Trudeau should be thanking Xi for their awkward G20 encounter

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Not since the Zapruder film has a clip been studied this closely: the 45 seconds of seemingly spontaneous back-and-forth between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Indonesia.

Much too much has been made of it, all in all. Mr. Xi is arrogant and contemptuous, lecturing Mr. Trudeau on the rules of international diplomacy in protest at Canadian officials having shared the substance of their bilateral discussions with the media. Mr. Trudeau is understandably taken aback, but manages a somewhat stagey answer about Canada’s commitment to openness and dialogue, before the two men shake hands.

But for those inclined to see the exchange as either an indictment of Mr. Trudeau’s weakness or a tribute to his strength: arrogant and contemptuous is Chinese leaders’ default mode. It wasn’t the first time, after all, that a Chinese leader had talked down to a Canadian prime minister. Recall the public rebuke prime minister Stephen Harper received in 2009 – on an official visit – from then-Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, for not having visited sooner. The difference is that last time, much of the Canadian media and political class sided with China.

Mr. Harper, then-Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said, was “reaping what he has sown,” due to his “provocative refusal to engage with China.” The lesson the NDP leader, Jack Layton, drew from the snub was “there’s work to do on Canada’s part.” The time was ripe, he suggested, to “show we’re serious about our human rights concerns in China … by addressing our human rights problems with Afghan detainees.”

Much has changed, of course, in the interim. China’s behaviour, under Mr. Xi, has steadily worsened, or perhaps it is simply that our perception of it has grown clearer. For his part, no one can accuse Mr. Trudeau of having refused to engage with China: in the first years of his government Canada was among the most ardent of China’s many international suitors, to a degree that baffled security experts.

The record of Liberal entanglement with Beijing is, in retrospect, staggering: the fundraising dinners with Chinese billionaires; the compromised ambassadorships of John McCallum and Dominic Barton; the eager pursuit of a free trade deal, even to the point of considering an extradition treaty as a side-letter; the presence of all those Liberal grandees on the Canada-China Business Council.

The policy record is no less striking, notably the strange reluctance to intervene where the activities of Chinese business – always closely co-ordinated with the state – raised security red flags: first in the Norsat deal, then in the matter of Huawei’s participation in Canada’s 5G network, only finally blocked after years of dithering.

Not coincidentally, perhaps, China’s behaviour has grown steadily more outrageous, lately culminating in the revelation that its agents were operating informal “police stations” on Canadian soil – and, last and worst, its reported attempts to subvert Canadian democracy.

Mr. Trudeau, then, should be grateful to Mr. Xi: so long as everyone is talking about who was rude to whom, no one is talking about China’s alleged campaign of interference in Canadian politics, or the Prime Minister’s failure to say or do much about it.

Indeed, if what has been reported is true, it amounts to the most serious assault on our democracy in our history. The Chinese government reportedly provided covert funding to a network of 11 candidates in the 2019 election, together with a number of political staffers.

In addition, the regime is reported to have targeted MPs who voted against China’s perceived interests for retribution, compiling data on companies in their ridings with business in China and smearing them as anti-Chinese bigots among the Chinese-Canadian community.

Former Conservative MP Kenny Chiu was a particular target, for having sponsored a private member’s bill to establish a registry of agents of foreign interests – a registry that, incredibly, has yet to be created. But a number of other Conservative MPs were similarly smeared.

Mr. Trudeau was reportedly apprised of all this by Canadian security officials in January. Yet no action appears to have been taken in response: certainly the information does not seem to have been shared with anyone outside the government.

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Affairs Minister are now taking up the matter with their Chinese counterparts, but whether they would have shown the same alacrity had the matter not come to light may be doubted. That presumably was the concern of those who leaked it.

There is much that needs to be investigated: the identities of the candidates and staffers on the Chinese payroll, what if anything the Prime Minister did about it, why the information was not made public – and, most important, how to prevent future such outrages. A foreign influence registry – the cause that cost Mr. Chiu his seat – would be a good place to start.