As a
third Canadian citizen
has now been detained in China, in what is almost certainly a tit-for-tat response to the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, I feel compelled to write something about this escalating and nasty situation we seem to have gotten ourselves into. It's a complicated issue, to be sure, so I'm going to try my best to stick to the facts.
FACT: Canada is not America's stooge.
The demands to free Huawei's CFO fail to recognize this country's rule of law. Canada has a long-standing extradition treaty with the United States, and we had
a legal obligation to make the arrest on their behalf.
FACT: Other parties have violated sanctions without facing arrest.
Meng and Huawei aren't the only parties guilty of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. As discussed in a recent episode of the
CANADALAND Short Cuts podcast, up to five financial institutions in North America have violated of these same sanctions:
Bank of America
HSBC
ING
JP Morgan Chase
Toronto Dominion Bank
At present I can only confirm
HSBC and Iran. But if even they're the
only other guilty party here, where are the arrests at HSBC? Just something to keep in mind when we get to the end of this.
FACT: The feared "backdoor" in Huawei equipment has yet to be proven.
The usually media-shy Chinese company has issued a public challenge
to prove that there's a security risk present in their equipment. While it is true that Nortel was at least partly undone by corporate espionage
at the hands of Chinese hackers, to my knowledge there has been no direct link to Huawei.
OBSERVATION: We seem to have conveniently forgotten Snowden.
Mising in almost every discussion of Huawei are the 2013 revelations of
Edward Snowden. Whether you think he's a hero or a traitor, no one has denied the warrantless surveillance that he revealed to the world only a few years ago.
I'm not saying that China's spying is better or worse, only that
we've got some backdoor issues of our own.
OPINION: This is as much about preserving the tech hegemony as anything else.
If you're seeking for a wider perspective on this story I would recommend looking beyond Canada and the United States. Here, for example, is an instructive video from DW News:
The gist of the interview presented here is that there is unquestionably a trade component in play. China continues to rise as a formidable tech power in the wider world, and the United States has a lot of its own interests to protect. Exactly how much this factored into the Huawei extradition request,
that's the billion dollar question.
Links cited in this post:
Al Jazeera,
CANADALAND,
CBC News,
National Post,
The Guardian,
Toronto Star,
Wikipedia
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