As Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was demanding China come clean with numbers of the dead and injured resulting from the Tiananmen Square Massacre 30 years ago, China’s caustic-tongued ambassador to Canada was packing up his luggage for gay Paree.
He will not be missed.
There are likely no diplomats in Ottawa more undiplomatic than China’s Lu Shaye, who recently penned a piece for one of Toronto’s Chinese-language newspapers that claimed Canada was run by a bunch of “white supremacists,” and then repeated it in an article published by the Hill Times , a must-read weekly which covers Ottawa’s parliamentary precinct like a finely woven rug.
And this was before the MMIWG inquiry accused the greater white Canadian collective of committing “genocide,” and then dared the prime minister to repeat the accusation as well as admit that it was true.
Justin Trudeau had no problem with this, of course, all which led to some reputation-harming international headlines which had our country basically admitting it was run by a pack of racists determined over generations to wipe out its entire Indigenous population.
China’s communist regime gave no reason for Lu getting promoted to a posher post in Paris, but these are sensitive times.
Under house arrest, and still languishing away in her Vancouver mansion, is Meng Wanzhou, arrested at the behest of the U.S. Justice Department on an extradition warrant for allegedly conducting illegal business with Iran when she was in the United States where Iran sanctions were sacred.
Under criminal arrest, and still languishing away in dank Chinese prisons, however, are the quid-pro-quo of Canadian diplomat-on-leave Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor who stand accused of being spies.
“Alleged” or “presumed innocent” are not words that jump to the front when China’s version of the justice system is bandied about.
And then there is Canadian Robert Schellenberg, sentenced by China to a 15-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, who woke up one morning for an unexpected quickie hearing to find his sentence upgraded to the death penalty.
All this nasty stuff is directly connected to Meng Wanzhou, who just happens to be the chief financial officer of Huawei, China’s national telecom giant now being pilloried by virtually every nation in the free world because it’s been deemed to be a front for espionage.
If that’s not enough, she’s also the daughter of the megafirm’s founder, and therefore what amounts to communist royalty.
Without her, all this would not be happening and Lu may have found himself backing off a tad when, in Chinese, he typed words that came out when translated as “white supremacists.”
Then again, maybe not. Lu has also accused Canada in one of his gentler moments of “backstabbing” China.
What followed, of course, was China’s banning of Canadian canola, a business that represents some $2.7 billion annually to the national economy.
Now it’s soybeans — a $1.7 billion hit if totally banned — and peas, and maybe pork and beef too.
As Canadian exporter Dwight Gerling told the CBC, “It’s just them playing games. (Beijing) is just going to keep putting the screws to us.”
But Canada has no ambassador in China to loosen those screws because Trudeau fired John McCallum at the end of January, and China’s ambassador to Canada is getting out of town and heading to Paris.
Being seen as a meddling advocate for Meng Wanzhou’s release is essentially what did McCallum in.
All in all, she’s been a very costly hostage.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
