Business
China likely to escape scot-free in persecution of two Canadians
From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Charles Burton
Beijing propagandists are already using recent claims to vindicate the appalling treatment of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor
There is a deep sadness to reports that Michael Spavor feels he was badly wronged by his fellow former political prisoner Michael Kovrig and, by extension, political officers at Canada’s embassy in Beijing and their masters in Ottawa.
Spavor reportedly wants millions in compensation from the Canadian government for its alleged complicity in his detention in his Chinese prison ordeal. If this ends up in court, Kovrig and his superiors would have an opportunity to defend themselves against these allegations, but Beijing propagandists are already using them to vindicate the appalling treatment of Kovrig and Spavor — a gross violation of international law — by a ruthless regime that arrested them to pressure Canada into releasing Chinese Communist Party figure Meng Wanzhou from house arrest in Vancouver.
While few specifics are known about Spavor’s claims, media reports depict a connection to Kovrig’s former job at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, and later with the International Crisis Group think tank, roles in which he would allegedly meet with people in China, engage them in his fluent Mandarin, and mine the conversations for nuggets of insight into China’s political or economic affairs.
Chinese authorities, of course, don’t like such activities. One expects that Kovrig and his superiors, both in government and the ICG, would have been well aware that this type of work would irritate Beijing, thus the danger of arbitrary detention on trumped-up charges was always there whenever he visited China without the protection of a diplomatic passport. And so it was.
One particularly troubling aspect of this sort of activity is the risk it presents to people who might unknowingly be sources for these information-gathering practices. Apparently Spavor and Kovrig routinely got together for drinks and sessions of good-humoured conversation. But friendships with diplomats imply that observations shared in a bar can end up the next morning in a report to Ottawa, and on to the Five Eyes. Was this possibility lost on Spavor? Was Kovrig perhaps not as forthcoming as he could have been about the full dimensions of their chats?
And there is always the possibility that China’s Ministry of State Security has access to Canadian diplomatic communications, which led them to open a file on the two.
Spavor ran a business, Paektu Cultural Exchange, that facilitated sports, cultural, tourism and business exchanges with North Korea. These pricey tours necessitated the transfer of badly-needed foreign currency into North Korea, arguably helping to enable the repressive Pyongyang regime. Perhaps more intriguing, in the course of his work Spavor developed an unlikely rapport with the third-generation Kim family dictator, Kim Jong Un, and was photographed jet-skiing and drinking cocktails with him on a private yacht. It is very plausible that China strongly disapproved of their junior proxy Korean communist dictator cavorting with non-Chinese foreign friends, hence his arrest.
Troublingly, Canadians — who were transfixed and infuriated by the two Michaels’ incarceration — have had little news about Kovrig and Spavor’s China nightmare since their sudden release in September 2021, just hours after Canada released Meng. One wonders if Ottawa really did enough to incentivize China’s Communist authorities to send them home sooner, or if there were other factors in Canada’s murky relationship with Beijing that took priority over what was perhaps downplayed behind closed doors as just another consular matter, one of many that are de facto subordinated to trade and political interests.
We may never see any Global Affairs Canada officials or former diplomats giving public evidence in a Canadian court to defend against Spavor’s accusation. To be sure, much of what goes on between Canada and China — indeed, within our own government internally — is kept from us by the secretive walls of the Security of Information Act.
Perhaps Spavor will be given a big whack of taxpayer money in an out-of-court settlement laced with ironclad nondisclosure provisions. One thing is for sure though. The Chinese authorities who so brutally persecuted him will, as usual, get off scot-free.
Charles Burton is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, non-resident senior fellow of the European Values Center for Security Policy in Prague, and former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing.
Alberta
“It’s Canada’s Time to Shine” – CNRL’s $6.5 Billion Chevron Deal Extends Oil Sands Buying Spree
From Energy Now
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.’s $6.5 billion acquisition from Chevron Corp. marks the latest in a string of deals that has helped make it the country’s largest oil producer and brought Alberta’s massive oil sands deposits almost entirely under local control.
