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But this is Canada, where the response is to shrug and ask what else is on? Fellow citizens? What’s that?

I don’t doubt that behind the scenes government officials are doing everything they can, or think they are. But the pressure to bring the Canadians home is surely less for the conspicuous failure of other Canadians to give a damn.

Indeed, what is striking throughout this standoff is that most of the pressure has come from the other side. It is China, not Canada, that has used trade as a weapon, blocking imports of Canadian meat and canola. It was the Chinese air force that buzzed a Canadian warship in the East China Sea.

It is the departing Chinese ambassador to Canada who has launched one incendiary attack after another on this country, while Canada’s now-former ambassador to China was floating trial balloons about getting the Americans to drop the charges against Meng. It is China’s leaders who refuse to meet ours.

And yet for all of China’s lawlessness, for all its bestial mistreatment of our citizens and baseless attacks on our interests, the most common response in this country is not to demand that China repair its relationship with Canada, but to ask how Canada can mollify China.

Photo by Lindsey Wasson/Reuters

Of these easily the most craven example has been the two former prime ministers, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien, in their traditional roles as footmen to the Desmarais family, whose interests in China are well-known. Not a day after Mulroney emerged to suggest that Chrétien be sent as an emissary to negotiate the hostages’ release, Chrétien revealed his proposed negotiating strategy: the minister of justice should simply refuse to extradite Meng to the United States. Presto, problem solved!