Thank you. I think in that regard there is no question the Chinese regime will attempt to pressure us through diplomatic and economic coercion if they feel that will achieve their purposes. We now have the situation of the hostage diplomacy of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, for example. I suspect that when Ms. Meng Wanzhou was given authority by the Chinese Communist Party to transit through Canada, the assumption was that Canada would simply ignore our obligations to the United States under the extradition treaty because there was sufficient knowledge in Ottawa that one should not be detaining Ms. Meng. Now Chinese diplomats say, “Well, the fact that you held her means that you must be punished.” So, even if Ms. Meng is eventually able to return to China under some means, a deferred prosecution agreement or withdrawal of the extradition request or determination by Justice Holmes that the extradition doesn't stand up, we're still going to be punished. The question is whether we respond.
Australia does, I think, over one-third of its external trade with China, so the $20 billion in sanctions that China has imposed on Australia, directly connected to 14 different conditions, damages them much more. They want Australia to seek funding for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, for example—it has found out a lot of things about Chinese espionage and influence operations—and to agree to Huawei and to stop their press from reporting negatively, and any number of things that the Chinese regime believe that we can achieve.
I think from that point of view we have to be prepared for retaliation, and the only reason this will not happen will be that the Chinese recognize that we will not be bowing to this kind of pressure and making concessions to them because they are pressuring us. Right now, by holding Kovrig and Spavor, they have managed to stop us from getting any response to Huawei 5G. We're not enacting the Magnitsky Act against Chinese officials complicit in genocide in Xinjiang, and we're not upholding our obligation to sign the British joint declaration with regard to people in Hong Kong who will be subject to persecution under what we would regard as the illegal national security law, so from the Chinese point of view, Canada's response is the one that they want.
I think it's the wrong response. I think it's time for us to make it clear to the Chinese regime that we will not be bullied and intimidated. Australia is certainly setting a very good example for us of the right way to go.