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In this framework, it was reasonable for the United States to request the detention of Meng as the finance director (and daughter of the founder) of China’s largest private company, the telecom giant Huawei, for sanctions violations. Given the existing treaty with the United States, Canada was right to detain her, and has been right to ignore, apart from normal diplomatic niceties, any pressure from the United States and China to influence the operation of Canadian courts. The fact that the United States and China are the world’s two most powerful countries should not be, and as far as can be judged, has not been, taken into account by the Vancouver court where Meng’s bail hearing occurred. Her personal history, the circumstances of the case, and the quantum of bail posted make the verdict — grant bail at $10 million — perfectly sensible. Even if Meng contrived to flee the country, the Americans have made their point about the sanctions on Iran.

A larger and more complicated question is that we should not have an extradition treaty with the United States at all. The manipulation of the plea bargain system, where prosecutors charge someone, catechize him to make fraudulent allegations of wrongdoing against someone targeted by a prosecutor, in exchange for non-prosecution or a light sentence, and with a guaranty of immunity from perjury charges, has produced America’s North Korean levels of prosecution success: a 99 per cent conviction rate, 95 per cent of those without a trial. The Bill of Rights’ Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Constitutional Amendment guaranties of a grand jury to avoid capricious prosecution, due process, no seizure of property without just compensation, access to counsel, prompt justice and reasonable bail, were all put to the shredder decades ago while the Supreme Court sat in perfect inertia, even before every nomination to its bench became a fierce struggle between exponents of a literal interpretation of the text of the Constitution, and those who wish to expand its meaning to give greater authority to the executive branch in response to modern conditions. The United States is not, by Canada’s standards, in criminal matters, a society of laws at all. It is a prosecutocracy and a carceral state which has six to 12 times as many imprisoned people per capita as other comparable wealthy democratic countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. We should revoke the extradition treaty and cease to send people compulsorily to any country with an inadequate assurance of due process for the accused. As long as there is the Canada-U.S. treaty, we must honour it, as we have with Meng, whatever China (where the concept of rights scarcely exists), says about it. But we were right to bail her.