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Each of these points is debatable, at best. The investigation into her was launched, not by Trump, but by the U.S. Justice Department, whose officials publicly contradicted his attempt to link it to trade issues. The location of Skycom’s headquarters is not necessarily germane to whether she committed a crime under U.S. law. And the charge against her is not sanctions-busting, but bank fraud — which is as much a crime in Canada as the U.S.

But these are, as the ambassador himself was good enough to say, for a Canadian court to decide (“the government cannot change these things… it’s purely a judicial process”). That being so, however, why on earth would he take it upon himself, as a representative of the government of Canada, to comment publicly on it? There’s a reason why ministers are supposed to decline to comment on matters that are before the courts: so that there can be no possible hint of political involvement in matters that are properly the subject of an independent judiciary.

This was, after all, the point that the government has insisted upon throughout this affair: that judicial decisions in Canada are based on the rule of law, not the desires of its rulers. At one stroke, the ambassador has now put that in doubt. He has, in so doing, echoed the very arguments China has been making, that Meng’s arrest was an abuse of the extradition process, thus impugning the actions not only of the Canadian police who carried out the arrest but also our closest ally, the United States, who requested it.