The two Michaels are home, but Canada still doesn’t have a foreign policy on China

Jordan As soon as it happened, it was breaking news across the world.

News Clip 1 The chief financial officer of Chinese tech company Huawei, is under arrest in Canada. Authorities aren’t sharing details of this case, but the US Justice Department is reportedly investigating whether Meng violated trade sanctions against Iran…

News Clip 2 Beijing is now holding two Canadians, apparently doubling the reprisals for Canada’s arrest of a rich and powerful Chinese executive and multiplying the concerns for Ottawa this morning, in this deepening diplomatic dispute.

Jordan Nobody could have known in that moment that the stalemate which began when China seized two Canadians in retaliation for Canada arresting a Huawei executive would drag on and on and on. Although the official word was that this was not hostage diplomacy, the detentions on both sides lasted more than 1000 days, lasted through two American presidents and two full Canadian federal elections. And then without warning on a Friday night, it ended.

Trudeau Clip Right now, this Friday night, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are on a plane and they’re coming home.

News Clip 3 The Michaels boarded a plane around 7:30 Eastern time at roughly the same time that Meng Wanzhou was flying away from Canada.

Jordan What matters most today is that two Canadians have been returned to their families. But that joy will fade, and reality must set in. Whether or not the governments involved want to call it hostage diplomacy, that’s how it ended, with an exchange of prisoners. So what does that mean for Canadian foreign policy? Was this a win or just a capitulation? How should Canada prepare for future relations or disputes with China? What happens next for our country, caught between the world’s two biggest superpowers, as tensions continue to rise? The Michaels are home, and that’s wonderful. But what is to prevent this from happening again?

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Stephanie Carvin is a former national security analyst. She is the author of Stand on Guard: Reassessing Threats to Canada’s National Security. Hello, Stephanie.

Stephanie Hello.

Jordan Why don’t you start, for Canadians who don’t typically follow foreign policy or who just lost track of the story, given it had been ongoing for so long, who are the two Michaels? And why is their story and the ending of their story so important?

Stephanie Well, all of this started, of course, when Canada detained the chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on a US request as she was transiting through Vancouver airport. And shortly thereafter, China was obviously upset. They did a bunch of retaliation in terms of Canadian agricultural products. But a few days later, there were reports of two Canadians basically being detained. The first was Michael Kovrig, who was a diplomat on leave, who was working for the International Crisis Group, and then a second Canadian by the name of Michael Spavor, who is known to be a tourism agent. And he actually doesn’t even work really primarily in China. He organizes trips to North Korea from China.

So these two Canadians were basically picked up, and for a little while, we weren’t entirely sure what the reasons were, but it became pretty clear, pretty quick that this was almost certainly a kind of kidnapping or more politely, arbitrary detention for Canada’s detention of Meng Wanzhou.

Jordan How long were they there for? And if you can, I know not many people know exactly what went on behind the scenes, but what do we know about the circumstances surrounding their eventual release this past Friday?

Stephanie Well, they were held for over a thousand days. It was either 1019 or 1020 days, depending on where you are, I guess, on the global calendar. But yeah, these individuals were held in fairly severe conditions, conditions that would be tantamount to torture by any Canadian standards, for sure. Which was pretty jarring compared to the rather luxurious lifestyle that Meng Wanzhou was living, even though she was wearing an ankle bracelet.

What we know about what happened is that U. S. Prosecutors were able to reach an agreement with Meng’s legal team, something called a deferred prosecution agreement. And this was an agreement whereby Meng Wanzhou didn’t admit criminal wrongdoing, but said yes, that she had engaged in wrongdoing in misleading a bank to basically circumvent US sanctions on Iran. I feel like we’re bringing in a whole new story here. But the main point is that meng admitted to doing wrongdoing, but not necessarily criminal wrongdoing. And then as a result of that, the US prosecutors said, okay, well, we will basically let you go. We will stop our extradition request. You agree to abide by certain conditions, not to engage in fraud and things like this for the next little while, for five years, but dating back to the original date of detention, which was in December 2018. And they agreed they will actually drop all charges in December 2022. She just has to basically kind of live on not quite a parole agreement, but abide by certain conditions.

So that was the deferred prosecution agreement effectively. It was just kind of admission of wrongdoing and agreeing to abide by certain circumstances and not engaging in certain activities like fraud, even though there’s really no way to hold her accountable for that if she’s back in China. And that was the agreement that was basically put in place. And that was the agreement we learned about on Friday morning.

