It’s a shocking statement, even for a man who made some shocking statements during his political career.
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, John McCallum said China should go easy on Canada over the Huawei case to help the Liberals in the coming election.
“Anything that is more negative against Canada will help the Conservatives, (who) are much less friendly to China than the Liberals,” McCallum told the news outlet on Monday.
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“I hope and I don’t see any reason why things will get worse, it would be nice if things will get better between now and (Canada’s federal) election (in October).”
Those are outrageous comments even for the man who was effectively fired as Justin Trudeau’s ambassador to China. McCallum, a long-time Liberal MP and senior cabinet minister, was appointed by Trudeau as ambassador in January 2017.
He was fired in January for musings on the detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
Even with that, these comments, effectively asking China to change its foreign policy to help the Liberal Party of Canada, are unsettling.
“This is appalling in so many ways,” career diplomat David Mulroney wrote on Twitter.
Mulroney, who served several prime ministers including Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, was Canada’s ambassador to China from 2009 to 2012.
McCallum is asking China to do what so many say Russia did in the 2016 American election. For the last two years we’ve had Democrats in the United States and many media figures not only say that the Russians interfered in the U.S. election, but that they did so at the request of Donald Trump to help him.
How is this different?
McCallum isn’t a nobody backbencher, he’s a man who served in a senior position in Trudeau’s cabinet and then was handpicked to go and represent Canada in the country the PM has put so much effort into pleasing.
Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin O’Toole said the latest comments show McCallum’s firing was the right thing to do.
“Six months after being fired for incompetence, John McCallum shows that’s still the case when he asks China to help the Liberals win the election,” O’Toole tweeted.
Will China stop putting the squeeze on Canada due to McCallum’s comments? Likely not.
The regime in Beijing has shown us that they want to bring us to our knees in order to force their will upon us.
In addition to holding two Canadians hostage they have blocked imports of Canadian canola, soy, peas, pork and beef. Other industries will follow and so far the response from the Trudeau Liberals has been near mute.
They haven’t responded in kind by blocking Chinese products or imposing tariffs, as Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has suggested. That was the kind of retaliation that we saw against the Trump administration when the Americans imposed tariffs on Canadian goods.
So I don’t expect China to change their tactics now.
Yet what if they do?
Should we read that as China attempting to influence the Canadian election? For all the talk of Russian interference, any sound analysis of foreign interference in democracies around the world shows China as a major player.
They could make the move McCallum is calling for, they could do more.
How will it look now, after McCallum’s comments, if Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are freed just before the election?
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To their families, to their loved ones, it won’t matter. To the rest of the country, it will look like China is throwing Trudeau a bone because, as McCallum said, the Liberals are more friendly to China.
Given that country’s track record, I don’t want to be friendly with their government.
Trudeau needs to do the right thing and denounce McCallum now while also calling for the release of the two Michaels.
Anything else will make him look too close to Beijing.
