Holding Beijing Responsible

"Ottawa can't seem to shake this tendency to flatter."
"I'm not suggesting that we need to insult China or provoke a quarrel. We should simply be guided by the facts. And right now the facts argue for the case that China was delinquent, that it wasn't transparent enough. That's not a conspiracy theory."
"When you start acknowledging the truth, then positive and corrective action is possible. As long as you're in denial, there's no hope of action that will ameliorate the situation."
"This is a tremendous missed opportunity and it's not too late for the government [of Canada] to slowly turn the ship around."
David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, 2009 -- 2012

"You have to draw a line. You have to stop such behaviour."
"You have to acknowledge that if you dealt with this issue with a lot more transparency we would have avoided an international crisis that has led to one of the greatest recessions of our times."
"Cabinet did not fully realize what I call the dark side of China."
Guy Saint-Jacques, former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, 2012 -- 2016

Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomes Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, Wednesday August 31, 2016. China has rejected Canada's efforts to inject labour standards into a free trade agreement. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was leader of the-then opposition Liberal Party of Canada, campaigning during the 2015 general election that brought him to the helm of government, he stated his intention of bringing Canada closer to China, with the ambition of signing a free trade agreement with the Chinese Communist Party, in contrast to the previous government of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper who distrusted the CCP and its obvious untrustworthiness, much less its penchant of abusing human rights.

In his 2018 trip to Beijing, Trudeau fully expected to sign that free trade deal he had placed so much stock in. And China might have been pleased to sign such an agreement, giving it even more influence in Canada, had it not been for Trudeau's usual insertion of recognized rights for aboriginals, environmental policy and gender-based analysis, so much a part of his 'progressive' agenda, even in the face of his conflicted admiration for authoritarian-style governments because they can 'turn on a dime'. And although Trudeau considers Canada, under his aegis, a post-national country, Xi Jinping celebrates Chinese nationalism.

A memorial this month for victims of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Officials have been faulted as having at first mismanaged and concealed the breadth of the epidemic.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock

Canada treads lightly in its relationship with its southern neighbour and largest trading partner, the United States, and most particularly under the leadership of its current president, not known for his steady, guiding hand of objective and open policies. Canada owes much of its international security and its economic health to the fairly open trade and intertwined closeness of Canada's production with that of the United States. And when an extradition request from the U.S. for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou led to her arrest in Vancouver, China unleashed the full force of its bitter enmity.

Ever since, the Liberal government has tread lightly, hoping to soften Beijing's acid vituperation and re-ingratiate itself with a world power that knows no constraints or restraints, exercising contempt for other nations' scruples while itself threatening international stability. No greater harm has been done to the global community than when the CPC decided to withhold vital information from the World Health Organization on the seriousness of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic ravaging Wuhan, unleashing a deadly coronavirus on an unprepared international community.

According to David Mulroney who has experienced ample reflections of China's moody manipulation, Ottawa's "almost humiliating" posture regarding China has as good as given China a green light to continue presenting itself as a champion of industry and morals rather than the criminal ideology that Trudeau's craven attitude avoids speaking of. In providing incorrect information to the WHO, China deliberately chose to place the world in danger. Canada, along with other first-world countries have an obligation to social health and security to name China for its disregard of moral responsibility, much less the crass looter of world resources that it is, in the interests of furthering its own industrial conquest.

The Trudeau cabinet has bent itself like a pretzel to avoid criticizing either China or the WHO, when both have been responsible for the current situation the world finds itself in, trying to control a deadly virus with success nowhere in sight, while millions are threatened and countless lives are needlessly lost. China's aggression and rejection of responsibility only ensures that it will continue to place the world community in danger from its reckless totalitarian decision-making impacting the world outside China.

The Chinese people deserve better from their government. The world community expects better from the Communist Party of China, but Xi Jinping and his colleagues heed no accusations that they cannot attribute to the false cries of 'racism' while bullying the world order and focusing on becoming the next and premier world power. It already considers itself to have achieved that status.

In laying the world low, killing an untold number of people through neglect and arrogance, destroying the world economy, Beijing still comes out ahead, placing its industries on overdrive to satisfy the world's new vital need for medical equipment and drugs in a desperate effort to allay the harm done by China, while China profits. And it will vigorously and effectively fend off any demands that may arise for an impartial international investigation into the true emergence of the Wuhan novel coronavirus.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology opened in 2018 with the founder of a French bio-industrial firm, Alain Merieux, acting as a consultant in its construction Hector RETAMAL AFP