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[The author is Margaret McCuaig-Johnston is an advisory board member of the China Strategic Risks Institute, a global think tank.]

Michael Kovrig, who all Canadians know along with Michael Spavor as having been kidnapped and held hostage by China’s Ministry of State Security in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, has written a compelling foreword to the third edition of The People’s Republic of the Disappeared edited by the NGO Safeguard Defenders.

The personal stories of foreigners and Chinese describe what it is like to be captured suddenly off the street, a black bag thrown over your head, kept for months in a padded cell with daily coercive interrogations, not knowing if you will ever see your family again, and sinking into despair. The Chinese call this “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location” (RSDL) but it is anything but innocent. You must confess to whatever crime the state wants to charge you with, explaining China’s 99.97 per cent conviction rate.

Canadians were upset and angry at the taking of innocent Canadians hostage. The same had happened to Kevin and Julia Garratt of British Columbia in 2014.

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When the Michaels were taken, I was told by a Chinese executive in Shanghai that Beijing has a list of 100 Canadians they can pick up and interrogate at any time. No doubt, Australia’s Cheng Lei was on that country’s list. As Australia’s Amanda Lang, she was a CGTN business broadcaster. She was taken when the Michaels were still in custody; her detention in 2020 came after Australia called for an inquiry into the source of COVID-19.

Ms. Cheng had two little children who did not see their mother for more than three years. This, too, was part of the torture.

Others, like Safeguard Defenders’ Peter Dahlin, were forced to write a detailed confession, which was televised to frighten NGOs and foreigners. You could have seen it on CGTN here in Canada – not exactly Canadian values in broadcasting.

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Under the Trudeau government, 82 countries signed onto the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention led by Canada and aimed at China and other autocracies. More than two-dozen foreign diplomats stood shoulder to shoulder with our deputy head of mission outside the Michaels’ courthouses during their trials.

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But now, the Government of Canada is dropping the ball on human rights. In Turkey on Oct. 23, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that his responsibility is human rights in Canada, contending that his government has a balanced “values-based realism,” but that “engagement is not approval.” No, but engagement without comment is acceptance of what they’re doing. As Mr. Carney has said, “we take the world as it is, not as we wish it to be,” and that there will be “no more lecturing from afar.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand may mention human rights in general terms behind closed doors, but it looks increasingly like any public criticism of China on any subject is now off limits for ministers, Liberal MPs and government officials.

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With this policy, Mr. Carney is lowering the bar for all democracies. If Canada no longer cares about human rights abroad, why should Germany or Britain or Australia? They, too, want more trade, and Beijing will tell them to “be more like Canada” and stop talking about torture in secret cells. The PM is creating a new paradigm for all democracies to step down from support for human rights. Instead, he should be working with allies to free all citizens wrongfully detained.

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Mr. Kovrig says that only co-ordinated, sustained deterrence and pressure through sanctions on trade, finance, and other points of leverage can make China’s torture cells more trouble than they’re worth for Beijing. Our government owes the Michaels at least that for their lost years in captivity and torture.

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