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Because China’s kidnapping of two Canadians in response, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, whom it has been holding hostage the past seven months, was none of these things, an intolerable affront to international law, not to say human decency?

No, because it “will help the Conservatives,” who “are much less friendly to China than the Liberals.” Rather than anything “more negative against Canada,” he suggests, “it would be nice if things will get better between now and the election.”

Besides, “Canada is in China for the long run… This problem will pass.”

In case anything was lost in the translation: the former ambassador to China for Canada has not only been, by his own admission, enlisting China’s aid in re-electing the Liberals — inviting the leadership of a hostile foreign power, if not to intervene in the next election on their behalf, then to refrain from acting in a way that would help their opponents — but coaching them how to do it.

Among the many, many questions raised by the former ambassador’s new gig as a freelance political consultant: whose interests was he taking it upon himself to defend? The Liberal Party’s, certainly. China’s apparently. It’s just not clear where Canada’s interests fit into his thinking — except, of course, so far as the interests of the Liberal Party are assumed to be synonymous with Canada’s.