Updated February 6, 2023
OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — The Trudeau government has rejected a petition to sanction Communist China for its persecution of the Uyghur Muslims.
On Monday, Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet released their decision to spurn a federal court petition to sanction Communist China, saying that they have “decided not to act.”
The petition was put forward by lawyers from the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, which wants an official sanction on behalf of the minority community currently suffering genocide in Chinese slave camps. Trudeau himself commented, saying that the decision to sanction China for that reason would have to be made with caution.
“When it comes to the application of the very specific word ‘genocide,’ we simply need to ensure that all the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed,” Trudeau told reporters.
“It’s a word that is extremely loaded,” he added.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, lawyers presenting the petition argued that Canada had breached the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and that they were “violating its international obligations by failing to prevent the ongoing genocide in that region thereby contributing to crimes committed against the Uyghur population here and abroad.” However, the Justice Department rejected the petition, stating that “it raises issues that are not justiciable due to their political nature.”
A former Canadian Ambassador to China, David Mulroney, told LifeSiteNews via email that Canada’s hesitance to sanction China is because of Trudeau’s unwillingness to speak the truth.
READ: China must end its pro-abortion population control policies to avoid demographic decimation
“The Prime Minister’s continuing unwillingness to condemn China’s actions as genocide, a determination that similarly binds his cabinet colleagues, is not hard to understand,” the former ambassador wrote. “Although the genocide is happening in our own day, and although there is abundant evidence of the communist party’s inhuman cruelty, it requires courage to speak the truth about a powerful state.”
“His silence is deeply unfortunate because China is effectively updating genocide with 21st century technologies, something that is being eagerly followed by other repressive regimes,” he continued.
Mulroney also added that, while Trudeau is cautious to apply the word “genocide” to China’s treatment of the Uyghur Muslims, the prime minister had no such qualms about applying the same term to describe Canada’s residential school controversy.
“The Prime Minister has, however, applied the term genocide to Canada’s former residential schools’ policy, a claim that has severely damaged our reputation internationally and that is now central to an effort to undermine faith in our history and institutions,” he said, adding that this reputation is “encouraged by a leader who claims that ‘Canada has no core identity.’”
Bestselling author Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, told LifeSiteNews by email that Canada need to show solidarity with nations who have called out Communist China on its treatment of the Uyghurs.
“Canada needs to stand with other countries—and there are many—who have expressed concern about the genocidal policies of the CCP toward the Uyghurs,” Mosher wrote.
“Clearly the end goal is to extinguish the identities of all minorities in China.”
But Mosher also pointed to a troubling financial incentive for politicians to ignore the Uyghurs’ plight.
“Communist China advances its interests around the world chiefly by buying off politicians in what it calls ‘moneybags democracies.’ The term is a reference to the fact that China thinks that all politicians are for sale,” he said.
“For example, in 2019 Patrick Ho, a top executive for China energy company CEFC—who had been doing business with Hunter and had given him a $1 million retainer—was found guilty of attempting to bribe officials in Uganda and Chad in exchange for oil rights,” Mosher continued.
“Clearly there is a lot of Communist Chinese money pouring into Canada, including into the pockets of Canadian politicians. This surely accounts for the reticence of politicians, not just in Canada, but in many other countries, to criticize China. Joe Biden is a prime example, but there are many others.”
Despite the extent to which Communist China perpetrates human rights abuses, including in their treatment of the Uyghurs who, in the words of Liberal MP Sameer Zuberi, “face the serious risk of mass arbitrary detention, […] separation of children from their parents, forced sterilization, forced labour, torture and other atrocities,” Justin Trudeau has previously expressed his admiration for China’s dictatorship.
“There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green, we need to start, you know, investing in solar,” Trudeau said back in 2013.
“There is a flexibility… having a dictatorship where you can do whatever you wanted, that I find quite interesting,” he added at the time.
READ: ‘I think it’s a role model’: World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab praises communist China
LifeSiteNews has previously reported on China’s persecution of the Uyghurs, and why Canadians ought to be concerned. As previously expressed by LifeSiteNews’ own Jack Bingham in a blog post, Canada ought to be worried about Trudeau’s lack of action here because tolerating such evils means that he “will tolerate anything, including mass murder and torture, if it bolsters [his] globalist goals.”
LifeSiteNews has reached out to various members of the Cabinet, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs. A spokesperson from the Office of the Minister of Housing and Diversity and Inclusion did reply by email, stating that “Canada is extremely concerned about the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China, and we take the allegations of genocide against the Uyghurs very seriously. We have condemned human rights abuses by China and we will continue to do so at the United Nations.”