North America Archive

In late February, Canada’s former justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, testified before a parliamentary committee that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other high-ranking aides had pressured her to intervene on behalf of the engineering firm SNC-Lavalin in a criminal case being pursued against the company. Trudeau now faces his biggest political crisis since taking office, with general elections looming in October. In an email interview, Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, explains the background of the SNC-Lavalin scandal and its implications for Trudeau and Canada’s political landscape. World Politics […]

On Monday, China accused Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat detained in December, of espionage, though authorities stopped short of announcing formal charges. Kovrig was taken into custody in the aftermath of Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of U.S. authorities. Along with the detention of another Canadian national, the businessman Michael Spavor, Kovrig’s arrest was widely seen as a tit-for-tat move by China to gain leverage against Canada as the hearing over Meng’s extradition to the U.S. proceeds. In an email interview, Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, explains recent high-profile cases […]