Rex Murphy: Who really wrote John McCallum’s shockingly China-friendly script?

I don’t think John McCallum dug this great pit and jumped into it all on his own. At a minimum there must have been a few outside shovels

Canadian ambassador to China John McCallum in a 2016 file photo.ALICE CHICHE/AFP/Getty Images

"I misspoke"...LOL

Have another drink, Hic...

Poor John McCallum. Summoned from his far-flung Eastern posting, in the very middle of the triangular turbulence that sees Canadian interests (jailed citizens, one scheduled for execution) batted like a shuttlecock between the two great powers of the modern globe, China and the U.S. Called back in the deeps of an Ottawa winter, when the icicles that depend yearlong on every politician’s heart find their winter brothers on every eavestrough and power line and on the cold, stern, stone noses of the gargoyles glaring out from the House of Commons.

It is not a kind time of year to be sent to the doghouse. Yet there the proud man now repines, very likely weak in grief over a great squall of scorn and rebuke that fell like an avalanche on his already white head. It followed his now infamous 40-minute press briefing to Chinese media (foreign and local), in which he has been described as “setting out the case of Meng Wanzhou” to beat her extradition case to the U.S.; acting more like a “defence lawyer” for the Chinese telecom executive than beseems an ambassador; finally, that he was horribly messing up Canada’s stringent to sanctimonious declarations of the “rule of law” as solely governing the matter.

Not unexpectedly, my National Post colleague Andrew Coyne put things more neatly than anyone else when he tweeted a précis of his column on McCallum, describing it as “when the ambassador for Canada in China becomes the ambassador for China in Canada.”

Mr. Coyne’s neat turn encapsulated the converging opinions of most commentary, from press and politicians, past diplomats and academics that McCallum had egregiously blundered, had forgotten his role, and was either incompetent or wildly freelancing in the middle of the most intense diplomatic crisis Canada has seen in decades.

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These judgments received not a little support from the least likely source a day later, Ambassador McCallum himself. Reaching for the most spurious neologism of modern politics, availed of by all politicos caught giving their honest view of things (as opposed to the ventriloquisms of party-line talking points), Mr. McCallum said he had “misspoken.”

Maybe he did. But as many pointed out, a 40-minute “misspeak” is more of a feat than a folly, less a slip of the tongue than a dyslexic marathon. He should be fired, said the Opposition leader, and many outside of politics said the same thing.

The view that he went wildly off on his own is probably, likely, the right one. Nonetheless there is still something odd about this whole sequence. Meaning no disrespect, seriously, I don’t see Mr. McCallum as primarily a creative type. Yet if there is anything that characterizes his press-conference performance, it is its originality. The line he took was brand new and different; no one else in government has even broached it. What brought on this sudden and rare flash of brazen originality?

He is definitely not a drummer in a one-man band, or a political improvisationalist. He’s emphatically not a rebel, not one to cross the leadership, or stir placid waters. Mr. McCallum and the status quo could almost be said to define each other.

Yet here was this dutiful servant of party politics, going where no Canadian diplomat has gone before, purportedly making a hash of all efforts to date, offering the Chinese (and Americans) mixed signals of Canada’s intent, and embarrassing the prime minister. Out of character? Absolutely.

Undoubtedly what he said was quite off message for Canada: his saying it was way off message for McCallum. To summon the question of the great Ambrose Bierce — Can such things be?

Is it at all possible that some of the busier brains in the PMO may have tinkered in this affair. That the strict “this is a rule of law matter and nothing other” approach, is proving to be unproductive? To the point that maybe hinting to the Chinese that, besides being a “purely legal matter,” suggesting it as a political and diplomatic one beckons as a supplement?

Certainly the decision to extradite must first go to the courts. But to oblige the court’s decision, should that be negative for Ms. Meng, will not be the province of a judge but that of the justice minister acting with the discretionary powers that are the minister’s in this case. Which is to underline that this is both a legal and a political matter. It is a contest between states. It’s rule of law when in the courts; politics when it leaves.

And when two Canadian citizens are staring at incarceration in a Chinese jail, and another is facing near-imminent execution, might it not occur to some at the highest levels of government that to hint that the rigorous talk of “rule of law” is not all; that another dimension for resolution is, at least, a candle at the far end of the tunnel?

Who would be the vehicle for such a thought? Certainly not the prime minister or foreign minister. Perhaps an ambassador. Could he have been encouraged to float that alternative, or even instructed to offer a little creative ambiguity that might unthaw the current impasse? Too subtle a theory? Very likely. But we are told so often that diplomacy is all subtlety and vague signals, cryptic smoke signals and hushed whispers. And theatrical walk-backs when needed or convenient.

The one solid impression I have of all this is that I don’t think McCallum dug this great pit and jumped into it all on his own. At a minimum there must have been a few outside shovels.