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Huawei, China’s “national champion” telecom giant, is a state-owned enterprise in everything but name, and Beijing insists that Canada must grant Huawei full access to Canada’s rollout of fifth-generation (5G) internet connectivity next year. Three former Canadian spy chiefs and Canada’s “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing partners in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand — the Brexit-broken United Kingdom’s decision is still up in the air — have warned that the national security implications are far too dire to let Huawei into Canada’s 5G networks. The Trudeau government’s official position is that it hasn’t made up its mind yet.

Here’s the plot-thickening bit.

The reason Canada doesn’t have an ambassador in China at the moment is because Freeland quite properly fired the former Liberal cabinet minister John McCallum in January, after McCallum repeatedly uttered statements that gave the impression that he was serving as China’s ambassador to Canada, rather than the other way around.

Photo by Alice Chiche/AFP/Getty Images/File

Nobody in China is taking Canada’s telephone calls anymore, and it is highly unlikely that China would accept the credentials of a new Canadian ambassador who was not capable of at least giving the impression of being as obsequious as McCallum, who went so far as to publicly plead Meng’s case for her, after being told to shut up, and even after apologizing for being so brazenly unprincipled and out of order.

On Tuesday, in an interview with reporters in Ottawa, Ambassador Lu didn’t mention that he was on his way home. He made it clear that as far as Kovrig and Spavor were concerned — they’re up on concocted espionage charges that carry the death penalty in a judicial system with a 99-per-cent conviction rate — there’s nothing to discuss. Ditto canola. Cased closed. “But the Chinese government is waiting to make a joint effort with the Canadian side and meet each other halfway,” Lu said.