WARMINGTON: Big two-for-one trade success between China and Canada

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Two Michaels for one Meng!

Thus, after three years of haggling over such a transaction, trade between China and Canada took place.

Finally! Both countries rejoiced!

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor at the Calgary airport on Saturday morning after the duo, released after more than 1,000 days in a Chinese prison, landed on Canadian soil after an all night flight.

In China, at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, a red carpet and red roses greeted Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on Saturday morning.

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Wearing a red designer gown and looking more like a head of state returning from a trip abroad than a person released from house arrest, Meng waved from the top of the steps of the Air China plane to a large crowd that worshiped with red flags, reminiscent of January 2020, when TheBreaker website reporter Bob Mackin exposed that his out-of-court followers in Vancouver were paid actors.

“Without a strong homeland, I would not have my freedom today,” declared the woman nicknamed the Princess of Huawei.

The homecoming was not as bright or noisy for the Two Michaels, but it was as emotional as they received the hugs from the family and Trudeau as well.

“Welcome home, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor,” Trudeau tweeted. “He has shown incredible strength, endurance and perseverance. Know that Canadians from across the country will continue to be here for you. “

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Shortly after leaving Spavor in Calgary, Kovrig was back on the Challenger jet bound for Toronto, where he was greeted by local reporters at Skyservice’s private terminal, all wondering how he was feeling.

“It’s wonderfully great to be back home in Canada,” he said. “I am so grateful to everyone who worked so hard to bring the two of us back home.”

Once the US government reached a deferred prosecution agreement with Meng on Friday, the Two Michaels were no longer needed as leverage.

“So happy they’re home,” said Kevin Garratt, who spent 775 days in a Chinese prison under similar circumstances because China wanted Su Bin, detained in Canada on cyber espionage charges, to be released.

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Once it was, Garratt and his wife Julia were on their way home. Like the Michaels, they were also charged with espionage.

“We were never spies,” Garratt said.

He and his wife were Christian missionaries trying to help people in China. The Two Michaels were law-abiding businessmen who became prisoners of convenience.

“The Two Michaels were simply taken as people to trade,” Garratt wrote in a 2019 column about their journey, which is also explained in his book. Two tears on the window. “It’s about (Meng’s) arrest … they are pawns in the game, just like us.”

And once again, this is proof that China arrests Canadians on false charges of espionage, to complicate the prosecution of one of its citizens here, it works. The Michaels were held hostage to demand a ransom and in the end that ransom was paid.

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So what is Canada doing about it now? Can you do something?

Will you do business with Huawei? Will Canada Boycott the Next Winter Olympics in Beijing? Perhaps such moves will be debated in the coming weeks, perhaps not.

But this Saturday, September 25, 2021, the focus was not so much on future relations with communist China as on celebrating the end of a difficult saga of two Canadians.

While Meng was ordered light house arrest in a Vancouver mansion with an electronic ankle bracelet but free to shop and dine, the Two Michaels were trapped in 10-foot cells with no windows and a hole for a toilet.

With his wife Vina Nadjibulla by his side after a long hug on the runway, Kovrig told Toronto reporters that he will have more to say later.

Meanwhile, the Two Michaels were not mentioned in China’s coverage of Meng’s heroic return.

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