Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President of China Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Jan. 16.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Prime Minister Mark Carney travelled to China in January as part of his effort to broaden Canada’s trade partnerships and build what he called a “more resilient economy” in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s damaging economic warfare.
Mr. Carney came home from Beijing with a “new strategic partnership” that committed the two countries to work together in what the Chinese government said would be a “spirit of mutual respect, equality, and mutual benefit.”
The pact included an agreement-in-principle that will let China export 49,000 electric vehicles to Canada at a most-favoured-nation tariff rate of 6.1 per cent. In exchange, China is supposed to lower tariffs on canola and other Canadian agri-food products, giving relief to farmers and fishers across the country.
Sadly, it didn’t take long for Beijing to violate the spirit of the partnership and turn it into a test of whether it can use the deal to coerce Ottawa into aligning its policies on Taiwan with those of the Communist Party of China.
On April 30, China’s ambassador to Canada suggested that the strategic partnership would be damaged if Ottawa sends more military vessels through the Taiwan Strait, which Beijing wrongly claims as domestic waters, or if Canadian parliamentarians continue to meet with their counterparts in Taiwan.
The only acceptable response from the Carney government is for it to reassert the right of MPs to visit Taiwan as they see fit, and to make the point that Canada continues to view international waters as just that.
Anything less will be a failure to stand up to a bully that is now wielding the new strategic partnership as the same sort of economic cudgel that, ironically, Canada was seeking to escape from by seeking out new trade terms with China. (As we said at the time, any rapprochement with China must be only the start of a trade diversification push.)
In short, China has shown itself to be no more reliable a trade partner than Mr. Trump, who regularly threatens partners with stiff tariffs or other punishments, such as the withdrawal of military support or troops, when they fail to bow down low enough before his foreign policy ambitions, or dare to point out his inconsistencies and obvious failures.
Just last week, the U.S. said it would pull 5,000 troops out of Germany this year in what is widely interpreted as a response to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s statement that Mr. Trump had been “humiliated” by Iran and lacked a coherent exit strategy from the war he started.
Back in January, Mr. Trump threatened 25 per cent tariffs on European and Nordic countries that didn’t support his outrageous plan to acquire Greenland.
And now China is pulling the same stunt, using the new strategic partnership to try to force Ottawa into accepting the unacceptable.
This will be a test of Mr. Carney’s thesis that middle powers like Canada can and must seek new trade alliances that free it from a past reliance on the American market, a reliance that under Mr. Trump is neither wise nor workable.
It’s not a moment for evasion such as shrugging that MPs are not controlled by the government, and that it would be a violation of Canada’s Westminster parliamentary system to tell them where they can and can’t turn up. Mr. Carney cannot just say, “Sorry, I can’t stop them,” because it suggests he would if he could.
No, he needs to demonstrate that Canada will insist on its sovereign right to set its own rules, and the clearest way of making that point is by ensuring MPs visit Taiwan this year.
The same applies to the Taiwan Strait. Canada must continue, in concert with its allies, to reject Beijing’s illegal assertion it has sovereignty over the strait, a key shipping lane. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea – of which China is a signatory – makes that clear.
Mr. Carney is famous for saying, “Canada must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.” That is in many ways an admirable and welcome sentiment, but it does present its own difficulties.
China’s breach of the new strategic partnership is a prime example of this. Canada cannot become a doormat for regimes that offer it trade relief in exchange for obeisance. It must instead show Beijing and the world that its values, its military alliances and its sovereignty are not on the negotiating table, and never will be.