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China likely to escape scot-free in persecution of two Canadians

Published

2 years ago

6 minute read

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.

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Potential For Abuse Embedded In Bill C-5

Published on June 24, 2025

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From the National Citizens Coalition

By Peter Coleman

“The Liberal government’s latest economic bill could cut red tape — or entrench central planning and ideological pet projects.”

On the final day of Parliament’s session before its September return, and with Conservative support, the Liberal government rushed through Bill C-5, ambitiously titled “One Canadian Economy: An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act.”

Beneath the lofty rhetoric, the bill aims to dismantle interprovincial trade barriers, enhance labour mobility, and streamline infrastructure projects. In principle, these are worthy goals. In a functional economy, free trade between provinces and the ability of workers to move without bureaucratic roadblocks would be standard practice. Yet, in Canada, decades of entrenched Liberal and Liberal-lite interests, along with red tape, have made such basics a pipe dream.

If Bill C-5 is indeed wielded for good, and delivers by cutting through this morass, it could unlock vast, wasted economic potential. For instance, enabling pipelines to bypass endless environmental challenges and the usual hand-out seeking gatekeepers — who often demand their cut to greenlight projects — would be a win. But here’s where optimism wanes, this bill does nothing to fix the deeper rot of Canada’s Laurentian economy: a failing system propped up by central and upper Canadian elitism and cronyism. Rather than addressing these structural flaws of non-competitiveness, Bill C-5 risks becoming a tool for the Liberal government to pick more winners and losers, funneling benefits to pet progressive projects while sidelining the needs of most Canadians, and in particular Canada’s ever-expanding missing middle-class.

Worse, the bill’s broad powers raise alarms about government overreach. Coming from a Liberal government that recently fear-mongered an “elbows up” emergency to conveniently secure an electoral advantage, this is no small concern. The lingering influence of eco-radicals like former Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, still at the cabinet table, only heightens suspicion. Guilbeault and his allies, who cling to fantasies like eliminating gas-powered cars in a decade, could steer Bill C-5’s powers toward ideological crusades rather than pragmatic economic gains. The potential for emergency powers embedded in this legislation to be misused is chilling, especially from a government with a track record of exploiting crises for political gain – as they also did during Covid.

For Bill C-5 to succeed, it requires more than good intentions. It demands a seismic shift in mindset, and a government willing to grow a spine, confront far-left, de-growth special-interest groups, and prioritize Canada’s resource-driven economy and its future over progressive pipe dreams. The Liberals’ history under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, marked by economic mismanagement and job-killing policies, offers little reassurance. The National Citizens Coalition views this bill with caution, and encourages the public to remain vigilant. Any hint of overreach, of again kowtowing to hand-out obsessed interests, or abuse of these emergency-like powers must be met with fierce scrutiny.

Canadians deserve a government that delivers results, not one that manipulates crises or picks favourites. Bill C-5 could be a step toward a freer, stronger economy, but only if it’s wielded with accountability and restraint, something the Liberals have failed at time and time again. We’ll be watching closely. The time for empty promises is over; concrete action is what Canadians demand.

Let’s hope the Liberals don’t squander this chance. And let’s hope that we’re wrong about the potential for disaster.

Peter Coleman is the President of the National Citizens Coalition, Canada’s longest-serving conservative non-profit advocacy group.

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Canada should already be an economic superpower. Why is Canada not doing better?

Published on June 24, 2025

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From Resource Works

Tej Parikh of the Financial Times‘s says Canada has the minerals but not the plan

Tej Parikh is the economics editorial writer for The Financial Times, a British daily newspaper. He joins our Stewart Muir for a Power Struggle interview. And we include in the following report some points from a guest column by Parikh in Canada’s National Post, which carried the headline ‘How Canada can unlock its economic superpower potential.’

Parikh begins the Power Struggle interview with this: “There’s an enormous economic potential here, very much the same geographic advantages that have underpinned America’s economic emergence over the last 100 years. . . . Given everything we understand about the advantages that countries need to grow, why is Canada not doing better economically?” He added: “When you break it down and you look at why income per capita in Canada has perhaps not increased as fast as we might expect on the basis of those advantages, it really kind of breaks down to three components. One is investment, so how much capital goes into the country?

The second is labour, and not just the amount, the size of the workforce you have, but how well you utilize the workforce. And then the third component is something that economists like to call a total-factor productivity, which is essentially your innovative ability and your ability to bring together capital and people. “And when you look at Canada as opposed to other large economies . . . you begin to see that actually there are a lot of restrictions in Canada, not just because of its vast geography but because of regulation, that it actually can’t combine its capital and labour as productively as it could.

