Probably we can do little to force China to capitulate, but we can at least not leave them with the idea that we will capitulate to them

It has been more than six months since Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were kidnapped by the Chinese government. Not “arrested,” with its connotations of law, due process and evidence, but kidnapped.

The two remain hostages, bargaining chips in the regime’s ferocious campaign to bully Canada into releasing Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive at Huawei Technologies and daughter of the company’s founder, detained here last December at the request of U.S. law enforcement.

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While Meng awaits her extradition hearing in one of her Vancouver mansions, in the rooms where Kovrig and Spavor are held the lights are reportedly never turned off. They are interrogated daily, without lawyers present; consular visits are restricted to once a month.

They had better get used to it, for all anyone in this country is prepared to do about it, or even seems to care. Were this the United States, Britain or any other country, their fates would be the subject of blanket media coverage and round-the-clock vigils, reflecting their fellow citizens’ concern for their well-being.

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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!

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It would do nothing of the kind, of course. Not only would it do enormous harm to relations with our neighbour, ally and largest (by far) trading partner — oh, and a fellow democracy, if that matters to you — but the message it would send would be unmistakable: that this country will indeed pay ransom for hostages.

But the mere suggestion, and others like it from other aging Liberal warhorses and the business interests they represent, is surely enough to have sent a message on its own. It is reinforced by every media account that describes Canada as being “caught between two superpowers” or that pretends the charges against Meng, issued not by Donald Trump but by the U.S. Department of Justice, are merely another front in an economic war.

If China sees Canada as the weaker link in this fight — if it has chosen to vent its displeasure on Canada, for having agreed to detain Meng, rather than on the United States for having asked — that may explain why. The Trudeau government, convinced it could foretell a geopolitical future in which China and not the United States would be the dominant power and all too eager to fall into line, fed this perception, at least in its first years.

Human rights are always someone else’s concern, until they aren’t

But then, this country’s political and business class has been signalling weakness for some years. Remember the hostility, the incomprehension, that descended upon Stephen Harper for his unwillingness to sacrifice human rights to “the almighty dollar” in pursuit of closer trade relations with China? Human rights are always someone else’s concern, until they aren’t.

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And so we find ourselves in our present fix. I don’t know which headline was the more humiliating this week: “Trudeau intends to raise case of detained Canadians if he meets with Xi Jinping at G20” or “Canada puts its faith in Trump in high-stakes meeting between U.S., China.” If he meets with Xi? Faith in Trump?

And yet China needs Canada much more than we need them. Never mind that China’s exports to Canada are nearly twice ours to China (a mere 1.5 per cent of GDP): China had hoped to parlay a trade deal with Canada into normalized relations with the rest of the G7. In its fury over Meng’s detention, it has vastly overplayed its hand, destroying any goodwill with what was arguably the most pro-China government among the democracies.

There is no possibility of any government of Canada giving in to China’s demands. And yet the perception in Beijing that it might means the two hostages are likely to remain in limbo; indeed, their treatment may worsen in coming months, as the regime continues to test the government’s nerve in the shadow of the election.

The best contribution people in this country can make to winning their freedom is therefore to disabuse China of that impression: notably by shutting up about deals with the Americans or abrogating extradition treaties. Probably we can do little to force China to capitulate — pull out of the Asian Infrastructure Bank? Sue China at the World Trade Organization? — but we can at least not leave them with the idea that we will capitulate to them.