Mccallum: Canada and China

mccallum: On a day that both of those issues collided spectacularly in the news, McCallum lost his job as Canada's ambassador to China asked by Trudeau to step down after some extremely ill-advised remarks on Friday to a Star Metro reporter in Vancouver, according to Toronto Star. Even as attention was riveted on Kingston, Ont., and the questioning of a Syrian refugee in a terrorism take-down on Friday, McCallum was musing aloud in Vancouver about how it would be great for Canada if the U.S. dropped an extradition request that has entangled Canada in a massive, high-stakes dispute with China. First, as immigration minister from 2015 to early 2017, he managed the influx of Syrian refugees to this country; then, for the last two years, McCallum was Canada's man in China. It was McCallum's second verbal misstep in a week, and Trudeau phoned him late on Friday night to say that this latest outburst was one too many. Article Continued Below Since then, two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, have been detained and another, Robert Schellenberg, has been sentenced to death. The firing throws a bucket of cold water over speculation all last week that McCallum was saying what the Trudeau government could not say publicly in what has been an escalating, high-stakes feud with China, kicked off by the December arrest and detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou as part of the U.S. extradition request. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.