Jordan And then what happened through the day on Friday?

Stephanie It was a bit of a whiplash, actually, I couldn’t believe the speed at which the events occurred. We did learn about that agreement at 10:00 a.m. On Friday. There was shortly thereafter a trial, where she appeared by video in New York at 01:00 p.m. New York Time, where this agreement was basically read out and everyone agreed to it. And then shortly thereafter, Meng gave a press conference at about 02:00 p.m. Eastern time again where she then thanked Canada for upholding the rule of law, I guess. And then talked about how she was thankful to the Chinese consulate and things like this. After that short statement, she didn’t really answer any questions. She was off. And the next thing we knew, she was back off to China.

And then for me, I was doing a bunch of media interviews that day, and I thought, well, it’s probably, based on prior cases where people are going through the Chinese legal system or prior cases where there seems to have been similar hostage experiences or arbitrary detention cases. Usually you have a three to six month delay before the other side is released. So I didn’t think we’d see the two Michaels for three to six months, especially since Michael Kovrig, he has not finished his legal proceedings in the Chinese system. I believe he’s been convicted but hasn’t yet been sentenced, so his legal ordeal hadn’t yet been finished. And so I thought, okay, we’ll have to wait for this. And then he might be released later on down the road. But no, we got notification that the Prime Minister was giving a talk at 845 Eastern time. He appears, and suddenly we learn that the two Michaels have indeed left Chinese airspace and are on their way back to Canada.

Jordan This whole time, as far as I understand it at least, there was sort of a public face on both sides that said, this is not hostage diplomacy, this is not a quid pro quo. And then both detentions end on the same day. To your point that you just alluded to, how unusual is it that it would seem this blatant?

Stephanie I was genuinely shocked. I was very surprised because China… it’s been a very interesting approach to use one adjective. But the fact is, they have often complained about how Canada has detained Meng Wanzhou and isn’t this terrible? And then they’ll say, well, there are the two Michaels, but this is totally a separate thing, and you should not interfere in our affairs. And you should also let Meng Wanzhou go. I mean, saying it in the same breath while basically kind of trying to also deny that the two cases were related. And I thought, well, they’re going to want to at least maintain the fig leaf of pretending this is some separate case. But no, it was the same day.

And we have seen since, a number of statements issued by the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa by Chinese state media outlets that they’re saying, oh, no, this was completely separate. They’ve now basically said that we let Michael Kovrig go because of health issues and Michael Spavor similar kind of argument. And it has nothing to do with that. But it’s just kind of beggars belief. It’s kind of international gas lighting is the only way I can put it. But the fact is, you would have had to have planned the release of the two Michaels well in advance. They would have had to have traveled from prison, they would have had to have showers, got their clothing, get their affairs in order, and then put them on a plane and have them fly out. And to pretend that that just happened all simultaneously at the same time that Meng’s being released? It’s not a convincing argument.

Jordan So what does this mean for Canada-China relations? And I guess just for Canada now, is this a win? I mean, I know it’s a win for the two Michaels, and it’s great that they’re home. But is this a win for the Canadian government? Is it a capitulation to hostage diplomacy? Like, I guess what I’m trying to get a sense from you of is the big picture when something like this appears so blatantly.

Stephanie It’s interesting. I’ve been getting this question a lot. Who won in this, who won? And I do believe that the deferred prosecution agreement was the best possible outcome for all parties concerned. China got meng back. And in some cases, I’ve seen a lot of people say that this is proof that hostage diplomacy works, but I’m not entirely sure. I mean, the United States did get a senior Huawei official to basically say that they engaged in wrongdoing, and this will almost certainly play a part in future US campaigns against Huawei, something they’ve been doing for years now to try and convince US allies to drop Huawei because of concerns over security.

And then there’s Canada as you started out with. Canada, we did get the two Michaels back, which is something that we’ve wanted for some on time. And we did it faster then if Meng was going to be extradited to the United States, a process that could have taken up to ten years, given all the possibilities for appeals and challenges and things like this. So I really do think this was a good outcome. I have a problem in thinking again in terms of winners and losers, I think we’re going to have to wait and see.

