THE ADVOCATE 813
VOL. 79 PART 6 NOVEMBER 2021
turn, that “we are enormously grateful to Canada’s Department of Justice
for its dedicated work on this extradition and for its steadfast adherence to
the rule of law”.13 Of course, China’s official tone was not as complimentary,
at least about the U.S. charges against Meng and her arrest in Canada; its
official statement of September 25, 2021 did not bother to comment on the
court process, presumably not used to seeing it as divorced from other state
means of exercising power.14
The rule of law that benefitted Meng in Canada is not a principle that
existed in China to the benefit of the “two Michaels”. Nor, sadly, did they
benefit from the fact that Canada observed the rule of law with respect to
Meng domestically—in late September 2021, soon after the return of Meng
and the “two Michaels” to their respective home countries, Canadian Foreign
Affairs Minister Marc Garneau noted in a speech to the United Nations
General Assembly that “Canada observed the rule of law, and two Canadian
citizens paid a heavy price for this commitment.”15
In this regard, on December 10, 2018—promptly after China protested
Meng’s “unreasonable, unconscionable and vile” arrest and threatened consequences—
Kovrig and Spavor were arrested in China, supposedly for
endangering its national security.16 On January 14, 2019, a Chinese court
imposed a death sentence on Canadian Robert Schellenberg (previously
sentenced to 15 years) in a drug smuggling case. China subsequently took
various trade measures against Canada. Less than a month after Holmes
A.C.J. dismissed Meng’s request to discharge her on the double criminality
ground, on June 19, 2020, China charged Kovrig and Spavor on suspicion of
spying. They were jailed throughout, in harsh conditions and with very limited
consular access. Their trials began in March 2021, with Canadian diplomats
refused access supposedly because of national security concerns. In
August, a Chinese court rejected Schellenberg’s appeal from his death sentence,
and Spavor was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to 11 years
in prison. No decision was issued in the Kovrig case.
Despite the supposedly serious charges against them and Spavor’s conviction,
Kovrig and Spavor were released and returned to Canada as Meng
returned to China. Their respective airplanes reportedly took off from the
two countries at roughly the same time.
The White House denied it had been involved in negotiating a “prisoner
swap” (though President Biden had apparently pressed his Chinese counterpart
recently to release Kovrig and Spavor). White House spokesperson Jen
Psaki said the deferred prosecution agreement with Meng was “an action by
the Department of Justice, which is an independent Department of Justice.
This is a law enforcement matter” and “there is no link”.17