CNRL has feasted on the oil sands assets of foreign energy producers over the past decade, snapping up stakes and operations from Devon Energy Corp. and Shell Plc as they shifted away from the higher-cost, higher-emissions oil sands business. Investors have applauded the strategy, which allows CNRL to boost output and make the operations more efficient.
That trend continued on Monday, with CNRL shares climbing more than 4% after the deal with Chevron raised its stake in a key oil sands mine and a connected upgrading facility, while also adding natural gas assets in the Duvernay formation.
“These assets build on the robustness of Canadian Natural’s assets,” said CNRL President Scott Stauth said on a conference call Monday. The deal boosts CNRL’s stake in the Athabasca oil sands project, which it first bought from Shell in 2017, to 90% from 70%.
The acquisition was largely expected and boosts CNRL’s oil and gas output by roughly 9%, adding the equivalent of 122,500 barrels of oil production per day.
“It’s just been a matter of time,” Eight Capital analyst Phil Skolnick said by phone, noting that CNRL had been seen as the logical buyer for Chevron’s oil sands business.
While CNRL also boosted its dividend by 7% on Monday, Desjardins analyst Chris MacCulloch cautioned the company’s additional debt to finance the acquisition “may disappoint some investors” given it plans to temporarily slow capital returns.
Still, MacCulloch said the deal is positive overall for CNRL as it further consolidates assets in the region. “There’s no place like home,” he wrote in a note.
Chevron, for its part, is the latest in a long line of US and international oil producers — such as BP Plc, TotalEnergies SE and Equinor ASA — that have shifted away from the oil sands after spending billions to build facilities in the heavy-oil formation. That has left the oil sands largely in the control of Canadian firms including CNRL, Suncor Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc.
“There’s no remaining, obvious assets available,” Ninepoint Partners partner and senior portfolio manager Eric Nuttall said after Monday’s deal. Ninepoint owns 3.1 million shares in CNRL, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Many of those oil sands deals have been struck at prices that favor the Canadian buyers, which have consolidated land, reduced costs and boosted returns in recent years.
“It’s Canada’s time to shine,” Nuttall said, adding that he expects foreign investors will return to the country’s oil producers in the future.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk said Vice President Kamala Harris will launch “lawfare” in an effort to shut down X “by any means possible” if she wins the 2024 presidential election.
Musk sat down for a two-hour interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation, released on Monday. Musk said that should Harris win the presidency, he anticipated that he and his companies would face legal action.
“If she wins, how can they let X continue in its current form, in its current role in American society?” Carlson asked Musk about the future of the social network if Harris wins the presidency.
“They won’t,” Musk responded. “They will try to shut it down by any means possible.”
WATCH:
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for Americans to be “criminally charged” for spreading what she viewed as disinformation during a Sept. 17 interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, and warned that a lack of censorship was causing a loss of “total control” in a Saturday interview with CNN host Mike Smerconish.
Carlson asked Musk to explain what he meant when he said a Harris administration would use “any means possible” to shut down X.
“They might try to pass laws,” Musk said. “They’ll try to prosecute the company, prosecute me. The amount of lawfare we’ve seen taking place is outrageous.”
Musk noted the Biden administration had sued SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers
“I mean… the Department of Justice, for example, launched a huge lawsuit against SpaceX for failing to hire asylum seekers,” Musk continued as Carlson expressed shock. “Not those granted asylum, but asylum seekers. Now, there’s also a law called International Traffic in Arms Regulations that because SpaceX develops advancements in technology that can be used in nuclear ICBMs… we have to be careful who we hire. We can only hire a permanent resident or a citizen.”
The Justice Department announced the suit against SpaceX in August 2023, claiming the company “discouraged asylees and refugees from applying to the company” in legal documents. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Tesla in September 20203. claiming black employees faced harassment and threats, including nooses.
The Biden administration launched other investigations and lawsuits into companies Musk is tied to, including Tesla, since he purchased Twitter in 2022. Musk predicted a dirty tricks campaign in May 2022, as his purchase of Twitter was in progress.
Musk has been an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House, funding America PAC, speaking at Trump’s Saturday rally at Butler, Pennsylvania, at the site of an attempted assassination of the former president and donating to efforts to elected House GOP candidates.
Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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