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International fraud and corporate espionage: These are among the allegations that the United States is making against Chinese telecom giant Huawei, in a case laid out by the Acting Attorney-General yesterday afternoon. The charges are related to two cases: one, the alleged skirting of U.S. sanctions in Iran by a Huawei subsidiary, and the company’s efforts to mask those activities; and two, the attempted stealing by two Huawei employees of the designs of a robot named Tappy from T-Mobile.
The first case – the alleged violation of sanctions – is the one that Canada has been caught up in. Canadian authorities arrested Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, at the Vancouver airport last month on the request of U.S. authorities, who are seeking her extradition to the United States for the charges that have now been laid out.
Canada’s ambassador to China, John McCallum, was fired on the weekend for comments he made last week about Ms. Meng’s case. Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said the problem was that he was not accurately reflecting the views of the Canadian government. “The central job of an ambassador is to represent accurately the government’s position. John didn’t do that and that is why his position was untenable,” Ms. Freeland told reporters.
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TODAY’S HEADLINES
Ms. Freeland and the Canadian government are also set to host a meeting in Ottawa next week of Central and Southern American nations to talk about the crisis in Venezuela.
In Washington, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election is close to completion, Acting Attorney-General Matthew Whitaker says.
In Quebec, teachers unions and school boards are alarmed by a request from the provincial government to count how many teachers wear symbols of their religion.
In Thunder Bay, a judge has released a man who spent four-and-a-half years in solitary confinement.
In the House of Commons, MPs can now speak their Indigenous languages.
And with an election coming up later this year, it’s worth a periodic glance at the polls. The latest weekly tracking numbers from Nanos Research show the governing Liberals and opposition Conservatives are currently neck-and-neck in popularity right now. The New Democrats are some ways back, as they have been most of the time since the 2015 campaign, and the Bloc Québécois and Greens are in their traditional low ranges. The People’s Party is, so far, just a blip on the screen.
Lynette Ong (The Globe and Mail) on the case against Chinese telecom Huawei: “The major Chinese multinational has come to symbolize China’s technological prowess, and to [Chinese President Xi Jinping’s] government, [arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou] epitomizes the innocent Chinese who, by virtue of their ambitions, have suffered simply because the United States feels threatened. By rallying its allies to denounce Huawei’s technology, the United States has inspired the prevailing belief in China – that a concerted scheme by the West seeks to thwart its rise.”
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on the charges against Huawei: “What do those two cases, filed by prosecutors on different coasts for vastly different federal offences, have to do with each other? Viewed together, they suggest that the company is a broad target for U.S. law enforcement and they represent a general allegation that Huawei is a bad actor."
Denise Balkissoon (The Globe and Mail) on politics and Pride: “In Toronto and around the world, Pride has always been both a party and a political event. It’s a chance for LGBTQ people to enjoy the communities they’ve built, while demanding an end to the injustice and violence that makes such a celebration so fragile. And decades before this current struggle, there were worries that revelry was overshadowing the meatier stuff.”
Amira Elghawaby (The Globe and Mail) on the two-year anniversary of the Quebec mosque shooting: “Two years on, this country still has no clear strategy for addressing online hate. We know now that Mr. Bissonnette was consuming Islamophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric spewed by a coterie of online propagandists. And while a parliamentary committee recommended increased funding for law enforcement to investigate online hate speech, we’re still waiting for concrete action.”
Martin Patriquin (CBC) on nationalism in Quebec and the premier’s call for more European immigrants: “In a society where other language are often seen as a threat to French, recruiting immigrants from Europe outside of France is exquisitely counterproductive. Equally as counterproductive: cutting immigration, Quebec’s main source of demographic renewal, when it has the highest average age of any province outside Atlantic Canada.”
Andrew Coyne (National Post) on the affordability debate: “The broad outlines of the campaign are becoming apparent. It will pit a party of everyday working Canadians against a party of the privileged elite, each party casting itself as the former and its rival as the latter. Each will claim to be uniquely committed to making life more affordable for Canadians — as opposed to that other party which presumably yearns to plunge Canadians into penury and destitution.”
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Chris Hannay