“It’s about creating those supply chains and critical minerals that the Western world is currently short of. Given it (Canada) has these vast raw material resources, there is a massive scope for it to become even more integrated into Western supply chains in particular and to become a supplier of these things.” From Parikh’s National Post column: “The country is energy independent, with the world’s largest deposits of high-grade uranium and the third-largest proven oil reserves. It is also the fifth-largest producer of natural gas.Canada boasts a huge supply of other commodities too, including the largest potash reserves (used to make fertilizer), over one-third of the world’s certified forests and a fifth of the planet’s surface freshwater. Plus, it has an abundance of cobalt, graphite, lithium and other rare earth elements, which are used in renewable technologies. “But the nation has lacked the visionary leadership and policy framework to capitalize on its advantages.”

Watch the full interview here:

Baçk to Power Struggle: “Investors right now will know that Canada has all of this latent potential, they will know that there are resources there, they will know that there are talented workers in Canada. But (they need) the answers to what barriers there are to business and how they can be reduced, and I think that’s the piece that Canada and its provinces can do a better job on. “That’s the thing that I think Canada would benefit from, showing how it is a kind of a more unified country and showing how that it is a unified marketplace where investors and businesses can develop expansive supply chains.”

In the National Post: “A country with its geography could clearly generate higher output. To do so, the Canadian economy needs to become more efficient, raise investment and attract more high-skilled workers. Here’s how. “Canada places significant bureaucratic burdens on the movement of people and goods too. This includes restrictions on the sale of certain goods across provincial borders, and variations in licences and technical standards that hinder scaling, competition and efficient resource allocation across the country.

“A 2022 study by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute found that Canada’s economy could grow by 4.4 to 7.9 per cent in the long term — up to $200 billion a year — if it eliminated internal trade barriers via mutual recognition policies. Similar reforms in Australia in the 1990s helped to boost productivity there. “Simplifying its complex tax system, expediting planning processes, easing red tape for foreign direct investment and developing economic partnership mechanisms for Indigenous populations, in tandem with internal trade reforms, would help businesses across the industrial supply chain tap into the nation’s vast energy and mineral resources.”

On Power Struggle: “You can be rich in oil and natural gas. But obviously over the last 10, 15 years the global economy has been thinking about alternatives. In Europe and in the UK and in some states in the US, there’s a concerted effort to shift to cleaner energy sources. Canada has vast access to the critical minerals that underpin a lot of renewable energy sources. And then you can go further than that. “This isn’t just about having access to those, you know, old world energy sources. This is access to the type of energy sources that the world is looking for. So Canada is aligned to the renewable transition and I was quite surprised, actually, that in the last 10 to 15 years you haven’t really heard Canada’s name in that. I thought it was about time that Canada plays that up a bit more and the opportunities it has there.”

Tej Parikh continued: “This isn’t about just digging up Canada and exploiting its raw materials. It’s about finding ways in which you can create economic compacts with Indigenous communities, create economic compacts with Indigenous communities. “It’s a way in which you can sustainably mine parts of the country and ensure that, as you are developing underground resources in Canada, you are also developing local economies. Developing an industry means you develop jobs.

“Once you start developing factories and industries in certain areas, then financial services, commercial roles, all of these things build up, and that’s how I think the debate needs to be kind of pushed forward a little bit. “Once you start developing finance around these industries, you can also find ways to make these industries even more sustainable and environmentally friendly.”

“I think there are very clever ways in which Canada and all Canadians can see that actually these natural resources that the country has is actually an asset that everyone has a share in.” Stewart Muir then raised the Donald Trump issue: “Where have you landed on what Trump is all about? I mean, is this a poker game? Is it a chess match? Is it a street fight?”

Tej Parikh: “He likes negotiating and I think, from what we can understand from his tariff policy, he takes things to extremes and then he rows things back and he tries to gain concessions where he can. And I think he will take the same approach on most policy he has. I mean, he sees the world through a transactional lens. It’s ‘what can the other people offer me and how can we do a deal to ensure that I can gain that?’ “And I think in some sense, you know, yes, he is unpredictable, above and beyond that. But I think if you know that that's his framing, then I think it means that you know others just need to adjust to it and be pragmatic in it. And that is essentially what we have seen from the way the Canadian prime minister has been interacting with Donald Trump. You have to be pragmatic if you know what the threat could be.”

Parikh added: “I think the first thing is (Prime Minister Mark Carney) should build on the momentum that he has, the political momentum he has on reducing internal trade barriers in Canada. You then create the groundwork in order to start taking advantage of the mineral resources and the natural resources.” “Once Canadians start to feel that everyone is benefiting from the natural resources in the country and there are avenues to recycle the revenues from those sectors into the country, whether that’s through housing or developing infrastructure, improving public services, you then have this kind of reinforcement effect between the country and its natural resources and its assets and the development of peoples, and I think working on that will kind of provide the groundwork for Canada’s emergence.”

In the National Post: “The Canadian economy is at a crossroads. The belligerence of its main trading partner is driving consensus around boosting the national economy. The world needs what Canada has in abundance. The nation has a unique chance to reach its potential. If it wants to.”

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