Manifest Destiny – 21st Century Version
It's 21st Century "Manifest Destiny". US extradition treaties export US laws and punishment to countries by treaty. Look at this beautiful woman coming to Canada via the Extradition Treaty (flanked by US prosecutors) to export US sanctions against Iran. https://t.co/ZVGmaYWDkz pic.twitter.com/P86Uc4kKcQ
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) May 28, 2020
The United States exports more laws than any other country on earth (with a little help from extradition treaties)
(This post will be best understood in conjunction with Part 4 and Part 5 of this series on extradition.)
https://t.co/ie44XJafy5 pic.twitter.com/RFfgJDoECv
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) May 28, 2020
The full text of the Justice Holmes decision is here. The guts of the decision, ruling that the “double criminality” requirement has been satisfied, is found in paragraph 82 which reads as follows:
[82] Ms. Meng’s approach to the double criminality analysis would seriously limit Canada’s ability to fulfill its international obligations in the extradition context for fraud and other economic crimes. The offence of fraud has a vast potential scope. It may encompass a very wide range of conduct, a large expanse of time, and acts, people, and consequences in multiple places or jurisdictions. Experience shows that many fraudsters benefit in particular from international dealings through which they can obscure their identity and the location of their fraudulent gains. For the double criminality principle to be applied in the manner Ms. Meng suggests would give fraud an artificially narrow scope in the extradition context. It would entirely eliminate, in many cases, consideration of the reason for the alleged false statements, and of how the false statements caused the victim(s) loss or risk of loss. By that approach, Wilson, described above, would, it seems, require a different result.
As one Brock comment suggests:
Imho, the decision is really political whether or not Huawei/G5 is involved. One thing is evident ,no matter who is spinning the yarn, the US started it all and Canada will feel the economic pain whatever the outcome is , either from the US or China,in this case. Always forced to side off with the US in all foreign affairs and internal, it seems more evident by the year that Canada sometime in the future will become another star on the US flag.
A thoughtful series of comments about the Justice Holmes decision begins here.
Big picture view: Leaving aside the legal technicalities and the nattering over matters of form/substance, etc …
It seems clear that from a US perspective the purpose of an extradition treaty is to export US law to other lands. Since Canada is the United States’ biggest trading partner, doesn’t it seem reasonable that Canada should be the export destination of the largest number of US laws?
It’s the 21st Century version of the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny”. Don’t give up your US citizenship just yet. You may, in the future, have (as a US citizen) a “preferred citizenship status” in Canada.