The Hamilton Spectator reprinted the Open Letter by Henry Evans-Tenbrinke directed towards Canada’s defence minister, Harjit Sajjan.

You can view Henry Evans-Tenbrinke’s letter as an opinion article, below:

https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/2020/10/15/release-meng-wanzhou-and-the-release-of-the-two-michaels-will-follow.html

Release Meng Wanzhou and the release of the Two Michaels will follow

As a former member of the Canadian Forces, I’m appalled by Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan’s lack of judgment. On Oct. 7, 2020, during a widely-reported panel discussion hosted by Slovakian think tank Globesec, he claimed that China was engaged in “hostage diplomacy.”

It’s frightening that the minister cannot distinguish between the actions of his own government and those of China. I wish to remind him that, on Dec. 1, 2018, his government acted upon a request of the Trump Administration to arrest Meng Wanzhou, CFO, Huawei Technologies. The U.S. indictment was approved by a New York State Court on Aug. 22, 2018, and the U.S. tried unsuccessfully following that date to pressure dozens of countries, through which Meng travelled, to arrest her. Every single country refused until Meng arrived in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018, and Trudeau slavishly acceded to the “urgent” U.S. extradition request.

Developments following Meng’s arrest confirm her arrest was politically motivated. On Dec. 6, 2018, Trump declared he might release Meng if he secured a favourable trade deal with China. He also told John Bolton that Meng was “a bargaining chip” in his trade negotiations with China. In fact, in “The Room Where it Happened,” Bolton reveals that Trump privately gave Meng Wanzhou the nickname, “the Ivanka Trump of China,” a moniker indicating Trump understood he was asking Canada to take a high-value hostage in the person of Meng Wanzhou to be leveraged against the People’s Republic to get a trade deal favourable to the U.S.A.

So, it was the Trudeau government, which first initiated “hostage diplomacy” in relation to China. Following the arrest of Meng, the Chinese government arrested Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig on espionage charges.

While I have no opinion on the justifiability of the charges against the Two Michaels, I believe the fraud charges against Meng are unwarranted. After all, they arise from Huawei’s alleged dealings with Iran, in violation of U.S. unilateral sanctions against that country. In the first place, the U.S. unilateral economic sanctions against Iran are illegal. According to the UN Charter, only the UN Security Council has the authority to impose coercive economic measures against member states. And all those UN-approved measures against Iran were lifted in the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Agreement) which came into effect in 2016. When Trump abrogated that agreement in 2018 to the chagrin of the entire world, Trudeau’s government also expressed regret. It stated it hoped that the other parties to the JCPOA would continue to honour its provisions.

In effect, then, Meng, a Canadian permanent resident, has violated no Canadian law. She’s being held under house arrest by the Trudeau government for violating a U.S. sanctions regime on Iran that no other country in the world recognizes. This bizarre situation is termed U.S. “extraterritoriality,” where the U. S tries to enforce its domestic laws on other countries. Canada should not play along!

The arrest and extradition proceeding against Meng have contributed to deteriorating Canada-China relations. At various times following Meng’s arrest, China, which is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, banned importation of Canadian canola, pork, and lobsters. Since livelihoods of thousands of Canadian farmers and fishers depend on the export of these products to China, they were severely affected. Thirty per cent of Canadian exports go to China, but Canadian exports only account for less than 2 per cent of China’s imports. So the potential of even more harm is possible. In addition, the promising Chinese-Canadian collaboration on a COVID-19 vaccine collapsed.

Canada and its people paid dearly so far and gained nothing from the Trudeau government’s decision to hold Meng as a hostage for the U.S. in its trade negotiations with China.

My specific objection to Defence Minister Sajjan’s remarks arises from his apparent failure to be able to distinguish between cause and effect, a very worrisome trait in a minister of defence. The arrests of the Two Michaels on espionage charges has been widely seen in Canada as tit-for-tat retaliation for his government’s arrest and extradition of Meng. Many experts in foreign policy have widely predicted that releasing Meng would result in the release of the Two Michaels.

Instead of railing publicly against China’s alleged “hostage diplomacy,” I urge this government to drop extradition proceedings against Meng and release her at once.

NOTE: I initiated a parliamentary petition, sponsored by NDP MP Niki Ashton, to release Meng Wanzhou: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-2857 I urge Canadians to sign and share it.