Toronto: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired Canada’s ambassador to China after the envoy said it would be “great” if the US dropped its extradition request for a Chinese tech executive arrested in Canada. Trudeau said on Saturday he had asked for and accepted John McCallum’s resignation on Friday night. McCallum made the remark to the Toronto Star on Friday. That came a day after he issued a statement saying he misspoke about the case earlier in the week and regretted saying Meng Wanzhou has a strong case against extradition.
The arrest of the daughter of the founder of Huawei Technologies Ltd at Vancouver’s airport December 1 severely damaged relations between China and Canada. The US wants her extradited to face charges that she committed fraud by misleading banks about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran. “Last night I asked for and accepted John McCallum’s resignation as Canada’s Ambassador to China,” Trudeau said in a statement. Trudeau said Jim Nickel, the deputy head of mission at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, would represent his government in China. He thanked McCallum, a former minister in Trudeau’s Cabinet, for his 20 years of public service. hina detained two Canadians shortly after Meng’s arrest in an apparent attempt to pressure Canada to release her. A Chinese court also sentenced a Canadian to death in a sudden retrial of a drug case, overturning a 15-year prison term handed down earlier.
