I doub't her detainment had anything at all to do about Canada, so in this case Canada was, it appeared merely toeing the US line, rather than having a specific stake in the matter.

Really though the crux of the matter is wether Meng is held due to a real criminality as per Canadian/US law, or is being held as a political move, and signals from both US and Canadian administration has been confusing in this regard. Some statements from US and administrations give a feeling that she's being held for political reasons.

"Several well-known Canadians, including former prime minister Jean Chrétien and former foreign minister John Manley, have suggested that Canada let Meng go or orchestrate a “prisoner exchange” with China."

From WaPo on this issue:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/extraditio...

Canada does have a stake in the matter as Huawei hacked Nortel to steal their IP and then undercut all their business deals causing nortel to go bankrupt to the detriment of 94,000 employees and every single Canadian that owned just about and stock market fund.

It is embarrassing that we haven’t banned Huawei products in Canada yet.

Yes but that is not related to the case at hand. So if that is used a justification to hold Meng, that is a political reason. Governments in democracies, esp the judicial system is supposed to act to uphold fairness and not national self-interest.

very good point. The Canadian government should grow a pair and determine if nortel's IP was stolen and then act accordingly.

Nortel was hit by the tech bubble bursting, then engaged in financial fraud.[1][2] Blaming Huawei for Nortel's failure is a pretty massive rewrite of history.

1. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nortel-files-for-bankruptc...

2. https://www.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSN1936265020080619

tech bubble burst in 2001, Huawei hacking of nortel was 2004-2009.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...

https://aragonresearch.com/cyber-war-flashback-remembering-t...

Not Huawei hacking - alleged Chinese hacking. By that time, Nortel had already been hit by the bursting of the tech bubble - which it never really recovered from - and was in the midst of a scandal in which top executives were accused of financial fraud. Nortel's final downfall occurred during the Great Recession, after years of limping along on life support. People blaming Huawei for Nortel's collapse are really banking on people forgetting the history of Nortel.

admittedly I am as biased as they come being a formel Nortel employee.

Chinese government hacking and Huawei hacking are one and the same as the end result is Huawei benefitting from the stolen information.

Had Nortel not been hacked they wouldn't have had to deal with their competitors ripping off their products and out manoeuvring them in their business deals.

The article I linked to cites an ex senior security advisor at Nortel stating that the hacking dated back to 2000, before the tech bubble burst.

Instead of being swept under the rug the demise of Nortel due to hacking should be a case study in why computer security needs to be given a lot more attention even if it is at the expense of convenience.

Hang on a second there. We really have to go back to the history of Nortel, because the claim that Chinese hacking brought down Nortel really does not hold up.

Nortel expanded massively during the dot-com bubble, and went on a nearly $20 billion acquisition spree that caused it to lose money every quarter for years, even while its stock price was driven up by unrealistic expectations. Then the dot-com bubble burst, at which point these expectations were tempered and people began worrying about Nortel's unprofitability. The stock crashed, raising capital became difficult, demand for Nortel's products (and all telecommunications hardware) plummeted, and the company had to lay off 20% of its workers. At this time, Huawei was a tiny player outside of China. Nortel's major competitor was Cisco.

In 2003, for the first time in years, Nortel finally posted a quarterly profit, but then came under investigation from the SEC over suspicions that it was fudging its numbers (specifically, the accusation was that executives shifted revenue in time in order to meet targets that earned them bonuses). The SEC charged top Nortel executives with fraud, and the case was eventually settled, but Nortel had to change out its top management. Nortel was also sued by shareholders, to whom it had to pay billions of dollars in a settlement. There were layoffs and downsizing throughout this entire period.

To look at that history, and then to claim that hacking that might have helped one of Nortel's several competitors (and not even the largest, by a long shot) is the reason for Nortel's demise just seems completely out of left field to me. To be honest, it sounds like a batter yelling at the ump about being distracted by a fan after he strikes out 0-3.

It's more like someone on base on your team stealing the catcher's signals to the pitcher and telling your batter what pitch is coming so they can hit a home run by cheating.

Here is a quote from one of the articles I linked: >Nortel was once one of the dominant telecom providers globally, but in early 2004, Huawei was caught stealing trade secrets from Nortel. This was proven by Nortel security expert Brian Shields. However, Nortel management had a hand in their own eventual downfall when it outsourced manufacturing to Huawei in the ’90s.

>In the hack, Huawei gained credentials of Nortel executives, including CEO Frank Dunn and Brian McFadden. It then simply stole documents that contained the future product and marketing plans of Nortel.

