A few days less than three years ago, I asked in this space: “Why did China’s government pluck the Two Michaels from among 300,000 Canadians in China?”
The answer, I suggested then, was that both Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor had “the kind of backgrounds, jobs and contacts that could plausibly facilitate activities of the sort the Chinese have accused them of conducting.”
Yesterday, Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig were back in the news, with the former saying in the words of The Globe and Mail that “it was intelligence work by the latter that led to both men’s incarceration by Chinese authorities.”
Mr. Spavor says he was deceived by Mr. Kovrig “and he wants a multimillion-dollar settlement from Ottawa,” the Globe reported.
“Startling revelations,” yelped the Toronto Sun’s Lorrie Goldstein.
“H o l y S h i t,” intoned the Globe’s own Andrew Coyne, surely nowadays the biggest kahuna of Canadian political analysis.
Global Affairs Canada is already dismissing Mr. Spavor’s allegations as bilgewater.
Well, whatever Messrs. Spavor and Kovrig were actually up to, there’s egg all over the faces of the Canadian political, media and intelligence establishments tonight.
So it’s worth taking a look back at some of what I wrote in December 2020 about the arrest two years earlier by Chinese authorities of the men who were soon known throughout Canada as The Two Michaels.
Their arrests were obviously intended by Beijing as a message to the Government of Canada about the arrest in this country of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of one of the most influential men in China.
Ms. Meng was snatched by the Mounties at the request of U.S. authorities on Dec. 1, 2018, in Vancouver, where she had a residence.
She was an excellent catch for then-president Donald Trump’s publicly admitted plan to use her as a bargaining chip in high-stakes negotiations with China for a trade deal more to his administration’s liking.
“The U.S. authorities seem to have concluded, obviously correctly, that their Canadian counterparts would meekly go along with the dubious scheme to arrest her during a stopover for supposedly ignoring U.S. sanctions against Iran, even though Canada and other Western countries had not enacted similar sanctions,” I wrote at the time.
Clearly then, and clearly now, the right move for Canada would have been to let her board her plane for China, quietly advise her not to return, and then apologize to the Americans that she had accidentally slipped away. Notwithstanding all the pish-posh we heard in Canada about the rule of law, that is how the geopolitical game is sensibly played.
But, I asked, “how were the two Michaels chosen?”
After all, the Chinese authorities had more than 300,000 Canadians residing in their country to choose from, most in Hong Kong, but also in many in other centres. Most are Chinese and Canadian dual citizens – status the Chinese government doesn’t recognize.
Moreover, at the time of the Two Michaels’ arrests for espionage, about 200 Canadians were thought to be in custody in China. There was no uproar at home about those prisoners. Indeed, the Canadian government said virtually nothing about them, usually refusing to comment on their cases.Chinese authorities seem never to have used these cases to ratchet up the pressure on Ottawa. A year ago, there were said to be 123 Canadians in Chinese jails, so there is no evidence Canadians are being rounded up as hostages.
The narrative repeated constantly in Canada and widely accepted is that because of our commitment to the rule of law our country had no choice but to go along with the U.S. extradition request, even though holding Ms. Meng was arguably not in Canada’s interest.
As for the Chinese government’s conduct in the matter of the Two Michaels, we are constantly told China is a totalitarian country not bound by the rule of law.
Yet the Chinese went all the way to Dandong, which faces North Korea across the Yalu River, to find Mr. Spavor, a North Korea watcher and founder of the Paektu Cultural Exchange, which describes itself as “an international non-governmental organization that facilitates sport, culture, tourism and business exchanges with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”
Mr. Spavor has been described by the BBC as close to North Korea’s dictator, someone who has “sipped cocktails on board … Kim Jong-un’s private yacht.
Dandong was also home for 24 years to Kevin and Julia Garratt, the Canadian Christian missionaries and restaurateurs who were arrested in 2014 and held three months on spying charges before being sent back to Canada.
In January 2017, the New York Times reported, “Peter’s Coffee House, named for one of their sons, quickly became a hub for expatriates, local Chinese curious about the outside world – and state security agents suspicious of the Garratts and their customers, who included the occasional American or Canadian diplomat.” One wonders if Mr. Spavor was among their clients.
