Based on what Prime Minister Mark Carney, a Liberal cabinet minister, and a Liberal MP said publicly about China’s use of forced labour, the idea they are fiercely criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping about it in private is laughable.

Indeed, watching the performance of Carney, Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, and former Conservative, now Liberal, MP Michael Ma on the issue over the past week, would have been hilarious if their milquetoast responses weren’t so alarming.

GOLDSTEIN: Carney’s two-faced policy on China exposes his Davos speech as nonsense Back to video

Alarming because they were consistent with what Carney himself said Xi personally warned him not to do on the sidelines of the APEC summit last year, which was: “Don’t lecture me in public.”

So much for Carney’s famous Davos speech where he proclaimed that “middle powers” such as Canada, “have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.”

Not when the Liberals fold like a cheap suit under questioning about whether Canada believes China uses forced labour, extracted from its minority Uyghur population in Xinjiang, to build aluminum components for electric vehicles, as Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a widely recognized expert on China, testified at the Commons industry committee.

This is obviously a live issue given that the recent Carney-Xi trade deal included Canada importing up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs annually, increasing over time.

When Carney was asked whether Canada believes China uses forced labour, he claimed Canada takes the issue of forced labour seriously and has the record to prove it, but repeatedly described it as a global problem, as opposed to the relevant question of whether it’s a China problem.

Carney finally arrived at, “there are parts of China that are higher risk” requiring diligence, which wasn’t what he was asked.

Carney later avoided classifying China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as a genocide, even though MPs from all parties, including Liberals, did so in 2021 by a vote of 266-0.

Hodgson, Carney’s natural resources minister, said Carney’s government does not discuss such issues in public.

“We’ve got clear categories of where we agree, and we’ve got places where we don’t agree,” he said. “We don’t need to have public discussions about where we disagree. We make that clear, to our friends in China.”

Given that China publicly describes claims it uses slave labour as a “blatant lie,” Hodgson is asking Canadians to believe they’re tough with China on human rights in private while glossing over the issue in public.

That, finally, brings us to Ma.

He’s now being praised in China’s state-run media for discrediting claims China uses slave labour as “hearsay,” after he challenged McCuaig-Johnston’s testimony in committee through a series of absurd and simplistic “yes or no” questions.

Subsequently, Ma claimed everything from the fact his strategy was “to use a quick burst of YN question (sic) to move away from the anti-China EV witness and then give the floor to the pro-China EV witness” to making a pro-forma apology to McCuaig-Johnston, claiming he takes the issue of forced labour seriously.

Following that, Carney gave Ma the mildest slap on the wrist possible in public, before attending a $1,775 per-ticket Liberal fundraiser closed to the media, co-hosted by Ma, where Carney praised him as a great Canadian representing “Liberal values,” which only became public because Global News obtained a video of the event.

Given that ethics are what you do when you think no one’s looking, it’s pretty clear what Liberal ethics are.

EDITORIAL: The Carney doctrine on China is silence

GOLDSTEIN: Liberals' kid gloves treatment of China is nothing new

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