Former diplomat Michael Kovrig says his government was caught flatfooted by China’s decision to arrest and detain him in 2018 — and could have secured his release earlier if it had a plan in place.
Three years after his return to Canada, he’s now calling on the federal government to publicly release a formal policy on Canadians being arbitrarily detained by other countries.
“You need to have plans and procedures and strategies in place to deal with it,” Kovrig told CBC News chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault in a recent interview.
“For a number of reasons, the Canadian government was not prepared. The U.S. government wasn’t prepared for the blowback from arresting Meng Wanzhou. And so it took them a long time to figure out what to do.”
Canada has accused China of arresting Kovrig and his fellow Canadian Michael Spavor in a tit-for-tat response to the RCMP’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at Washington’s request in 2018. The U.S. had an extradition request out at the time for Meng, who was detained on fraud charges.
Kovrig and Spavor spent more than 1,000 days in Chinese prison cells before the U.S. dropped its extradition request in 2021 and China freed them.
Michael Kovrig says the Canadian government was unprepared when he and fellow Canadian Michael Spavor were detained by China after the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou. He’s now urging Canada to develop better strategies for dealing with blowback from countries like China.
“That is the fundamental responsibility of the state, is to protect its own citizens,” Kovrig told CBC News. “But you also need to look at deterrence and denial and other ways to prevent hostage-taking by states.”
While the two men have never confirmed publicly they received a settlement, sources tell CBC News both Kovrig and Spavor were offered financial support from the government to help them rebuild their lives.
Global Affairs Canada said it “proactively engaged” in discussions with them about financial support and the matter has been resolved.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian responded to Kovrig’s interview with CBC News by alleging China’s judicial authorities followed the law and accusing Kovrig of having committed a crime. Kovrig denies any wrongdoing and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said his arrest had “absolutely no justification, no reason, no excuse.”
Kovrig said he now fears for other Canadians in China and elsewhere who could be detained arbitrarily. He recently met with Global Affairs Canada and said the government needs a strategy to protect others from going through what he endured.
“I think somewhat different approaches and a quicker understanding of the problems would have led to hopefully a faster resolution,” he said. “But let’s not pretend that it was easy. And frankly, that whole situation is so complicated.”
Kovrig said he doesn’t blame the government for his experience and credited it for “enormous efforts” to bring him home. He said he’s personally thanked individuals in government who worked to secure his release.
“I think eventually they figured out the right path,” Kovrig said. “They put a lot of really qualified, competent, driven people on it, so I don’t fault the effort involved.”
The “key lesson” Canada should take from his ordeal, he said, is that “you need to be better prepared and have a strategy.”
Canada has dropped its extradition case against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou after she entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S., resolving that case. It’s believed she is no longer in Canada.
Kovrig said that while the federal justice minister at the time “had the authority to interrupt the process at any point and essentially end it,” he acknowledged there would have been “costs and consequences” if the minister had intervened to prevent Meng’s extradition to the U.S.
“I think the key is rather to think more strategically in terms of what leverage Canada had, with particularly the United States and China, and how it could have used that leverage to accelerate the process,” he said.
Kovrig praised U.S. President Joe Biden for having the “moral courage … to make the hard decisions that others were not willing or able to make previously” to get him home.
François-Philippe Champagne was the foreign affairs minister while Kovrig was being detained from 2019 to 2021. Champagne told CBC News getting Kovrig and Spavor home “was the top priority of the government.”
“I can assure him, and I know him, I know his family, that we did everything we could as a government to bring him back home,” he said.
Champagne said he remembers meeting for hours in Rome with the Chinese foreign minister and holding multiple discussions with Canada’s ambassador in China about providing Kovrig with “everything he needed during the time he was detained.”
Current Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said she’s had “many conversations” with Kovrig, who “went through hell.”
Canada developed an initiative on arbitrary detention in 2021 following the detentions of Kovrig and Spavor and convinced dozens of countries to sign it, she said.
“We were able to have 75 countries signing onto it and send a clear message to the world, and to countries that don’t necessarily follow the international norms, that we won’t accept and we will never accept that our citizens be used as pawns in this geopolitical game,” Joly said.
But a 2023 report said Canada still hasn’t made the necessary legislative changes to better handle these cases.
The report was co-written by Kovrig’s former wife Vina Nadjibulla, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center and an international security and peacebuilding specialist. Stephanie Foggett, a research fellow at the Soufan Center, co-wrote the report.
Global Affairs Canada, which leads the government’s response to Canadians detained abroad, has tried to come up with a policy framework to manage the issue over the past two decades but has yet to adopt one, the report said.
The report also said that, unlike the U.S., Canada has no law that “explicitly” requires the government to provide consular services to its citizens abroad.
The Soufan Center report also points to a National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) report that said the RCMP, the Department of Defence and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service don’t have a plan for co-ordinating a response to Canadians being taken hostage abroad. NSICOP recommended that the government come out with a “clear framework” and provide sufficient resources to respond to “critical incidents.”
“While the government agreed with all the NSICOP recommendations, no action appears to have been taken,” the Soufan Centre report said.
In an interview with The National’s Adrienne Arsenault, former diplomat Michael Kovrig describes being grabbed off the streets by masked officials in Beijing and how he survived nearly three years as China’s captive.
Global Affairs Canada said it “will continue to work with its international partners to strengthen collective response and deterrence mechanisms.”
The department also named Julie Sunday as its the senior official for hostage affairs. Global Affairs called it “just one example of the steps that Canada has taken” to increase its capacity to respond to hostage-taking.
Sunday is no longer in the role and is now the high commissioner for Canada in Australia.