And I guess the way I’ve been thinking about it in my own head is that their short term, medium term and long term. So in the short term did China get what it wanted? Yes. But it had to basically resort to what is now pretty much internationally recognized as hostage diplomacy. And will that work in the long term? Is this something that they can use against every country that does something that China doesn’t like? I’m not so sure. And will other countries try to find ways to get around this if they feel that China is literally taking hostages to circumvent the rule of law? The reputation of China around the world has definitely taken a beating.

These strong arm tactics aren’t just being used against Canada. It’s being used against Australia. We know that Swedish citizens have been kidnapped. Right now, there’s a big dispute between China and Lithuania, and yeah, these are all smaller countries, but there’s a lot of smaller countries out there right now that are starting to feel this and are starting to think about how are they going to engage in a world where this is a reality? And so what I want to do is look back on this in five years and then reevaluate questions as to who won and who lost.

Jordan So what does the saga reveal about how the world’s foreign policy works now, you know, is it a distinct change? Is it an evolution? Is it a regression? Like it seems kind of scary.

Stephanie Well, I think if we look back probably over history, we can find lots of cases where States have taken hostages or used strong armed tactics. So I’m not sure how new it is, but, yeah, it does seem to be scary. I mean, we have a China that sees itself as a rising power, and there’s some debate as to just how much of a rising power it actually is. But it is one that has engaged in what’s often called “Wolf Warrior diplomacy”. And Wolf Warrior refers to a film that came out in China. It’s very nationalistic. It’s kind of a Top Gun-meets-Rambo film and a lot of the very dramatic shouty kind of statements that come from China, they really don’t land particularly well in the coast countries where these are aimed at.

But I think there’s a number of things going on here that we have to pay attention to, which is that a lot of this diplomacy isn’t only for an international audience and in fact, may not be for an international audience. President Xi’s main audience is the Chinese people, and he wants to be seen as a strong nationalist leader who will do whatever it takes to secure China’s interest in the world. And this is something I think we have to bear in mind when we do engage with China. And we’re going to have to. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of calls that we need to disentangle ourselves with China to basically try and wean ourselves off China when it comes to goods and these kinds of things we’re constantly buying on Amazon, but at the same time, we can’t ignore one sixth of the world’s population, even if it is engaging in this so called Wolf Warrior diplomacy. And I think that’s really important. We do need to figure out how we engage in this less certain world. And that speaks to perhaps some of the larger challenges when it comes to Canada’s foreign policy, that we’ve talked about on this podcast before.

Jordan So what do you think national security analysts and the Trudeau government are discussing right now in terms of the future of Canada-China relations?

Stephanie My concern is what they’re not discussing in some ways. One of the things that really bothers me is that Canada hasn’t had a foreign policy in over 15 years.

Jordan 1 second when you say that, what do you mean, that we haven’t had a foreign policy in 15 years?

Stephanie We haven’t had a foreign policy document in 15 years. Over 15 years, in fact. I think the last 1 may have been in 2005, and we don’t put out statements as to what our interests are and how we’re engaging with the world. Things that normal G7 countries do. The UK had a massive foreign policy document that came out just this year post-Brexit. It went through this major change said, okay, we have to think about what our interests are in the world and how we’re going to achieve them and put them out there. The United States is always releasing foreign policy documents. Other countries do this as well. I’ve worked on, for example, cyber foreign policy as a part of my research. And it’s amazing to see just how many countries have put out documents just simply on cyber foreign policy.

But this is something that Canada doesn’t do. Foreign policy doesn’t really resonate with the Canadian electorate. There was very little discussion of foreign policy in this election. There was some in Afghanistan, as that issue was coming out. There was a little bit on China. We saw that during the debates. But by and large, the fact is, Canadians, we feel safe in the world. We’re bordered by three oceans. We have a mostly benign neighbor to ourself. We never really feel we have to engage or have a foreign policy. And as a result of that, you know, we’re kind of drifting.

And so to bring it back to that earlier point is that we see the United States, the UK, and Australia in this new kind of regional security arrangement in the IndoPacific. we see the EU developing an IndoPacific policy, and Canada, we haven’t decided at all on how we want to engage, who we want to work with, and what it would take to achieve those ends. And so what I hope now that the two Michaels are free, and now that we’re kind of rethinking what our foreign policy towards China and other countries should be, that we actually do need to create a foreign policy, if only to signal to our allies what we want, what we’re doing. And it also would signal to China exactly what our interests are. And that would be the basis upon which future cooperation could happen, even if on a lesser range of issues than perhaps would have been expected when the Trudeau government was first elected in 2015.