Mr. Kovrig, who was arrested in Beijing, has a resume similar in important respects to Mr. Spavor’s.
He is a former Canadian diplomat who was stationed in Hong Kong and Beijing, fluent in Mandarin Chinese. In 2017, he joined a non-governmental organization called the International Crisis Group as a senior advisor for North East Asia.
The ICG describes itself vaguely as “an independent organization working to prevent wars and shape policies that will build a more peaceful world.”
So, regardless of their reality, both men have the kind of backgrounds, jobs and contacts that could plausibly facilitate activities of the sort the Chinese have accused them of conducting.
Clearly the Chinese authorities also looked for Canadians in China who had the kind of connections that would send a much more pointed message than a mere diplomatic note, one that would be understood behind closed doors in Ottawa.
To make the point, in other words, that China was acting in accordance with the rule of law, as opposed to the lawless conduct of the Trump Administration, and by implication its Canadian ally. (Emphasis added to the original.)
https://albertapolitics.ca/2020/12/why-did-chinas-government-pluck-the-two-michaels-from-among-300000-canadians-in-china/
Now, it would appear, there was more than just verisimilitude to the Chinese government’s suspicions, and more than just honest outrage to the Canadian government’s protestations of the Two Michaels’ innocence.
Well, there is a long way for this story to go, and many revelations, no doubt, yet to be made.
Ms. Meng was released from house arrest in Vancouver on Sept. 24, 2021, and immediately flew home to China. A year later, with Mr. Trump out of the White House, the U.S. charges against her were dismissed. Canada looked like a chump.
And what about Robert Lloyd Schellenberg?
And what about the case of Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, the Canadian schmuck found guilty of drug smuggling by China not long before Ms. Meng’s arrest?
Once the Two Michaels had returned to Canada, Canadian media lost all interest in the fate of the poor guy, found guilty of trying to smuggle drugs out of China to Australia, who had his 15-year jail term goosed up to a death sentence to increase the pressure on Canada to release Ms. Meng.
A Chinese court rejected Mr. Schellenberg’s appeal of his death sentence in 2021.
There doesn’t seem to have been another news report about him since then.
He wasn’t a model citizen, a spy, or a corporate executive. He’s still a Canadian, though. Does anybody give a hoot?
That you don’t even mention the fact that the new claim says nothing about spying on China (it was North Korea) and thus in no way, shape or form validates what the Chinese government arrested them for is incredibly dishonest of you.
Shame on you.
GD: This time I’m saying the circumstantial evidence suggests the federal government was lying to us about whether one or one or more of the Michaels was a spy. The jury is still out metaphorically speaking, as the evidence is (and probably always will be) circumstantial. Last time I was saying that the resumes and activities of both men fit the pattern of known spies through recent history, and that the Chinese Government appeared to be using that fact to make a point to the Canadian government about Ms. Meng. I was saying in both pieces that Canada did not act in its own interests in the Meng case when the U.S. demanded she be arrested on what was obviously a “Trumped up” charge. Subsequent events have pretty well confirmed that opinion. As for whether or not Canada was spying in China, I agree with you that that is not confirmed by the facts at hand, although it seems extremely unlikely we wouldn’t be. Nation states spy on each other. As for calling me “incredibly dishonest,” I can only say that you are incredibly sensitive, and it makes me wonder who you are, hiding behind a meaningless pseudonym and equally meaningless Gmail address, which may or may not even exist, and a presumably disguised IP address that purports to be located in another country. DJC
Here, here!
Why didn’t you mention that the new info is about North Korea and not China? That is a gigantic omission and one, in the context and especially given your perspective, is by any measure journalistic malpractice.
From what I’ve read, Spavor passed openly-available information about North Korea on to Kovrig, who in turn passed it on to Western intelligence agencies. Here in the West, that would not constitute espionage, which involves covert intelligence gathering and secret information — but the DPRK and PRC might see that differently. In their worldview, that might also fall under the definition of espionage, even though there was nothing covert about the collection of the information, and none of it was state secrets, even in the DPRK. (The same likely cannot be said about how that information was passed on by Kovrig and to whom).
