MENG WANZHOU

 A Triumph for the Rule of Law ?....

As we all know now, Meng along with our Two Michaels were released Friday and are safely back in their respective homelands.

Canadian Pundits are calling it a Victory for the Rule of Law since in their eyes, Canada ...read Justin Trudeau - stood firm in the face of  Progressive Demands that Wanzhou be released in the hope that China would reciprocate by releasing Michael Spavov and Michael Kovig.

Why these Progressives... in this case Senior Liberals and Senior Bureaucrats past and present ...would make such a demand of Trudeau is a question for another time but the fact remains something is 'Rotten in the State of Denmark' a.k.a. Canada as Shakespeare would say.

But before we go too far into this let's review how all this began:

• Ms. Wanzhou was arrested by Canadian Officials when she arrived in Vancouver on her way to Mexico from Hong Kong on the 1st of December 2018 ...the better part of three (3) years ago.  This related to allegations by the US Department of Justice that Huawei and Meng Wanzhou as its Chief Financial Officer, had for the past decade stolen trade secrets, obstructed a criminal investigation and evaded economic sanctions on Iran;
• By shear coincidence... I am sure, the two Michaels were arrested in China later that same month but unlike Wanzhou who lived in the lap of luxury while in Canada's prettiest Province they endured Hell on Earth confined in their Chinese Prison Cells; 
• It is trite, yet still appropriate, to say that Justice Delayed is Justice Denied and the fact that it took the Canadian Judiciary nearly three years to decide on Wanzhou's Extradition to the United States is simply unconscionable.  After all, Our Courts were not deciding her guilt or innocence and even if they were - 3 years and counting to come to that conclusion is still far too long to take.  Here all they were considering was whether to Extradite an individual to another country (America) which has a Judiciary comparable to our own.  The Court was not being asked to extradite the poor woman to a country like China that is devoid of the Rule of Law so it should have taken them a week at most to make its decision and then place her on the nearest plane bound for Washington.

With that let's get back to the Rule of Law and whether it was followed in Wanzhou's case. First, the strange fact that former US President Donald Trump offered to use this woman as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with China.  Hardly consistent with the precepts of the R of L.  Indeed, quite the opposite. This would be something one could expect from a Dictatorship.  So if Trump could so easily circumvent an Extradition demanded by his own country's Justice Department how does that differ from China misusing its own Kangaroo Courts to try the two Michaels.  In degree I grant you but not in appearance. 

The other glaring inconsistency was in regard to yesterday's swap.  For some time now, the Canadian Government - both at the Political and Bureaucratic level have been lobbying the United States to make a deal with China to 'get our boys freed'.  And in the end this is just what happened.

Without so much as a guilty plea, Wanzhou was freed from the arms of Lady Justice on both sides of our international border.  In other words, we witnessed a prisoner swap... on one side an individual who was likely guilty as charged and on the other side two innocent victims who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

For the two Michaels, this was a blessing but for the Rule of Law it represents a betrayal.  And how can we - the US and Canada - continue to criticize China for ignoring the Rule of Law when we too can jettison it at will?  

In 2019 Trudeau was sanctioned by Canada's Ethic's Commission for violating our Conflict of Interest Act when he tried to pressure our then Minister of Justice the Honourable Jody Wilson-Raybould into treating SNC Lavalin more leniently than our legal system of Justice believed appropriate.      

The danger with these three examples of course is the more the Rule of Law is ignored or violated, the easier it becomes to do in the future.  

Lessons Learned?

Well certainly China has learned that by kidnapping innocent foreign nationals they ultimately get their way.  They have also learned that despite Western Democracies claiming to be faithful to Justice and the Rule of Law, that fidelity has its limits. 

And while I am happy for the Michaels I believe the same result could have occurred... even much earlier, if the world's democracies had moved quickly to isolate China from civilized discourse.  Not just because of what China did in our particular case but because it has been acting as a Rogue, Bully State since the coming into power of its current President Xi Jinping. If we do not soon collectively grow a spine we'll be in for even far worse trouble with China.

Canada, for its part, can begin by finally dropping Huawei from the 5G Networks ...we are the only member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network not to have already done so.

As I See It...

'K. D. Galagher'