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Hello,

Let’s start with breaking news out of Ottawa this afternoon: China is about to begin trials for the two Canadians it jailed in apparent retaliation for Ottawa’s 2018 arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, who is wanted by U.S. authorities.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor have been incarcerated for 829 days. China alleges they are spies.

“Our embassy in Beijing has been notified that court hearings for Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig are scheduled to take place on March 19 and March 22, respectively,” Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau said in a statement.

The court dates for Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor coincide with high-level meetings between the U.S. and China. Top foreign officials from the two countries will meet in Alaska on Thursday. The Joe Biden administration has made clear that it intends to push Beijing over its treatment of U.S. allies.

The two men were arrested shortly after Canada detained Meng on a U.S. extradition request for bank fraud, which she denies.

The Canadian government, meanwhile, is counting on President Joe Biden’s proposed reset of U.S.-China relations to open the door for the release of the two Michaels.

Globe and Mail Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife and Senior Parliamentary Reporter Steven Chase report on this development here.

Reporter’s Comments Steven Chase - “There are lot of potential obstacles to a deal that might free Ms. Meng. Huawei has previously maintained her innocence and balked at a proposal floated by the U.S. Department of Justice in late 2020 that would see her admit wrongdoing. A deal with Huawei itself could be difficult because the company would likely want to be removed from a U.S. blacklist – known as the entity list – as part of any agreement and it’s seen as unlikely that the United States government would agree to that.

Vancouver-based lawyer Richard Kurland, who has followed her case closely, feels that Huawei is open to a deal that could set Ms. Meng free. While Ms. Meng’s lawyers have said she is adamantly opposed to admitting wrongdoing, he said he believes that the company’s reluctance to concede anything is “out the window now.”

He said he thinks part of the problem to date has been a “clash of cultures” between the U.S. Department of Justice and the Chinese tech maker.

“Huawei is willing. It’s not the cheque size. It’s the words,” he said. “The Americans have to package it culturally [appropriately].”

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This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter, written by Ian Bailey. It is available exclusively to our digital subscribers. If you’re reading this on the web, subscribers can sign up for the Politics newsletter and more than 20 others on our newsletter signup page. Have any feedback? Let us know what you think.

TODAY’S HEADLINES

A senior Enbridge Inc. executive told members of Parliament on Tuesday that Canada must fight hard to rescue a key petroleum transmission line running through the United States because it would be even harder to build a cross-Canadian pipeline to replace it.

From The Ottawa Citizen: A senior female military officer and Afghan war veteran is leaving the Canadian Forces because of the failure of its leadership to deal with sexual misconduct.

The serial number on Canadian-made air strike targeting gear that turned up in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict last fall matched that of restricted military equipment Ottawa had approved for export to the Turkish navy, newly released documents show. The matching serial number provides the strongest proof to date that Canadian military equipment was diverted by the Turks to its ally Azerbaijan.

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is ruling out the cut in foreign aid his party campaigned on in the previous election, declaring a government under his leadership would maintain Canadian foreign-aid spending.

Jason Kenney defends the campaign by the Alberta oil and gas war room against a bigfoot film, namely Netflix’s Bigfoot Family. Mr. Kenney labelled the movie as “anti-oil and gas propaganda” during Question Period on Tuesday.

PRIME MINISTER’S DAY

Private meetings and talks with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Reporter’s Comment: Eric Reguly (European Bureau Chief, The Globe and Mail) : “Topic No. 1 for Mario Draghi and Justin Trudeau is bound to be the vaccine rollout, which has been exceedingly slow across the European Union, including Italy, and in Canada. They will no doubt talk about their respective plans to ramp up their vaccination campaigns and Mr. Draghi, who has come out in support of the AstraZeneca vaccine, will want to know if Canada has any reservations about using the same product. The two men probably will compare notes on stimulus and recovery measures and Mr. Trudeau might ask his Italian counterpart, who is the former president of the European Central Bank, whether the gushers of government spending might trigger inflation. Donald Trump will surely enter the conversation. Mr. Draghi will be curious about life north of the border in the post-Trump era, and whether Joe Biden’s new US$1.9-trillion relief package will accelerate Canada’s recovery.”

OTTAWA ROUNDUP

The affable Ian Waddell, who served four terms as an NDP MP and was also a B.C cabinet minister, has died suddenly in Vancouver. Reports here and here. Reacting to the news, B.C. Premier John Horgan tweeted, “Ian Waddell was the first person to welcome me to Parliament Hill when I was a legislative assistant 35 years ago. Everything Ian did, he approached with passion & desire to make progress for people. I’m saddened to learn of his passing. He will be missed.”

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Karen Hogan, Canada’s Auditor-General, is to deliver three performance audit reports next Thursday on various aspects of Canada’s COVID-19 response. Topics are the design of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy and Pandemic Preparedness - Surveillance and Border Control Measures. The latter includes whether the Public Health Agency of Canada and Canada Border Services Agency implemented and enforced border-control and mandatory quarantine measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 in Canada.

OPINION

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on challenges the Rogers-Shaw deal raises for the federal Liberals in a likely election year:Ordinarily, this kind of transaction – Rogers Communications Inc.’s $20.4-billion bid for rival Shaw Communications Inc. – would raise a few weak questions from government, slow-but-certain reviews and, eventually, public acquiescence. But this deal, at this time, is a political problem for the governing Liberals. "

Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on the benefits of a hereditary head of state:From their book-lined studies on the leafiest streets of one of the most favoured countries on earth, pundits shed their usual hot tears at what they and we might have become were we not bent under the lash of the House of Windsor.”

Gary Mason (The Globe and Mail) on the challenges of a “vaccination-passport” program: Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s Provincial Health Officer, is talking about a postpandemic world by this summer. Some restrictions are already being removed. Do we really want to invest the time and financial resources it would take to implement a vaccine-passport program when it could be completely redundant come September?

Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on “bleak choices and dim prospects” ahead for Canada’s airports:By failing to privatize Canada’s airports when it could have, the Trudeau government missed out on an opportunity to reap billions of dollars for taxpayers and enable airports to tap new sources of capital that would have helped them withstand periods such as this one.”

Ginny Roth (The National Post) on Conservative Party of Canada self sabotage: “There was once an unspoken assumption that party leaders had at least two elections to try to form government before the membership would insist on replacing them. There were early signs conservatives were growing impatient with this two-shot approach when Tim Hudak faced a tough leadership review in Ontario after increasing his party’s seat count and reducing the governing Liberals to a minority in 2011. But it was the take-down of Andrew Scheer after the past federal election, one in which the Liberals were reduced to a minority, that ushered in a new era of do-or-die leadership among Conservatives.”

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