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/two-michaels-revelation-doesn-t-excuse-beijing-s-behaviour/article_c7443999-3a15-5b30-aa26-abfe9674e318.html
Jerry: I think we will need for the public trial, if there is a public trial, to see what Mr. Spavor’s allegations really are. In the mean time, my apologies to everyone for taking so long to post these comments. I was at a long meeting that left me rather tired and reduced my normal blog output somewhat. DJC
The problem is that the alleged activities happened in China. Also, the Chinese government charged those two for intelligence activities for foreign entities and did not specially say they spied against China (Understandably, the alleged activities could have China’s behaviour exposed to unintended parties). In fact, Michael K was met by the head of a Chinese think tank in 2018. They knew who Michael K was. And I would speculate that the two Michaels were considered an asset to the Chinese side at the beginning. As time went by, the Chinese government made the decision that was known to everyone.
They absolutely did. Look up any Global Times piece about them and it will absolutely specify clearly that they were arrested for spying on Chinese military installations.
It’s all kind of ironic. If this is indeed why they were arrested, China is just as much North Korea’s pawn as Canada supposedly was America’s.
Global Times?!?!?! OMG almost lost my sense of reason. Are you an agent for China? The GT is an official organ of the Party and is hardly a paragon of journalistic ethics. Yet you criticize DJC who had said on many occasions that this blog is an opinion piece, not a journalistic investigative site. I hear the Epoch Times has an opening..
Even if your claim that the only spying was on NK, I am fairly certain the Chinese government does not look fondly on foreign nationals conducting espionage operations against their ally on their soil.
The implication of China grabbing the two Michaels, as most rational observers thought at the time was a signal that we knew what these clowns were up to the whole time, and as their “operations” were largely ineffective (a common trait of Canadian intelligence operations these days from what I understand) their presence was tolerated. When we showed ourselves to be such a willing stooge of the Americans of course they’re going to grab two obvious spies as a bargaining chip. The only reason we weren’t made to look ridiculous at the time were the bold faced outrageous lying from the Canadian government and the lapdog press that focused on being stenographers for Ottawa rather than reporting on the behaviour of the two michaels, which is quite obviously closer to intelligence operatives than whatever they purportedly were doing according to their CVs
My final point is that is precisely because of their own incompetence and hubris the two Michaels were such an easy bargaining chip, which again not a very good reflection on whatever training they would have been provided before their departure.
It’s not my claim. The only new information we have these days is that spying was done on NK. You can literally look it up yourself!
Can I definitively say they weren’t spying on China? No, just as I couldn’t say that about anybody I have no personal relationship with (and perhaps some that I do). The point is that we didn’t learn that spying on China is what they were doing and to imply as much is dishonest.
Really picking a strange hill to die on, it’s not really even new information they were focused on the hermit kingdom. What you appear to be attempting to do is move the goalposts, in the hope folks will begin to doubt whether or not they were spies to begin with. We see you.
Lol, where’d you go, govt worker?
Actually it doesn’t matter two hoots what the claim says or doesn’t say. China, like every other country in the world can arrest, with or without charges, valid nor not, at any time any non citizen in their country. To the shame of all Canadians, Canada with the cowardly act on behalf of the US, did.
Look up any piece in the Global Times about them and it will specify that they were arrested for spying on Chinese military installations.
That a government can theoretically arrest anyone for any reason may well be true, but uh, it’s not the line I’d take in defense of an arrest.
Wow DJC, that was excellent reportage in a few hundred words. I expect a spy thriller under the tree in 2024! You’ll just need a femme fatale and perhaps a crazy submarine captain. Hmmmm
This seems like a movie, but it’s real life.
Finally someone is speaking the truth.
Does anyone think a book deal is in the works? This doesn’t seem exciting enough for a spy thriller movie.
As for Mr. Schellenberg, past news stories claimed that his father had disowned him, due to his criminal ways in Canada. It seems to me that people with families to lobby for them back home are the ones who get rescued. Squeaky wheels get the grease.
