This is the right call: Trudeau stands firm against China's "hostage diplomacy"

Much as I sympathize with Michael Spavor, Michael Kovrig, and their families, Justin Trudeau has absolutely made the right call here. As reported by CBC News:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed out of hand calls from former parliamentarians and diplomats to release Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and unilaterally end her extradition process — saying such a move would embolden China to detain other Canadians to further its political goals.

A group of 19 high-profile Canadians, including former foreign affairs ministers Lloyd Axworthy and Lawrence Cannon, penned a letter to Trudeau this week saying Justice Minister David Lametti should intervene to free Meng.

They said Meng's release would give Canada the chance to "redefine its strategic approach to China."

[...]

The letter writers said Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig are likely to languish in Chinese prison until Meng's extradition case is settled. The two Canadians who were detained in China shortly after Meng​​​​ was detained in Vancouver in 2018.

Trudeau was definitive that Canada would not bow to Beijing to secure the freedom of these two men.

"I respect these distinguished Canadians who put forward that letter but I deeply disagree with them," Trudeau told reporters Thursday. "They're wrong in their approach."

Trudeau said he is sympathetic to the plight of Spavor and Kovrig — he called it a "terrible and trying situation" — but he said Canada can't let China get away with this sort of hostage diplomacy.

[...]

"The reality is releasing Meng Wanzhou to resolve a short-term problem would endanger thousands of Canadians who travel to China and around the world by letting countries know that a government can have political influence over Canada by randomly arresting Canadians," Trudeau said.

Trudeau said his government is firmly committed to the rule of law and Meng's case will be handled by our justice system.

This is the sort of hard decision that real leaders need to make, and Justin Trudeau made it. Undermining the rule of law in Canada, undermining Canada's international reputation to the rule of law, and increasing the risk to every Canadian abroad by signalling that hostage-taking is an effective way to force his government to make concessions that wouldn't happen otherwise, it absolutely the wrong thing to do. And, make no mistake, if Trudeau had ordered Meng Wanzhou's release under these circumstance, a lot of these same"former parliamentarians and diplomats" would have been quick to point that out, too.

Now, to be clear, Donald Trump's unilateral trade war against China is entirely motivated by U.S. Presidential re-election politics, and the charges against Meng Wanzhou are largely the fruit of that same poisonous tree. I think the Chinese government is right to object to the charges against Meng Wanzhou in this case as being politically motivated on the part of the U.S. government. But Canada is not trying to wage a trade war against China, and Trudeau doesn't have any political gains to make by victimizing Meng Wanzhou; if anything, the opposite would be true, since most Canadians would love to see Trudeau take a strong stand against Trump's policies, something he's stepped very carefully around ever since it became clear that he would have to deal with President Trump for at least four years, and not President Clinton.

But the law is clear on this point. Canada has a ratified extradition treaty with the United States, and is legally required to detain, and hold extradition hearings for, people in Canada who are charged with having committed crimes south of the border. Much has been made of the ability of Canadian justice ministers to intervene in extradition hearings, but the reality is that they typically only do so when extradition would result in the extraditee facing the death penality; and, even then, they've rarely done so, simply because Canadian courts routinely block extradition on those same grounds.

Claims that Canadian justice minsters routinely block extradition proceedings on political grounds are simply false. This does not happen in Canada; intervening in Meng Wanzhou's in this way would serve to undermine the rule of law in this country in a way that decades of federal justice ministers have avoided doing. So, no, releasing Meng Wanzhou by fiat, rather than by court order, is not the only solution to this problem, or even a viable solution to this problem.

So, what is Trudeau to do? Well, bluntly, exactly what he has been doing so far: nothing. Court proceedings typically take time, and allowing them to grind along could well delay the actual need to ship Meng Wanzhou to the U.S. until after their elections in November, and maybe until after President-elect Biden is able to take office... at which time we can reasonably hope that Biden will act to de-escalate Trump's trade wars with the whole world, beginning with dropping Meng Wanzhou's charges. No charges = no extradition = Meng Wanzhou's immediate release.

Or, more accurately, no extradition = Meng Wanzhou's immediate departure for China, since she's not actually in custody. Meng Wanzhou is not in jail; she's just not allowed to leave Canada until the matter of the American extradition request is resolved. She's been allowed, and will continue to be allowed, contact with the Chinese consul, independent legal counsel, and as far as I know, even the ability to communicate with her colleagues at Huawei. This is a stark contrast to Spavor and Kovrig, who are rotting in a Chinese jail, and who have have been denied both independent lawyers and regular contact with the Canadian consulate. Spavor and Kovrig are very clearly hostages, anxiously awaiting their show trials on trumped-up espionage charges, and possible execution; Meng Wanzhou is anything but.

Trudeau has indeed been "in a difficult position" by Trump's clearly politically-motivated trade war, and by the U.S. request to extradite Meng Wanzhou for use as a bargaining chip, but there really is only one thing that a real leader can do in that position. Trudeau deserves all the credit in the world for doing that thing, no matter how politically hard it's been to do.