As an author, you must have been kicking yourself because your news hook came out after your copy deadline.

Well, that's right, just.

On the other hand, what the book does and did and continues to do was to provide the context for what happened after the detention of Meng Wanzhou.

We couldn't have hoped as a publisher for better publicity than that, because people were asking, well, what the hell has happened here? You know, aren't we meant to be best friends with the Chinese Communist Party? How has this happened? Now, I think that whole thing is a fascinating story from a number of points of view.

I think that this was a really definitive moment in the relationship between Canada and the Chinese Communist Party, particularly at this point, so far as Canadian people are concerned, as distinct from the Canadian establishments, because Canadian people understood immediately You cannot have a normal relationship with a regime whose first instinct, when there is a problem in the relationship, when their first instinct is to take hostages.

And the first instinct of the Chinese Communist Party was to detain the two Michaels.

and held them for nearly three years, subjected them to secret trials.

You view the commission too as a healthy development?