bleat, over and over again, although what relevance that has to the case
immediately involved, namely the extradition proceedings against the Chinese
business executive who was arrested at
the command of President Trump and his gang while passing through Vancouver on
December 1, is not immediately clear to me.
Of course we are a country of
rule-of-law, we all know that. But under our extradition law it is written that
no one can be extradited for a crime that is not a crime in this country, and
secondly, that only the Minister of Justice can extradite anyone anywhere.
So, that being so, why doesn’t our
government take its courage in both hands and apply these parts of the law?
It is good to see the former Prime
Minister Jean Chretien espousing exactly the view I myself expressed in a
Chronicle eleven days ago, when I allowed myself the fantasy of being Foreign
Minister for a day, and recommended that we should release Ms. Meng Wanzhou,
the executive in question, giving as our reason that there are insufficient
reasons to extradite her. (In passing I might mention that it is the first time
I have ever found myself in agreement with Mr. Chretien, since I first rubbed
up against him when he was Minister of Indian Affairs in 1969, when he proposed
a new law that would have abolished the trust relationship imposed on the
federal government for “the Indians and lands reserved for Indians,” under the
British North America Act of 1867. I should mention that, as a reporter just beginning
to take an interest in the indigenous people, I knew almost as little as Mr. Chretien
himself about the subject. But one thing I did know was that the Indians had
never asked for such a change in all the many consultation meetings the
government held with them in preparation for the new law, as became immediately
obvious from the unanimous rejection of the proposed law by Indians across the
country.)
Our government now says that politics
cannot be allowed to interfere in the application of any laws. although Mr. Trump
has already politicized the extradition request by musing to the effect that,
if he could only get a good trade deal with China, maybe he could abandon the
extradition request.
In these circumstances, it seems to
me it would not be out of line for our responsible minister --- that would be
the Minister of Justice ---to tell the U.S. government that his legal experts
had advised him as follows: the extradition cannot proceed because the United
States sanctions imposed on Iran consequent upon Mr. Trump unilaterally withdrawing
from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Ms. Meng is accused of
violating, is not a Canadian law, and that consequently his decision, as the
only person authorized under the law to make this decision, is that the
extradition should proceed no further.
Exactly what I foresaw might happen,
of course, has happened: all the cast-iron establishment thinkers in the land
have arisen as one to denounce Mr. Chretien’s proposal. It would set a terrible
precedent, they moan. It would be an act of terrible weakness. It would be to
submit to the bullying of a great power.
So, instead of clearing up this question
in the only way possible, instead of taking the only step that could set at rest
our troubled farmers, suffering from Chinese refusal to buy their goods, our
fearless Foreign Minister instead goes down to Washington where she busies herself trying to convince American government officials that their president
should intervene with the Chinese government in an effort to obtain the release
of the two Canadian businessmen held hostage in China. China has made it clear
that the only action on our part that could return our relationship with them
to normal, would be the release of Ms. Meng.
It is a remarkable thing to observe our Canadian government, which, if it had had
a little more experience and cunning, would never have arrested Ms. Meng in the
first place, willingly box itself into a corner with its repeated bleating
about rule-of-law, ignoring the drastic impact of this idiotic policy on our
farmers and business people. It is even more remarkable to know that our
responsible minister has gone to Washington, the power base of a President for
whom bullying is second nature, to plead with them to, “for heaven's sake, please
help us from the dilemma into which our intransigence has landed us.”
(Imaginary conversation.)
Once again, the only comment I can
offer, apart from again wishing for a resumption of commonsense in the government,
is “wot the hell, wot the hell…”
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