Justin Trudeau starts 2019 on the right note

Cold comfort does not necessarily have a negative connotation. It certainly doesn’t for 18-year-old Rahaf Mohammed. The mercury in Toronto may have already plunged below zero, and will plummet further over the weekend, but the teenaged Saudi is basking in the warmth of liberty provided by Canada.

Rahaf has already dropped her family name Al-Qunun, just as she dropped her family, as she made her dramatic escape. For now her interest lies in living the normal life of a young woman. As she has renounced her religion and her region, there will be no turning back.

That’s the sort of heart warming tale that a New Year’s frigid harshness can do with. Canada will certainly face some heat from Riyadh, with what calls itself a human rights organisation already accusing nations of provoking unrest among “female delinquents”. But if Ottawa were to take a measure of the domestic political temperature, the Justin Trudeau government could find it quite clement. It has started an election year with steps that underlined the Liberal in the name of the party that governs the country.

Over previous months, Trudeau’s administration has faltered and flailed, and failed to enthuse the electorate. But as 2019 commenced, Rahaf’s rescue is nothing but a positive for it. The government eagerly took ownership of the event, with Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, welcoming the young Saudi at Toronto’s Pearson Airport.

Elsewhere too, standing up to bullies plays well. Which is why the briefest of messages posted on the Canadian government’s travel advisory website was just as telling: “Exercise a high degree of caution in China due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”

That came just as a Canadian accused of smuggling drugs was sentenced to death in China, after Beijing’s envoy to Ottawa made the outrageous comment in an opinion piece, that countries like Canada were displaying “Western egotism and white supremacy”. All that chagrin because Canada seeks the release of two of its citizens, including a diplomat, suddenly arrested in China, as it lashed out after a senior executive of the Chinese telecom firm, Huawei, was detained in Vancouver. The Huawei executive is out on bail in her mansion, benefiting from due process that the Canadian system offers. The arrested Canadians in China, meanwhile, are rarely even allowed consular access. In recent telephonic conversations with leaders as far flung as those of Argentina, Finland and New Zealand, Trudeau has harped upon China’s hostage diplomacy (though not in those terms) through leveraging its legal system. In contrast, Canada is now preparing to extradite two residents to India to face trial in a case relating to a 2000 hate crime.

As his government weans itself off authoritarian states and regains some of the chutzpah of the early months of its tenure, there ought to be a natural progression towards mending relations with countries like India, where the rule of law and institutions function in a manner familiar to democracies.

Anirudh Bhattacharyya is a Toronto-based commentator on American affairs

The views expressed are personal

First Published: Jan 19, 2019 14:49 IST