QUEBEC -- Stephen Harper made a political blunder by failing to attend the Olympic opening ceremonies in China, Jean Chrétien charged Monday as he denounced the sitting prime minister for burning bridges and undoing decades of goodwill between the two countries with his swipes at the emerging superpower.
The Chinese will not likely forgive the Canadian government's slights because they have a "collective memory there that is very important and plays a big role," the former Liberal prime minister told a meeting of the Canadian Bar Association.
Jean Chrétien accused Stephen Harper of burning bridges with China.
"I would have been at the Olympics myself," said Chrétien, who also lambasted the Harper government for alienating the Chinese by bestowing honorary Canadian citizenship on the Dalai Lama of Tibet.
"We're blackballed," Chrétien said later to Canwest News Service. "We're at the bottom of the ladder with China. We've lost a lot of ground."
Harper, citing a scheduling conflict, was one of a handful of world leaders who skipped the lavish Olympic Opening Ceremonies on Aug. 8, widely described as China's coming-out party. The prime minister's failure to attend has been viewed by critics as snubbing a country he has repeatedly criticized for its human rights record.
Harper has had a tense relationship with Chinese President Hu Jintao amid the prime minister's assertions he would not sacrifice human rights to reach business deals with China.
Dimitris Soudas, a spokesman for Harper, shot back at Chrétien, saying he only attended one of six Olympic Opening Ceremonies during his 13 years as prime minister, when he went to Atlanta in 1996.
"For Mr. Chrétien to sit there and say our relations with China are damaged because the prime minister did not attend is hypocritical," said Soudas, adding the government sent a delegation led by Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson.
Chrétien said relations between the two countries have steadily deteriorated under the Harper government, reversing decades of hard-earned goodwill that began with the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker, which sold wheat to China in the 1950s.
"Starting with Diefenbaker, and then with Trudeau, and all of us, we established very good relations with China," Chrétien told reporters after speaking to the legal gathering. "And suddenly, you break a bridge. It would have been easy just to be there (at the Olympics)."
Chrétien told Canwest News Service he personally does business with China in his post-prime-ministerial life, travelling there once or twice a year to give public affairs advice to private-sector clients. Chrétien's business dealings prompted a government official, who would not be named, to speculate Chrétien has personal interests at stake in condemning the Harper government's China record. Under Harper's watch, participation has plummeted in the Canada-China Business Council, a private-sector group that promotes trade between the two countries, said Chrétien.
When he was prime minister, Chrétien led numerous business delegations on trade missions to China.
Also on Monday, Chrétien said the Conservative government should seek Canadian Omar Khadr's return from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he has been detained for six years at a U.S. military prison and faces trial this year on charges of throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Pakistan.
"The kid who is in jail should be sent to Canada," Chrétien said in a question-and-answer session with lawyers.
"He has a right, as was the case with the other prisoners, to go to his own country and be judged there."
But the former prime minister conceded he has not followed the case closely because, "It's no more my problem."
-- Canwest News Service
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