>The hack went even further than usernames and passwords. It has never been proven, but U.S. sources discovered that it was most likely Huawei that used sophisticated malware to record nearly every phone call that Frank Dunn made. After all of this, Huawei grew and Nortel faded, eventually going bankrupt.

All of the history of some mismanagement or funny accounting means nothing to me. Nortel had a large portfolio of IP that was stolen by China and ended up in the hands of Huawei and then the details of all of the deals they were trying to make to sell equipment were also stolen and used to out manoeuvre them, driving losses and unprofitability.

> As a Canadian I certainly do not wish we had "just let her slip".

History has shown us and it keeps showing us principles are great as long as they don't get in the way of business.

For example why was it that Trudeau decided to "just let [it] slip" when it came to the SNC-Lavalin corruption investigation?

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/06/americas/canada-politics-...

Trudeau was, rightly (to the extent that he was involved/aware), lambasted for that decision...

However, at least for me, that then taints the credibility of Trudeau and the government he leads.

I have idea if the claims against Huawei are true (many of these details seem to be kept secret) and my suspicion would be they may well have been involved in some sort of industrial espionage.

I'm also sure many companies and countries around the world are also actively engaged in all sorts of espionage.

However, the fact a government has been shown to easily bend it's own laws for the sake of business also means Huawei's claim this is a politically motivated attack can't be so easily dismissed.

A country of Canadian laws, not American laws.

Indeed, and Canadian laws say that we should arrest her and probably extradite her to the US subject to the outcome of some hearings.

The standard for extradition is that the alleged infraction must also be a crime in the country being asked to extradite. So that's what Canada is trying to determine right now.

> Source on this? I certainly haven't heard the government say anything to this effect.

I'm basing this on the government's paralysis in this case.

> We're a country of laws.

Canada's system of laws is being abused by the Trump administration, which has made no secret of its desire to use Meng Wanzhou as a bargaining chip in the trade war. Allowing the Canadian extradition treaty with the US to be abused for political ends was not wise. There were smarter ways to deal with the request. Hong Kong's reaction to the US extradition request for Snowden (please resubmit the paperwork while we let him fly out of our jurisdiction) would have been a good model to follow.

> We should follow those laws, not just give in to pressure from China because they're big, mean, and scary.

The possible US reaction to not extraditing Meng Wanzhou would be just as - if not more - scary. Canada is extremely dependent on trade with the US. That's why the government arrested Meng Wanzhou, and why it is finding it so difficult to acknowledge the obvious: that this is a politically motivated prosecution that does not fall under the terms of the extradition treaty.

> I'm basing this on the government's paralysis in this case.

What paralysis? It's moving through the court system at the court systems typical pace. (Which is slower than I would like... but that's just a general comment about our court system)

> Canada's system of laws is being abused by the Trump administration

This is primarily an argument for amending our laws in response to this case, not ignoring them in this case. Admittedly it's partially an argument that might be raised to say that the laws do not support extradition in this case, but of course at the time we detained Meng Wanzhou this was nowhere near as clear, and her lawyers are more then capable of making this argument to the court.

> The possible US reaction to not extraditing Meng Wanzhou would be just as - if not more - scary.

Indeed, and we should pay as little attention to that as we do to China's threats and retaliatory arrests. I have complete faith that our courts are paying as little attention to it.

So you're saying we should all ignore the very, very obvious political angles here and trust that it's all about the rule of law, applied neutrally and apolitically?

Next you'll be telling us that a police officer would never lie on the stand.

No, I'm telling you that you should look at the public court process and conclude that it's the rule of law being applied, very little trust is necessary in this instance.

Not requiring trust is the entire reason why we have such a public court process.

This case is pretty irregular as far as rule of law goes. You just don't see executives imprisoned for corporate accounting shenanigans or trade with the wrong countries way down in their reporting chain. The laws are long and can capture anyone, why was this one brought to bear in particular, at this particular time?

I suspect we have very different opinions on how frequently police lie on the stand.

You can be certain that there is heavy government involvement in the case, just as there was in the SNC Lavalin case. The government is not simply going to leave an important matter of state like this to the vagaries of the courts.

> This is primarily an argument for amending our laws in response to this case, not ignoring them in this case.

The political exception to extradition quite obviously applies here. This is a standard clause in extradition treaties. The thing is, the Canadian government is afraid to use this clause for political reasons - fear of retaliation from the Trump administration.