Opinion | Canada’s outgoing ambassador to China deserves credit for two Michaels’ release and repairing bilateral ties

Despite tireless efforts to free two Canadians in Chinese custody, Canada’s former ambassador to China Dominic Barton has been labelled a failure at home

Unfounded attacks will make replacing him more difficult at a time when China-Canada ties remain fragile

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Dominic Barton was appointed as Canada’s ambassador to China in 2019, shortly after Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained by Chinese authorities. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 1:30am, 5 Jan 2022Updated: 2:14am, 5 Jan 2022

The opinion pages of Canada’s leading papers have not been kind to Dominic Barton, the country’s former ambassador to China, after he announced that he would resign from his post at the end of 2021.

One writer said Barton was irrelevant in the effort to bring home Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, except for serving as their “flight attendant”; another described his ambassadorship as “the least successful appointment in the history of Canadian diplomacy”.

Such commentary is not only wildly inaccurate, but disrespectful to a public servant who worked tirelessly to resolve an intractable diplomatic crisis and repair one of Canada’s most important bilateral relationships.

I’ve lived and worked in Beijing since 2003. Through my engagement with Canada’s Trade Commissioner Service, the Canada-China Business Council, and Beijing’s tight-knit Canadian community, I’ve got to know each of Canada’s ambassadors to China over the past two decades.

My view is that Barton has been the most successful ambassador during that time – and that Canadians should be grateful for his service.

Barton was uniquely qualified to lead Canada’s effort to resolve the crisis surrounding the detentions of Meng Wanzhou and the two Michaels – and he left a lucrative, relatively low-profile private-sector role to take on this challenge.

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