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Q : Why don’t we do more for the release of the two Michael (boycott of the Olympics, refusal to buy goods produced in China…)?
Michel T.
R : Think about it: it has now been more than 1000 days since Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor languished in prison in China when in the opinion of almost everyone, they did nothing to deserve such a fate. .
Nothing… except being in the wrong place (in China), at the wrong time. Xi Jinping’s regime was then seeking to put pressure on Ottawa to obtain the release of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer.
But is Canada putting enough pressure on Beijing to obtain the release of the two Michael? The question is very relevant. We would like to answer it clearly and denounce the attitude of the Canadian government, but the circumstances are pushing us to show much more nuance.
Because everything is a question of balance of power. And compared to today’s China, Canada is very small and very weak.
This is why Canada has every advantage in continuing to seek to convince its allies to take concerted action (such as the international declaration on arbitrary detentions). Because Canada alone is David against Goliath.
Take for example the idea of a boycott of Chinese products. Let’s say Ottawa gives such a slogan. Of course, China would retaliate with similar measures.
And we would lose in the exchange.
China is Canada’s second largest trading partner, after the United States. But Canada, among China’s trading partners, is around 15e rank, explains Zhan Su, full professor in the management department at Laval University.
Moreover, the products we sell in China are not unique, he emphasizes. For both pork and soy, for example, there are (for Beijing) many alternatives.
Such a trade conflict could therefore hurt Canada. Very bad. But China would not suffer.
As for the Olympics, if Canada acted as if nothing had happened in February 2022 in Beijing, it would be terribly embarrassing.
Having said that, things are not straightforward in this case either.
Few are those who suggest in Canada the boycott of the Olympics, since this would penalize the athletes and would not have the desired effect.
Organize the Olympic Games elsewhere? We would like it, but it won’t work. The International Olympic Committee will never accept such a last minute change.
The Canadian government and the Canadian Olympic Committee would do well to deploy imaginative treasures to find ways to protest at the event. By boycotting the opening and closing ceremonies, among others.
This is what some experts in the relationship between the two countries suggest, including Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.
But let’s not forget, she adds, the importance of individual initiatives. Try not to buy products made in China or even decide to shun the broadcasting of the Olympic Games next year, for example.
“That’s what a lot of Canadians are going to do, I think,” she said of the Olympics. Who wants to see these great shows when Canadians have been kidnapped? Other citizens’ initiatives are also, of course, possible.
It is not so much, here, a question of balance of power as of principle.
In short, let’s not just ask ourselves what Canada can do to secure the release of the two Michael’s.
Let us ask ourselves what we too can do to protest what China is doing to them.
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