Line in the sand has been redrawn deeper

With the best of intentions, the prominent Canadians who would have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enter into a quid pro quo with China to secure the freedom of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have done their cause more harm than good.

In a letter to Trudeau dated June 23, 19 high-profile signatories, including former parliamentarians and senior diplomats, called on the federal government to drop the extradition case against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in exchange for the release of the two Canadians.

Their intervention comes at a time when fears are on the rise that Kovrig and Spavor, who have already been detained for over 500 days, are going to be crushed by the wheels of China’s arbitrary justice system.

Those fears are well founded. After more than a year in detention limbo, the two have now been formally charged with espionage. The conviction rate on such charges in China is virtually 100 per cent and the process, to put it mildly, is opaque.

But noble motives often lead to unintended negative consequences.

Given the collective public service experience of the letter’s signatories, they would have had to at least have known that their appeal was a very long shot.

The best possible opportunity for the Trudeau government to veer from its current path actually vanished when the B.C. Supreme Court ruled last month that the extradition hearing could proceed.

A different ruling could have provided Ottawa with enough legal cover to advise the United States that it could go no further on the latter’s extradition request.

That would have been consistent with the government’s long-standing line that it was guided by the rule of law in the conduct of the controversial file that has landed Canada in the China-U.S. crossfire. There is no doubt many in the federal backrooms hoped for such a lifeline.

Instead, the court’s finding closed what could have been a politically defensible avenue of resolution.

It cut the legs from under any rationale for the minister of justice to use his power to abandon the extradition process short of a complete reversal from the government’s previously stated position.

The very existence of that power is hardly reason enough for it to be used in the Meng case.

Whether the former diplomats and parliamentarians who signed the letter factored in the risk that their pressures could make things worse is an open question.

That, in any event, is pretty much what happened. By week’s end, both sides in the dispute were more entrenched in their respective public positions.

On Thursday, Trudeau dismissed the letter-writers’ suggestion in unequivocal terms.

Where the prime minister had previously sketched a line in the sand at engaging in hostage-style negotiations with China to bring the two Michaels home, he has now drawn a deep one.

The minority status of the government is unlikely to force a change of strategy. This is one Trudeau stance that finds the official opposition and the government on the same page. If anything, the latest pressures may push the Liberals closer to the Conservatives’ more hardline position.

The letter argued that for as long as Kovrig and Spavor remain in detention, Canada would be condemned to deal with China with one diplomatic hand tied behind its back.

But the prime minister’s unusually firm response to the appeal could be a prelude to a hardening of the country’s tone in its dealings with China.

Here again, one could argue that the signatories of the letter forced Trudeau to publicly bolt the door to what has long been Beijing’s insistent demand.

With China emboldened by the high-level domestic pressures exerted on the prime minister, the latter was left with little room for diplomatic equivocation.

At the end of the day, the quid pro quo proposed this week rests on two equations that do not easily add up. The first is the inference that the U.S. extradition request is as illegitimate as China’s decision to retaliate by detaining two Canadians and putting them on trial.

It takes a fair amount of rhetorical twisting to put a totalitarian regime with a demonstrated history of contempt for the rule of law on a level playing field with one whose justice system, notwithstanding the current American administration, remains robust.

The other dubious parallel involves George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and the notion that just as the first got over his disappointment at Jean Chrétien’s refusal to sign Canada up for the Iraq invasion in 2003, the second would similarly come around and drop the Meng extradition. That argument may become more compelling should the U.S. presidential election brings about regime change and a less mercurial administration to the White House in November.