The case involving Schellenberg is even stranger. Not only was the alleged kingpin known to police, he was on the run from both American and Canadian authorities for running an international drug smuggling organization (their words). A man connected to the UN gang as a “respected elder” who allegedly arranged an international murder as a favour to them when they worried another one of their members, hiding out in Mexico was about to return to Canada and talk about his involvement in yet another murder. The implication being that despite the international ambitions (and rise), of the lower mainland criminal groups there remains an even higher, older, more entrenched level(s) above that, and this, is what that “poor schmuck” Schellenberg stumbled into.
When you add in the accusation during his trial that his translator was in fact working for the state police service, the amount of drugs, the amount of convictions (and large quantities) he was convicted of trafficking in Canada, the implication of who he had to have been working for in when he lived in the lower mainland, his claim that he got the money to go to China “working in the alberta oilfield” (doing what? For whom?) I find it EXTREMELY unlikely he didn’t know what he was getting into, that he didn’t see it as a promotion and it wouldn’t have been seen as such had he carried it off. The guy is a careeeeeer drug dealer, with the exact right connections to be working for who he alleged.
The final kicker is that the alleged kingpin retuned to Canada in 2021 & was promptly arrested. His charges were then subsequently dropped by both the United States and Canada.
Now, all I’m saying is this, there’s a VERY long history of overlap between intelligence agencies and drug trafficking organizations and I find that to be rather suspicious. I’m sure the Chinese government found it interesting as well. As far as the unfortunate mr Robert, sadly I’m sure he would be dead or in jail had he remained in Canada doing the things he was doing. Not for nothing the protracted UN / BK gang war took the life of a child in Edmonton just this past week. Might be worth considering some of the broader implications of the Schellenberg affair, Kim Bolan is the only Canadian reporter I’ve seen write about any of this.
China obviously picked these three specific men to apply pressure for reasons they were well aware of. It very much has the visual of, “you say we are criminals but here is just a sampling of what you are getting up to in our backyard and we SEE YOU.”
unfortunately the Canadian establishment is far too arrogant to understand subtlety on the level of Chinese diplomacy. & it would appear our security establishment is rather ham handed when it is dealing with something other than spying on its own citizens and or third world populations who’s mineral rights we want.
So I’ll tell you why we don’t hear about Robert Schellenberg anymore, and I’m betting my last dollar it’s because our betters really don’t want us to think about why China presented THESE three men as objects of political pressure and why only one of them was seen as expendable.
Not a good look for CBC that this hasn’t made their news site. Great article, great reporting, great reminder that all governments, including ours, are structurally untrustworthy.
“He wasn’t a model citizen, a spy, or a corporate executive. He’s still a Canadian, though. Does anybody give a hoot?”
Canadians take a masturbatory delight in dropping six figures per year per prisoner incarcerating other Canadians for using drugs, I am completely unsurprised that they are okay with another country footing the bill for incarcerating or even executing a Canadian for selling drugs. I would not be at all surprised to find that the only thing unusual about this execution is that it made the news.
The perennial performative blather about Canadians having value to Canada is performative blather. Homeless people are Canadian citizens too, feel free to ask them how much their government values them. We are valued for a combination of our wealth, skills and connections (and not having too much of a tan doesn’t hurt either). Canada’s ruling class (the owning class) sees us as disposable, expendable units of production that exist to be exploited, broken and discarded.
I don’t think Canada was exercising the rule of law by arresting and home-detaining Chinese-national Ms Meng; rather, it cited the rule of law—effectively, the torpidly slow-geared wheels of justice—to stall her extradition to the USA at presidunce Donald F tRump’s behest until he was no longer a threat to Canada or the world.
Whatever the “Two Michaels’” motivations, they were collaterally locked into the holding pattern that had become many nations’—including Canada’s— go-to diplomatic policy with respect the USA after ten months of reckless tRumpublican foreign posturing (it can hardly be called “policy”—much less “politics’ of any salutary kind). At the time Meng was arrested in Canada it was amply clear that the narcissistic political ignoramus was an ogre, not an oaf, who actually enjoyed running amok with his new toys.
