Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired his ambassador to China after the envoy said it would be “`great” if the US dropped its extradition request for a Chinese tech executive arrested in Canada.
Trudeau on Saturday said that he had asked for and accepted Ambassador John McCallum’s resignation on Friday night.
McCallum made the remark to the Toronto Star on Friday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
That came a day after he issued a statement saying he misspoke about the case earlier in the week and regretted saying Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) has a strong case against extradition.
The arrest of the daughter of the founder of Huawei Technologies Co (華為) at Vancouver’s airport on Dec. 1 last year severely damaged relations between China and Canada.
The US wants her extradited to face charges that she committed fraud by misleading banks about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.
Photo: Reuters
“Last night I asked for and accepted John McCallum’s resignation as Canada’s ambassador to China,” Trudeau said in a statement.
He said Jim Nickel, the deputy head of mission at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, would represent the government in China.
He thanked McCallum, a former minister in his Cabinet, for his 20 years of public service.
China detained two Canadians shortly after Meng’s arrest in an apparent attempt to pressure Canada to release her.
A Chinese court also sentenced a Canadian to death in a sudden retrial of a drug case, overturning a 15-year prison term handed down earlier.
McCallum told Chinese media in the Toronto area earlier in the week that the extradition of Meng to the US “would not be a happy outcome.”
He suggested the case was politically motivated and said the US could make a trade deal with China in which it would no longer seek her extradition, and two Canadian detained in China could then be released, but on Thursday he walked back the remarks and said he “misspoke.”
Trudeau had earlier dismissed calls to fire McCallum, but he clearly had enough after the envoy spoke off script again.
Trudeau and Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland have stressed that Canada’s government cannot interfere politically in the case.
Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer said McCallum should have been fired days ago because his remarks raised concerns about the politicization of the Meng case, adding that McCallum damaged Canada’s reputation by delivering different messages through different media on different days.
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