In the way the story’s usually told, relations between Canada and China are said to be at the lowest point in decades, or at an all-time low, or chillier than ever. But any close examination of the relationship will show that what these expressions more precisely describe is an ongoing, abject humiliation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government by China’s capricious and sadistic supreme ruler, Xi Jinping.
It’s been a very public humiliation, too. It began well before Xi’s Ministry of State Security kidnapped and imprisoned the diplomat-on-leave Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor in December, 2018, to punish Canada for having detained one of the Chinese Communist Party’s elite untouchables on a U.S. extradition request.
No matter how far the “relationship” drags Canada away from its traditional allies and Five Eyes intelligence partners, Ottawa’s singular focus has been on avoiding hard questions, keeping quiet and hoping nobody notices. While Beijing’s ratings in Canadian public opinion polls have continued to plummet year after year, the Trudeau government’s main worry hasn’t been about the outrages against international norms that were causing Canadians to take such a dim view of the Xi regime. Its main worry was that Beijing’s behaviour was harming the “relationship.”
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