Had he a whit of capacity to think strategically (his closest handlers were appalled by his bored dismissals of critical details the world’s most powerful office needs to grasp), tRump would doubtlessly gloat and boast about how many hostages he effectively took in trifecta (taking the “Two Michaels” as a single unit, along with Canada and China). It could be argued, however, that Canada’s extradition-delaying tactic was successful as a small component of the contingencies to contain the Orange Spray-Goo Tan pomander of peeve and ride his single term out: he never got Ms Meng into US custody before he was drained into a swamp of scandal, impeached twice, and defeated before he could continue damaging his country for another four years. Meng was effectively exchanged for the two-M Canadians, and all of them are home safe.
And JT, crudely belittled and threatened by tRump, weathered both retaliatory (and legally short-lived) tariffs against important Canadian exports to the US and the pandemic (with less than half the per-capita Covid fatalities than tRump’s unfortunate Americans), and the wrenching economic compromises to keep circumstantially unavoidable, post-Covid inflation from teasing out a full-blown recession. Yes, there are a lot of really big-ticket issues only worse for the delays, but we’d be a lot less capable of addressing them had we not successfully suffered through the embarrassments of tRumpublicanism.
In the end, Trudeau’s government might have its long-in-the-tooth problems, but it’s still in power and, barring loss of parliamentary confidence, has two more years to go. tRump, in contrast, is a pathetic loser at home and abroad; courts of law are now trying his many, many perfidies; he ruined his party, probably fatally—but the US, if necessarily weakened to some extent, retains global hegemony nonetheless.
I think it would probably be much worse had Meng been extradited into tRump’s hands—and much worse for Canada which, it sometimes needs reminding, is so economically, culturally and strategically close to the USA that China considers it America’s postern and weakest point in its North American bastion of confidence.
Was Canada a chump in the Michael-Meng-Michael affair? Given the uncertainty of tRump’s presiduncial whim and, at the time, still three more years of America’s most dangerous republicans to go, Canada might not have had much choice—it’s not like we have a Netflicks kind of weight in the world. Quietly letting Meng ‘escape’ her plush accommodations in Vancouver risked very real retaliation from tRump—but handing her over to the US risked much more for the rest of the world. Neither happened, thank goodness.
Were the gang of three-Ms pawns in a high stakes geopolitical game? Certainly so, but anyone who thinks China isn’t extremely sensitive to foreign nationals doing suspicious stuff in its borders probably also doesn’t think Israel should fire back when attacked by thousands of Hamas missiles and Israeli casualties. Indeed, when both countries are afraid of their own citizens, they tend to not to dwell on niceties. One has to expect the expected from wary and/or wounded members of Superpowers Anonymous. Little players can easily get trampled under foot. Canada might have gotten tRump-chump mumps, but it survived to benefit from best-boosted immunity, vis a vis its strong relationship with the global hegemon, along with the rest of the world’s post-tRump herd.
I just try to imagine what Ukraine, Gaza, and Taiwan might have looked like today had Canada given tRump whom he wanted or, worse-case, if he’d ever gotten to preside for a second term. He always bragged that the likes of Un, Putin, Bi-bi, and Xi really liked him. In retrospect, I think that’s undeniable.
I really don’t get what you mean by your last paragraph, ukraine would be worse under trump ? They literally impeached him for trying to slow arms deliveries to ukraine, I don’t understand what your point is. They’re both ruined parties, it’s a completely ruined democracy. Biden is a bloodthirsty maniac like all their presidents have been. Foreign policy is dictated TO the president. Ask Nixon.
The detainment of Meng was not a Trump initiative, although he sought to take advantage. John Bolton set up the arrest without Trump’s knowledge. The arrest seriously disrupted Trump’s concurrent meeting with top Chinese officials in Argentina. Plans to use DOJ and sanctions laws to disrupt Huawei dated back to Obama administration as New York Times reported:
“Counterintelligence agents and federal prosecutors began exploring possible cases against Huawei’s leadership in 2010, according to a former federal law enforcement official.”
How A National Security Investigation of Huawei Set Off an International Incident
New York Times Dec 14, 2018