Canadian and Western sanctions and their 'democratic' mess

Editor's note: Radhika Desai, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

China's recently-announced sanctions against two Canadian organizations, the "Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project" and "Canada-Tibet Committee," are countermeasures. Unlike the West, China does not impose illegal unilateral sanctions. It only counters Western measures, usually undertaken aggressively in the name of human rights and democracy. Canada had marked International Human Rights Day on December 10 by imposing sanctions on eight Chinese officials for alleged involvement in human rights violations in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Xizang Autonomous Region without any factual basis.

Most people realize such sanctions have little to do with promoting democracy or human rights anywhere. However, do they know that they are also symptoms of the decline of democracy and human rights in the West? Certainly, recent Canadian sanctions demonstrate this.   

Why did Canada impose these sanctions when, only a few months ago, it had sent its Foreign Minister, Melanie Joly, to China to lift Sino-Canadian relations from the depths to which they had sunk after Canada arrested the then Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou, in December 2018 at the behest of the U.S.?

Two intertwined reasons suggest themselves and both point to the grave political dysfunction of Canadian and Western democracies. Long devoted to neoliberal policies favoring tiny wealthy elites and casting the vast majority into economic misery, they have been losing legitimacy. By the mid-2010s, winning elections was becoming near impossible. That was when political upstart, Donald Trump, blazed a new and dangerous trail: to get votes, he had to acknowledge popular misery. But instead of blaming the true culprit, neoliberal policies, he blamed China.

The first reason for Canada's newest sanctions is Trump's recent election. In arresting Meng, Canada had bent over backwards to appease Trump who, in his first term, had already torn up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among the U.S., Canada and Mexico to renegotiate it on terms he favored. Trump was the deity to be propitiated and Canada made its relations with China the offering.

Of course, unable to counter this political logic, Biden not only doubled down on trade and technology sanctions against China but combined them with sanctimonious verbiage on human rights and democracy. The voters were not fooled and voted him and his party out of the White House and both houses of Congress. Shocked, if not surprised, already in multiple crises, Trudeau's government thinks its anti-China sanctions will please President-elect Trump and somehow make him relent on his multiple threats – on tariffs, immigration, defence spending and much else besides – to Canada.

The second reason also revolves around Trump. Nearly all Western governments had gone along with Biden's combination of neoliberalism and 'democracy promotion' and all are now in crisis. The German government fell within hours of the declaration of Trump's victory. The French government fell in early December. The UK government, which enjoyed no "honeymoon" after its July election, lurches from one disappointment to another and has become one of the most unpopular governments less than half a year into its term. Japan's historic ruling party faces being trounced out of office. The South Korean President was impeached for – and this is pretty ironic – declaring martial law to save democracy.

Canada is no different. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau leads a minority government whose life may end with any vote. And Trump's election generated new disputes about how to respond to his many threats.

In these disputes, the opposition Conservatives are calling the shots. Its relatively new leader, Pierre Poilievre, taking a page from Trump's book, has made being opposed to China into a test of loyalty to Canada and Canadian values. The Conservatives, encouraged by the U.S., had already pushed for the shocking unanimous 2021 vote in the Canadian parliament, after a laughable parody of an "investigation," declaring that China was responsible for "genocide" in Xinjiang. Today they are demanding the Trudeau government investigate "Chinese police stations" in Canada and "Chinese political interference" in Canada's elections.

The Canadian government's crises are mounting. Days after the sanctions were imposed, Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland resigned. Her resignation letter, posted on social media, was effectively, her opening shot in the battle for Liberal leadership that must come.  

The sanctions against China are part of this political dysfunction that is making Western democracy daily less democratic and less legitimate. If the more or less inevitable election of a Poilievre government brings any improvement on this front, it will only be because the anti-China rhetoric having done its work in deluding the people and delivering the votes, can be laid to rest in the interests of Canada's and the U.S.'s corporate interests. Needless to say, this will not constitute any sort of vindication of Canada's democracy, in whose name these absurd sanctions are imposed.  

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