Prime Minister Mark Carney sits beside Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand at the UN in September. Officials are trying to set up a meeting between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping during Mr. Carney's trip to Asia.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand will visit China this week, part of an effort to mend fences as a painful trade war with Beijing grinds on.
The Anand visit, announced Friday, may end up being a prelude to a leader-level meeting later this fall between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two have not met since Mr. Carney took office.
A government source said officials in Canada and China are trying to arrange a meeting between Mr. Carney and Mr. Xi during the Prime Minister’s coming trip to Asia.
Both are expected to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum in South Korea in late October. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.
Since taking office, Mr. Carney’s government has held a series of increasingly high-level meetings with China, an attempt at rapprochement as Canada seeks to expand export markets outside of Donald Trump’s increasingly protectionist United States.
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The trade conflict between Ottawa and Beijing has compounded years of strained relations over the countries’ past detentions of each other’s citizens. But a thaw with China could put Canada offside with the U.S., which has been raising trade barriers against Beijing under the Trump administration and has sought the same of Ottawa.
Mr. Carney met Chinese Premier Li Qiang on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this September. The Prime Minister, a former central banker who has a reputation as a technocrat, offered praise for China in comments to the Council on Foreign Relations think tank the day before the meeting. His remarks earned him coverage in Beijing’s state-run Global Times newspaper.
China is “very sincere and engaged” on climate change, Mr. Carney told the Council on Foreign Relations, because it’s “a country run by engineers.”
In his remarks, Mr. Carney laid out a possible roadmap for co-operation with China. Canada could “engage deeply” when it comes to commodities, energy and basic manufacturing, but with guardrails that “left off to the side” anything that could “bridge into national security, privacy” or other matters.
He said fighting climate change is one area where Canada feels comfortable working with China. “This is a country that understands a lot of the engineering solutions to issues around emission,” he said of China. “They’ve happened to have built real competitive advantage in a number of these areas as well.”
Ms. Anand, in an interview on Friday, said her trip to China is intended to help bring more steadiness to ties with Beijing.
“We need to stabilize the relationship,” she said, adding that her goal is “to build the bridge, open the dialogue, ensure that Canada can interact with China in a way that puts the interests of our workers and our businesses and our industries first.”
Ms. Anand will arrive in China on Thursday and meet the following day with her counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Beijing.
China in August imposed a 75.8-per-cent duty on Canadian canola seed, a major crop in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as part of its retaliation for Ottawa’s 100-per-cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and 25-per-cent levies on Chinese steel and aluminum in 2024.
Beijing’s move was on top of a 100-per-cent tariff on Canadian canola oil, canola meal and peas imposed in March, and a 25-per-cent tariff on Canadian seafood and pork products.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has written to Mr. Carney asking him to scrap Canada’s tariffs on EVs in return for China lifting its tariffs on canola and pork.
In his Saturday letter, Mr. Kinew said that although he believes protecting Canada’s vehicle industry is important, the country’s approach “has created a two-front trade war that disproportionally affects Western Canada.”
China has made no secret of its wish for Canada to drop the tariffs on electric vehicles, saying it would then drop the retaliatory levies it enacted. Ottawa imposed the levies in concert with the United States in order to stop what both countries said was deliberate overproduction. This was ostensibly to safeguard the integrated North American auto sector.
But since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has made clear his desire to stop buying cars from Canada, which raises the question of whether there is any joint strategy to protect the North American auto industry from China.
Mr. Carney himself appeared to refer to this in remarks at the BMO Eurasia U.S.-Canada Summit in Toronto on Wednesday, when he commented on the idea of countries “coming together and competing against China.” He didn’t mention the auto sector or the United States, but appeared to be hinting that Ottawa may not necessarily be aligned with Washington right now.
Speaking of working together to compete against China, Mr. Carney said, “I wouldn’t assume that that’s always the organizing principle. If it were, there would be more immediate progress in certain traditional industries than we’ve seen.”
Mr. Carney, who inherited a fractious relationship with China from his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, is trying to deepen business relations even as Ottawa and Beijing agree to disagree on past differences.
Canada-China relations entered a deep freeze after Ottawa arrested Huawei tech executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request and Beijing subsequently locked up two Canadians – Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor – in conduct called “hostage diplomacy” by one Trudeau cabinet minister.
Canada and China also clashed after Ottawa spoke out against Beijing’s crackdown on civil rights in Hong Kong, its intimidation of Taiwan, its treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and its assertions of sovereignty over the South China Sea.
Ms. Anand’s trip to China will be preceded by a stop in India to meet with her counterpart there, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, as part of the Carney government’s effort to reset ties with New Delhi after the assassination of a Sikh separatist in Canada more than two years ago
Hardeep Nijjar was shot dead in June, 2023, in Surrey, B.C., a slaying that Mr. Trudeau publicly alleged was the work of the Indian government. India denied the accusation, but the charge led to a serious rupture in relations that saw dozens of Canadian diplomats leave India and later, in 2024, the expulsion of Indian diplomats from Canada.
Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation, a Canadian think tank, said she will be looking for any sign that India and Canada are resuming negotiations on a trade deal that was shelved in 2023.
On China, she cautioned that Beijing doesn’t compartmentalize trade and diplomatic relations, which would mean that the Chinese expect changes to Canada’s support for Taiwan or its position on the South China Sea.
Ms. Nadjibulla said selling more agricultural products and energy to China makes sense, but she said Ottawa can’t make any concessions that are counter to Canadian national security or economic interests.
“I think we shouldn’t underestimate the degree to which China is interested in bringing us into their Belt and Road initiative,” she said of Beijing’s plan for land and maritime infrastructure projects around the world that would put it at the centre of international trade.
With a report from The Canadian Press