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Slow Process

Getting glimpses of her daily life is difficult — her guards appear to have taken on the responsibility of shielding her from the public eye. When Bloomberg News journalists parked on the street next to her home last week and identified themselves as press, one guard took photos of the license plate as another sped over in his white SUV to block their vehicle. As Meng slipped out of her house in her Lululemon jacket, the guard began accusing the journalists of damaging his car before later acknowledging he’d obstructed them.

Photo by Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

Still, the outings and post-card views mask a darker reality for Meng: This extradition process could drag on for months and possibly years, if history is any guide. And the odds are high that she will be extradited in the end.

“The tilt of the Crown in these cases is extradite, extradite, extradite,” said Robert Currie, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia who specializes in international law. Canada’s extradition law “is unbalanced to the point where a number of critics, including me, have said it’s unfair.”

Canada Crime

The U.S. must turn over its formal extradition request by the end of January. Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti can reject the request or order extradition hearings to begin. It’s not clear if that will happen before Meng’s next court date.

Lametti can’t arbitrarily refuse. His ministry would have to determine that fraud doesn’t constitute a crime in Canada — an implausible finding. Furthermore, in Canada, the extradition judge has to accept whatever evidence the U.S. presents at face value — the proceedings don’t consider the strength of the evidence or the likelihood of conviction.