How Meng’s case will be resolved remains unclear, though she has become an object of fascination in a city where her family owns two homes and where she spent down time when she was not running Huawei’s finances. Tourists stop by to take selfies outside her home near a 2,000-acre park overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where she is ensconced with her husband and daughter.

Meng’s bail terms include the GPS monitor, an 11pm to 6am curfew, and 24-hour surveillance by a private security firm, Lions Gate Risk Management Group. Their job is to ensure she does not violate the conditions of her release. She pays the hefty bill for that monitoring, which includes two guards at a time and a driver.

“If I were on The Price is Right, I’d say that’s about US$7,000 a day,” or more than US$2.5 million a year, said Nicholas Casale, a former police detective, referencing the game show. Casale structured Bernie Madoff’s bail agreement and acted as monitor for the disgraced money manager for about three months.

Meng’s long leash following her C$10 million (US$7.5 million) bail is unusual, he said – normally, the defendant’s movements and communications would be restricted.

“You can’t just go to dinner or go shopping,” Casale said.

The conditions of Meng’s house arrest are in stark contrast to another corporate titan – former Nissan Motor chairman Carlos Ghosn – who is confined at a Tokyo detention centre. He arrived in handcuffs, plastic slippers and a rope around his waist in court last week. Meng is also faring better than the two Canadians detained in China, who have had scant consular access.

That has not stopped China’s envoy to Canada from protesting Meng’s treatment. In a fiery op-ed published in an Ottawa newspaper last week, Ambassador Lu Shaye railed against “Western egotism” and “white supremacy” of those who have criticised China for detaining the Canadians, in what was widely seen as retaliation.

“Have they shown any concern or sympathy for Meng after she was illegally detained and deprived of freedom?,” Lu wrote in the Hill Times.

Meng, 46, sported a purple Hermes scarf and Bottega Veneta handbag when she first reported to her bail supervisor in Vancouver on December 12. Renovations, meanwhile, are underway at her other C$16.3 million mansion in one of Vancouver’s toniest neighbourhoods, where a truck from a high-end wardrobe designer was parked outside recently. Her defense indicated she would like to move there when it is ready. If she does, she will be two doors down from the US consul general’s residence, where the star-spangled banner flaps on the front lawn.

Getting glimpses of her daily life is difficult – her guards appear to have taken on the responsibility of shielding her from the public eye. When Bloomberg News journalists parked on the street next to her home last week and identified themselves as press, one guard took photos of the license plate as another sped over in his white SUV to block their vehicle. As Meng slipped out of her house in her Lululemon jacket, the guard began accusing the journalists of damaging his car before later acknowledging he had obstructed them.

Still, the outings and post-card views mask a darker reality for Meng: This extradition process could drag on for months and possibly years, if history is any guide. And the odds are high that she will be extradited in the end.

“The tilt of the Crown in these cases is extradite, extradite, extradite,” said Robert Currie, a professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia who specialises in international law. Canada’s extradition law “is unbalanced to the point where a number of critics, including me, have said it’s unfair.”

The US must turn over its formal extradition request by the end of January. Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti can reject the request or order extradition hearings to begin. It is not clear if that will happen before Meng’s next court date.

Lametti cannot arbitrarily refuse. His ministry would have to determine that fraud does not constitute a crime in Canada – an implausible finding. Furthermore, in Canada, the extradition judge has to accept whatever evidence the US presents at face value – the proceedings do not consider the strength of the evidence or the likelihood of conviction.

Canadian judges end up approving about 90 per cent of extradition requests because the system makes it nearly impossible to mount a defense, says Gary Botting, a Vancouver-based lawyer who has been involved in hundreds of extradition cases.

“They say ‘jump,’ and Canada says ‘how high?,’” he said.

For her part, Meng has hinted at how she would like to spend her time during what could be a years-long ordeal.

She would like to apply for a PhD in business administration at the University of British Columbia, whose campus sits near her home. In an awkward twist, the school is receiving C$3 million from Huawei to fund research on 5G – the next-generation mobile network technology that the US wants to block the company from developing.

“I’ve been working hard for 25 years,” she said through her lawyer during her bail hearings last month. “If released, my only simple goal would be to spend time with my husband and daughter. I haven’t read a novel in years.”