This would be the third time the HFX has presented the McCain Award. The first, in 2018, went to the residents of Lesbos, Greece, for their efforts to save refugees; the second, in 2019, went to the civil protesters in Hong Kong. HFX intended to give the third to Taiwan’s president because he strongly opposed China’s relentless pressure.
When Canadian officials heard of the forum’s plans, they made it clear that if the organizers gave Tsai the credit, the Canadian government would receive support – and funding – from HFX.
HFX has not decided how to proceed. For now, it looks like the situation is on ice.
“HFX has not yet announced the winner of the John McCain Award for Public Service Leadership in 2020,” Vice President Robin Shepherd said in a statement. ‘We look forward to making the announcement and holding a presentation on time, given the challenges facing the Covid-19 pandemic. President Tsai of Taiwan is a respected international leader, the first female president of Taiwan, and a strong global supporter of democracy. She will definitely be the best fit for this award. We have no further announcements to make at this time. ”
The McCain Institute, where Cindy McCain chairs the board of trustees, did not respond to requests for comment.
POLITICO is a media partner of the event, but is not involved in pricing decisions. POLITICO employees handling their role at HFX did not participate in this story.
The Halifax Forum, also sponsored by NATO, attracts numerous powerful military and civilian leaders. Previous speakers included then-US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel; Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command; Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan; and officials from a multitude of other countries, including Israel, Estonia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Poland, and Japan.
The forum’s website states that it is ‘dedicated to strengthening strategic cooperation between democracies’. It is also of the opinion that it should criticize Beijing’s autocratic expansionism, and last year released a publication entitled ‘The HFX Handbook for Democracies’, which highlights ‘the serious challenge facing China’. HFX promises donors that their contributions to the forum will strengthen the government’s intention to stand up against China.
Now the question is whether the forum itself will combat the Canadian government and honor one of Beijing’s main targets.
Trudeau’s government seems uncomfortable with the situation. Ottawa rushed to provoke Beijing after tensions escalated in December 2018, when Canadian authorities arrested a senior Huawei executive on behalf of the United States. In an apparent retaliation, China arrested two Canadians a few days later and has since charged them with espionage.
A spokesman for Sajjan, Canada’s defense minister, declined to confirm or deny whether the Trudeau government had threatened to withdraw from the forum over the organizers’ plan to transfer the award to Tsai.
“The Government of Canada has provided financial support through a contribution agreement with the Halifax International Security Forum,” Sajjan spokesman Todd Lane wrote in an email to POLITICO. ‘Although financial support has been provided, the Department of National Defense and the Canadian Army are not involved in the planning of the Forum. The organizers contact us, as well as many other organizations, for panel members on various topics and we try to support when appropriate. ”
Sajjan will testify before a special parliamentary committee on Monday night on relations between Canada and China.
Officials from Taiwan’s missions in Washington and Ottawa declined to comment.
Ottawa’s relationship with Beijing in turbulent state
In recent months, the Chinese government has targeted Taiwan with a hybrid warfare campaign, including election interference, cyber attacks and drone intrusions into its airspace. The insignificant barrage fired the country’s economy and fueled fears of a full-scale invasion. Meanwhile, only ten of Taiwan’s nearly 24 million people under Tsai’s leadership died of Covid-19. In January 2020, she achieved a major victory against a rival who wanted closer ties with Beijing.
Beijing does not recognize the independence of Taiwan, and has long sought control over the dynamic island democracy. The communist government campaigned for the undermining of Taiwan’s international recognition, using its influence to pressure companies and institutions to change maps depicting it as an independent country.
The U.S. maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan, and on Friday the Department of State released guidelines that would allow for closer interaction between U.S. diplomats and those of Taiwan, as Reuters outlined. Like the United States, Canada’s “One China” policy means that Ottawa does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state and that it does not maintain official relations with the Taiwanese government.
Honoring Taiwan’s president during such a high-profile conference in Canada is likely to irritate Beijing – especially as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tries to free the release of the two Canadians detained in China.
Diplomatic relations between Canada and China plunged after the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver airport in December 2018. Beijing called the move political and demanded its release. Meng’s father founded Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant. The U.S. Department of Justice last year sued Huawei for violating the Racket-Affected and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) – charges mostly related to organized crime – for fraud in the service of evading U.S. sanctions against Iran.
Days after Meng’s arrest, Chinese authorities summoned Kovrig and Spavor, popularly known as the ‘two Michaels’. China has also halted some major agricultural imports from Canada.
Kovrig and Spavor were tried last month in separate one-day proceedings, each behind closed doors. Canadian diplomats and media have been banned from entering the courthouses for both trials. The men are now awaiting sentencing and, if convicted, their sentences.
Trudeau called the arrests of the Canadians arbitrary and claimed that they ‘trump’ charges in.
This is not the first time Beijing has arrested Canadian citizens in apparent retaliation for Ottawa’s compliance with its treaty obligations. In 2014, a Canadian arrested a Chinese citizen named Su Bin, who was indicted in the U.S. for working to steal plans for the U.S. C-17 military transport aircraft and F-35 fighter jet. After his arrest, the Chinese government arrested Kevin and Julia Garratt, two Christian aid workers living there. A lawyer for the Garratt family told The New York Times that Beijing had made it clear that they had been arrested for putting Ottawa under pressure not to extradite Su Bin. Su Bin later renounced extradition, pleaded guilty and served a short prison sentence in the US. The Garratts are now free.
China is a political issue for Trudeau
While the fight for the two Michaels’ freedom has become a leading foreign policy issue for Trudeau, the prime minister has been criticized for being too soft on China.
Conservative Erin O’Toole, Canada’s official opposition leader, has repeatedly tried to put Trudeau at odds with China and has challenged the prime minister to stand up to Beijing.
“It is disappointing, but not surprising, to see to what extent the Trudeau government will secretly support the Communist Party of China,” O’Toole wrote in an email to POLITICO on Friday when asked about the Trudeau Government’s ultimatum to the Halifax Forum on Tsai. . “It begs the question of what this government is still secretly doing to support their friends in China that we do not know.”
Trudeau sought to bring together Western leaders – including President Joe Biden – to push for China’s release of Kovrig and Spavor. “People do not exchange chips,” Biden said in February after his virtual encounter with Trudeau. “We will work together until we are safe again.”
However, since the arrests of Kovrig and Spavor, Trudeau has sometimes seemed reluctant to take steps that could anger China. Canada is still the only member of the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance that has yet to decide to restrict Huawei from its 5G network.
In February, the Canadian parliament overwhelmingly voted in favor of a motion declaring Beijing’s mistreatment of Uyghur Muslims a genocide. Trudeau himself and his 36 cabinet ministers refrained from voting on the symbolic motion.
But in other areas, Canada has moved forward multilaterally. The Trudeau government, along with allies, recently imposed sanctions on individuals and entities allegedly linked to human rights violations against Uyghurs in China, including mass detention in concentration camps and reports of forced sterilization of women. It also called on Beijing to give independent investigators ‘unhindered access’ to the region.
The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not respond to requests for comment.
Senate Marco Rubio, meanwhile, the top Republican of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement praising Tsai in response to this report.
“No world leader deserves the recognition more than President Tsai Ing-wen,” he said. “President Tsai has stood firm against Beijing’s international bullying without undermining the status quo that has maintained peace for decades. Democracies worldwide must refuse Beijing to prescribe how we treat Taiwan. ”