McCallum’s ‘gaffe’ was telling the truth
By Medicine Hat News Opinon on January 29, 2019.
John McCallum, ex-minister and Canada’s ambassador to China, has committed a gaffe, an awfully big one. More precisely, he has committed what’s known as a Kinsley gaffe, named for the American journalist who came up with this definition: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” In this case, the truth that McCallum blurted out is that the extradition case of Chinese telecom executive Meng Wanzhou, which has sparked an increasingly bitter squabble between Canada and China, is infused with politics from start to finish. It’s fine for Canadian officials to insist over and over that Canada is simply following the “rule of law” in the case of Meng, the chief financial officer of tech giant Huawei, China’s flagship telecom company. They are right that our judicial system is as free from political interference as any in the world — unlike that in, say, China itself. But no one should pretend to be shocked by McCallum pointing out the obvious in his meeting last week with Chinese-language journalists. And the obvious is that while Canada is handling the U.S. request to extradite Meng by the book, the charges against her have been made in an unmistakably political context, if not for purely political reasons. The U.S. Justice Department accuses her of fraud by lying to cover up Huawei’s violations of American sanctions against Iran. That’s arguably a political charge in itself. More than that, Meng was arrested in Vancouver on Dec. 1, just as the trade dispute between Washington and Beijing was heating up, with a struggle for world-wide dominance in next-generation telecom networks very much at the heart of it. Some in Washington theorized that the U.S. wanted to hold her as a bargaining chip in the talks; others that it was engineered by anti-China hardliners out to derail the negotiations. Regardless, all agreed it had to be seen as part of the bigger U.S.-China rivalry. And Donald Trump quickly put an end to any illusion that Meng’s case can be considered a purely judicial matter. He cheerfully acknowledged that he would “certainly intervene” to get the charges dropped if it would be good for national security or help to seal a trade deal. And, in fact, the U.S. president has broad powers to intervene in such cases. This is the essence of what McCallum was pointing out when he told the reporters that Meng has “some strong arguments” to make in a Canadian court against extradition. On Thursday, after enduring 24 hours of criticism for getting off-base with the government line, McCallum issued a groveling statement saying he “misspoke” and his comments “do not accurately reflect my position” on the issue. As ambassador, he said, “I play no role” in deciding extradition cases. Of course not. But McCallum basically got it right the first time. The fact is that Trump undercut both his own justice department and Canada’s insistence that the case is simply about the non-political rule of law when he blurted out his willingness to use Meng’s fate in getting a deal with China, if that’s what it takes. Everyone who has followed the case knows this, but McCallum’s gaffe consisted in stating publicly what is obvious but inconvenient. And it was decidedly inconvenient to have the Canadian ambassador to China, fresh from consultations with the entire federal cabinet, put on the record statements that are helpful to the Chinese government’s contention that the whole Meng affair is a political put-up job. On their side, of course, that’s exactly how the Chinese treat it. They’ve jailed two Canadians in clear retaliation and arranged for a third to be sentenced to death in a drug smuggling case. Unlike Canada, they neither respect the rule of law nor even much pretend to follow it in cases like this. Still, McCallum did go beyond simply stating the obvious. He ignored a golden rule for officials: don’t comment on court proceedings. And he expressed a preference for a particular result by saying it would “not be a happy outcome” if the Canadian court does order Meng’s extradition, leading to a long, drawn-out series of appeals that will prolong the tension between Canada and China. That part was indefensible. McCallum’s humiliating roll-back at least makes it clear that the government is determined to maintain its rule-of-law line at all costs. They have called their ambassador to heel, and at this point he might as well call it a day, if he isn’t soon dismissed. How can he be effective as Canada’s representative in China when he clearly doesn’t have the confidence of his own government, or simply can’t control his own mouth? But what was said cannot simply be unsaid. China may still get the message that at least some Canadian officials have serious doubts about this case, and share their view that it is at bottom a political issue demanding a political solution. And none of this changes the uncomfortable fact that Canada is squeezed between two economic giants operating on their own political agendas. The best — and most likely — outcome is that they will eventually strike a new deal on trade and related matters, and the cases of Meng and the imprisoned Canadians will be disposed of as part of that. That’s another obvious truth that McCallum spelled out this week. Yet another gaffe, in other words. — Toronto Star 21-20
