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OTTAWA — It was said of the actor Errol Flynn that you always knew precisely where you stood with him because he always let you down.

It’s a maxim that could be applied equally to Donald Trump. Justin Trudeau should have known better than to believe the president when he said in the White House less than two weeks ago that he would do “anything I can to help Canada” on the China file.

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Trump said he was prepared to intervene in the case of two detained Canadians with President Xi Jinping at the G20 in Japan last weekend. In the event, he said he and Xi did not discuss the case of Meng Wanzhou, the Chinese executive who is on bail in Vancouver while her extradition case is heard. Trudeau said he did not know whether Trump raised the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor with Xi but the odds are high that if the Meng case was not discussed, neither was that of the two Canadians, whose arrest is rightly viewed as a blatant and illegal case of retaliation.