Jordan One more question: from a national security perspective, how does Canada possibly prevent this from happening to anyone like the two Michaels again? I mean, it’s unrealistic to expect Canadian citizens to stop going to China. What levers can they pull here?

Stephanie Well, one of the things that Canada did do was to create this treaty on arbitrary detention, which almost, I believe, 60 countries signed around the world. And that was a treaty whereby countries agreed that if they were in a bilateral meeting with a country that had take hostages or arbitrarily detained persons, that they would bring it up in those meetings. So that, you know, it became clear that this behavior is not acceptable not only against the country who has had its citizens detained, but in the eyes of the international community as well. Canada always speaks louder when it speaks with our allies. So I think this is something that we should continue to press for, continue to work on.

The second thing we need to do is really engage in risk management strategies. So, for example, if you have a company that wants to come to Canada, and there is a risk that Canadians could be detained in retaliation or in order to circumvent the rule of law, should we be allowing those companies to actually set up a large presence here in Canada? This would be another way of trying to risk manage the issue. So I think there’s a number of steps that we should be taking both diplomatically and in terms of our national security. But the fact is, I think there does remain within Ottawa a division as to how we should be engaging with China. There’s a lot of people who do feel that China is there. You can’t wish it away and that we should be working with them as much as possible, to try to bring them back as much, as an international leader, as we possibly can.

And then on the other side, particularly on the national security side, you have agencies like CSIS, which have taken a far harsher tone towards China and have been really advocating more and more restrictions on, say, academic arrangements and exchanges with China in terms of China’s ability to invest in certain strategic sectors here in Canada. And so there doesn’t really seem to be a roundtable at which all of these different perspectives could be discussed and brought forward in order to actually generate a policy. I think there still is a little bit of division, but the job of the government, the job of the next foreign Minister, whether it’s Mark Garneau or not, is to sit down, listen to this advice, and then decide what Canada’s foreign policy should actually be. What are the risks? What are the challenges? And how do we go forward?

I’m going to quote Rush here badly. Our strategy seems to be not to choose anything, but even if you decide not to choose, you’ve made a choice. And I hope I haven’t butchered those lyrics too badly. But I feel that that’s where we are. We just don’t seem to want to decide what our relationship with China should be. And so we haven’t made any choices. But our choice, basically, not to really think about the challenges that are there, doesn’t set us up very well. It’s very possible we could find ourselves in a situation in a year or two where we’re talking about the next Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. Although I very much hope that I’m wrong.

Jordan Last question, and it’s to your point earlier about us speaking louder when we speak with our allies. It ultimately took a US-China agreement to free our citizens. Is that something to worry about in the future, given our ties to America, as tensions between the US and China rise?

Stephanie I don’t think it’s beneficial for us to have a lot of tension between the United States and China. One of the things I do take hope in is Biden’s speech to the United Nations very recently where he basically said, I don’t want another Cold War. I want to work with China. I want to work with partners. It’s just not very helpful to do these things. And so I think that’s a good sign. I think it’s good that the United States and China were able to work on this issue.

Where that leaves Canada is an interesting question. I think at the end of the day, if we just put all the cards on the table, our security is entirely wrapped up with US alliances. Our number one trade partner remains the United States at 80% of all of our trade. And China, well, it sees itself as a rising power. It’s definitely a growing force, if not the second major force in the world right now. We are going to have to engage with them. But in the end, I think that the idea that we’re somehow caught between these two powers is a bit of a lie. We are sometimes subject to tensions between them, but really, Canada’s in a Western Alliance. But how it then chooses to engage in the world, given where we stand now will very much depend on a lot of the decisions that are going to have to be made by the government in the next couple of years.

Jordan Stephanie, as always, thank you so much for your insight into this.

Stephanie Thank you so much for having me on.

Jordan Stephanie Carvin, the author of Stand on Guard: Reassessing Threats to Canada’s National Security.

That was The Big Story. For more, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca find us on Twitter at @TheBigStoryFPN. Or send us an email at thebigstorypodcast@rci.rogers.com [click here!]. Look us up in your favorite podcast player. If you switch your podcast player, remember to add us to your new one and rate us and review us and tell your friends all of that good stuff.

Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow. Back to top of page