Written by: Aidan Jonah

An ATIP document obtained by Dimitri Lascaris, given to The Canada Files, reveals how Canada used its 2018 kidnapping of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to promote messaging ‘regarding human rights’ in China.

This comes as Canada’s government claims, without evidence, that Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland has faced a Chinese foreign interference campaign as she contests the Liberal Party leadership against Mark Carney and other lesser known candidates.

In Meng Wanzhou’s kidnapping, Canada sees opportunity

In December 2018, Canada kidnapped Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou at then and current US President Donald Trump’s behest. Canada was unique in following Trump’s demand, because seven other countries had refused to kidnap Wanzhou for the US.

Canada’s justification? That the US was claiming that Huawei had violated their illegal sanctions on Iran, after the US pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran in May of that year.

And soon Trump made obvious the political nature of Wanzhou’s kidnapping. In Ken Stone’s 2020 op-ed for The Canada Files, he explained that:

“On December 6, 2018, President Trump declared he might release Meng if he secured a favourable trade deal with China. He also told John Bolton that Meng was ‘a bargaining chip’ in his negotiations in his trade war with China. In fact, in The Room Where it Happened, Bolton reveals that Trump privately gave Meng Wanzhou the nickname, ‘The Ivanka Trump of China’, a moniker illustrating that Trump understood he was asking Canada to take a high-value hostage in the person of Meng Wanzhou to be leveraged against the People’s Republic to get a trade deal favourable to the USA.”

Unsurprisingly, Chinese citizens were unhappy about the kidnapping of a crucial Chinese company’s CFO on farcical grounds.

What did Canada choose to do during this time?

The document obtained by The Canada Files shows that the Canadian Embassy in the People’s Republic of China chose “to leverage the increased attention to promote its messaging across its social media platforms in China, including regarding human rights”, during the first month after Canada kidnapped Wanzhou.

The G7’s Rapid Response Mechanism Coordination Unit noted that “According to reporting from BEIJING-PD, the embassy's Weibo account gained approximately 18,000 new followers in the four weeks that followed the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, which represents 36% of all the followers gained in 2018.”

But the gains in following didn’t produce positive attention:

“Yet with this increased traffic to the embassy's account came a torrent of vitriol, with one post alone garnering more than 25,000 hate messages directed at Canada.”

But Canada’s embassy in China appeared to be thinking that any attention was good attention, as it emphasized that its ‘human rights’ moralizing “were widely seen by millions more readers than would normally be the case” (A202301262, Pg. 47), in the first month after Canada kidnapped Wanzhou.

Canada’s embassy in China didn’t respond to The Canada Files request for comment.

Eventually, in September 2021, a swap was arranged where the Two Michaels were returned to Canada, in exchange for Huawei CFO Wanzhou being allowed to return to China. Rapidly, Canada’s intelligence agency tweeted out this message: “Welcome home, #Michaels”.

Canada’s China paranoia cost Canada economically, as paranoia around Huawei being a supposed data grabber for the Chinese government led Canada to ban all Huawei equipment in 4G and 5G networks, in May 2022.

Canadian government incompetence means that with the Liberal government’s proroguing of Canada’s parliament, a bill that put legal force behind the demand that, “Any Huawei gear you already have must come out of 5G wireless networks before July 2024 and older 4G networks by the end of 2027”, was killed before it could come into force.

So despite kidnapping Huawei’s CFO, severely damaging Canada-China relations and banning Huawei equipment in Canada, in the current moment it’s still legal for Canadian companies to use Huawei equipment in 4G and 5G networks.

Baseless claims of Chinese interference against Freeland

While the Canadian embassy in China leveraged a kidnapping to attempt to intervene in Chinese domestic politics, Canada has a paranoid approach towards even the hypothetical, unproven, spectre of China using WeChat to spread ‘disinformation’ about political candidates they dislike.

The latest case of Canadian paranoia comes as Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland’s bid for Liberal Party leadership lags behind that of Mark Carney.

The claim was made by Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE), a task force “made up of senior Canadian intelligence and security officials”.

Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC, explained that SITE was claiming a Chinese “information operation directed at Freeland was traced to WeChat's ‘most popular news account,’ an anonymous blog that experts have linked to the People's Republic of China.” SITE claims that “two to three million WeChat users saw the campaign globally”, with “WeChat news articles disparaging Ms. Freeland netting over 140,000 interactions”.

But even the CBC admitted that SITE’s claim was vague:

“SITE did not say what the ‘derogatory’ content was about or list any of the WeChat accounts in question.”

Evidence of course, is not forthcoming in this case. Because what evidence is there? None.

Just like the case of ex-Conservative Party MP Kenny Chiu, where his claim that Chinese Canadian articles on WeChat opposing his 2021 candidacy because of his push for a foreign influence registry, were backed by no proof.

Also just like the case when, in August 2023, Canada’s foreign ministry claimed Conservative MP Michael Chong was the target of a “disinformation operation” on WeChat. In this case Canada was slightly less shameless, not outright claiming China was behind WeChat articles critical of him, only alleging that “China's role in the information operation is highly probable”.

Such a case study in contrast: the Canadian side brags about intervening in Chinese domestic politics through WeChat, while the other side repeatedly fails to produce evidence of China using WeChat to interfere in Canadian domestic politics.

Document

A202301262

Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.

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