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Canada’s Ambassador to China, John McCallum, says he “misspoke” on Tuesday when offering up what appeared to many as a robust defence of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.

“I regret that my comments with respect to the legal proceedings of Ms. Meng have created confusion. I misspoke,” McCallum said in a statement that was released Thursday.

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“These comments do not accurately represent my position on this issue. As the government has consistently made clear, there has been no political involvement in this process.”

This statement, to put it mildly, does not make a lot of sense.

The phrase misspoke brings to mind many things: A slip of the tongue. Getting your words mixed up. Or something said in haste that you then immediately regret.

None of that describes what McCallum did on Tuesday.

He convened Chinese-language media to a hush-hush press conference in Markham, a city north of Toronto, that mainstream English-language media was not told about. Then he offered three points as to why, in his view, Ms. Meng had a good case when it came to fighting her extradition to the United States.