Jimmy Lai is escorted by Correctional Services officers in Hong Kong, in December, 2020. the jailed Hong Kong businessman and publisher has invested millions in the Niagara area, where he owns a string of hotels and restaurants.Kin Cheung/The Associated Press
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand is facing calls to raise the plight of jailed publisher Jimmy Lai at next month’s G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Ontario’s Niagara Region, where the Hong Kong businessman has invested millions and owns a string of hotels and restaurants.
MPs and human-rights advocates, as well as the chief executive of Mr. Lai’s Canadian hospitality company, are urging the G7 to highlight his continued incarceration in Hong Kong and are calling for him to be freed after almost five years in solitary confinement.
Mr. Lai, whose mother was Canadian and whose twin sister lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake, is facing life imprisonment under the Beijing-imposed national-security law, which critics say is being used to curb free speech and dissent.
The publisher, who is 77 and has diabetes, is one of the longest-held prisoners under Hong Kong’s security law. His lawyers have raised grave concerns about the effect of his prison conditions – which are swelteringly hot in the summer – on his health, and have called for him to be released so he can spend his remaining years with his family in Canada or in Britain.
Mr. Lai is awaiting a verdict after the conclusion of his long-delayed trial in Hong Kong in August and could face life imprisonment.
Opinion: Jimmy Lai trial is latest sign of Hong Kong’s heartbreaking descent
Opinion: As the democratic world lines up behind Jimmy Lai, Canadian leadership is badly needed
Ms. Anand, visiting China this week in an attempt to build bridges with Beijing, is playing host to the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting Nov. 11 to 12.
Liberal MP Judy Sgro, who before the G7 summit in June in Alberta spearheaded a push to award Mr. Lai honorary Canadian citizenship, said she hoped his situation would be raised in the Niagara Region, where Mr. Lai has spent so much time and invested so heavily.
In June, there was cross-party support for a motion that Ms. Sgro drew up to grant Mr. Lai honorary citizenship. But the Liberal MP was told by the Government House Leader to shelve the motion just before she was about to present it.
“The fact that we are hosting the summit and it is being held in Niagara, it seems so appropriate to raise it and acknowledge his contribution to that community there. He invested a lot of money and created a lot of jobs,” she said.
In 2023, the House of Commons and the Senate passed a motion by unanimous consent calling on the Hong Kong authorities to release Mr. Lai. But Prime Minister Mark Carney has so far not spoken publicly about his situation.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said his government will “do everything we can” to help Mr. Lai. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said securing the release of Mr. Lai is a government priority.
Tony Baldinelli, MP for Niagara Falls–Niagara-on-the-Lake, said “it would be appropriate” to raise Mr. Lai’s plight at the G7 foreign ministers’ summit. He said Mr. Lai has “strong family and business ties” there and his investments have helped rejuvenate many hotels in the town and reinvigorated the area.
Mr. Lai founded the now-shuttered pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily after the 1989 massacre of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. It became the largest independent Chinese-language media outlet in the region.
He and six senior staff members were arrested in 2020 and charged with “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” under the national-security law and under a sedition law. The sedition charge had not been used since the 1960s, when Hong Kong was still under British rule, until it was resurrected five years ago.
The six staff members pleaded guilty to the collusion charge after being detained for between 488 and 521 days. But Mr. Lai pleaded not guilty.
Brandon Silver, director of policy at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, said he hoped Canada would raise Mr. Lai’s case at the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting.
“Jimmy Lai is a major investor in Niagara, is deeply committed to Ontario, and his immediate family lives there. With Foreign Minister Anand hosting her counterparts in Niagara, we trust she will lead a call for the immediate release of this human-rights hero,” he said.
Mr. Lai’s company, Lais Hotel Properties Limited, owns a string of luxury and boutique hotels in the area, as well as hotels in other parts of Ontario, and restaurants and sports bars.
Bob Jackson, CEO of the company, said there have already been hotel bookings related to the G7 summit.
Mr. Jackson said Mr. Lai has spent a lot of time in Niagara-on-the-Lake and was “very unassuming” when he was there, enjoying going out on boats on the river and the peace and quiet.
“There are times where he could be here for a couple of weeks during the summertime, and I would certainly know he was here, but not a lot of people would, because he just kind of does his own thing and enjoys his life when he’s here,” he said.
He said Mr. Lai asked for a piece of land he owns in Niagara-on-the-Lake to be turned into a landscaped garden for the public based on impressionist painter Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, France. He has never seen the finished garden because he has been in prison.
Mr. Jackson, who has corresponded with the imprisoned Mr. Lai, mainly about business matters, said “he is in our thoughts, on our minds all the time” and he hoped the G7 would highlight his case.
“Of course, we wish and hope for his freedom,” he added.