The Royal Canadian Navy frigate HMCS Ville de Quebec in front of a monitoring Chinese PLA Navy vessel during a maritime cooperative activity between the Philippines, Australia and Canadian navies near Scarborough Shoal in disputed waters of the South China Sea on September 3, 2025.TED ALJIBE/AFP/Getty Images
Defence Minister David McGuinty declined to say whether Canada would continue sending warships through the Taiwan Strait, weeks after China’s ambassador warned doing so would damage a new strategic partnership Prime Minister Mark Carney has struck with Beijing.
Mr. McGuinty cited operational security as a reason for not answering.
“Those are operational questions, security questions – I don’t get into that,” he said in an interview Thursday.
The Globe and Mail had not asked about the timing or routes of future ship movements, but rather whether Canada would maintain or abandon a policy of transiting through the strait.
Mr. McGuinty was speaking roughly two weeks after a warning delivered by Wang Di, China’s ambassador to Canada, in an interview with The Globe and Mail last month. Mr. Wang said the new partnership between Canada and China would be harmed if Ottawa sends more military vessels through the Taiwan Strait or if Canadian parliamentarians keep travelling to Taiwan to meet with its government.
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The ambassador appeared to be laying out expectations for Canada’s behaviour as the two countries attempt to build on a truce reached in January, 2026, when Prime Minister Mark Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a breakthrough in a painful trade war.
Mr. Carney is seeking bigger overseas export markets and new foreign investment to offset economic damage caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist tariffs.
Despite declining to discuss Canada’s policy going forward, Mr. McGuinty said he nevertheless regards the waterway between China and Taiwan to be international waters.
“Canada has asserted that for some time, and that’s something that we continue to talk about – and it’s a position we hold dearly,” the minister said.
He said the Indo-Pacific is a priority region for Canada in terms of deepening defence ties with countries such as Japan, the Philippines and South Korea.
The phrase “international waters” refers to an idea, discussed in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, that straits used for international navigation are subject to transit passage rights – meaning warships can pass through freely without seeking prior permission from the coastal state.
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China, by comparison, considers the Taiwan Strait to be an internal waterway. The People’s Republic of China claims the island of Taiwan, which lies 160 kilometres off its coastline, as a breakaway province. Taiwan, where many from the losing side of China’s civil war fled in 1949, calls itself the Republic of China.
From 2018 until the resignation of former prime minister Justin Trudeau last year, Canadian warships transited the Taiwan Strait 11 times – over the objections of Beijing.
Under Mr. Carney’s government, this has happened only once. A Canadian frigate made a single trip, in September, 2025, along with an Australian destroyer.
Mr. McGuinty, asked about Mr. Wang’s comments, pointed out that Mr. Carney has described the rapprochement between Canada and China as “recalibrating.” That, Mr. McGuinty said, indicates incremental shifts rather than a sharp pivot.
“We’re using the language that was deliberately chosen. We’re recalibrating our relationship. That implies, to me, we’re taking one step at a time,” he said of relations with China.
Mr. McGuinty said what came to mind when he read Mr. Wang’s warning was Canada’s intensifying defence co-operation elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific. This engagement, he said, would continue and deepen.
“My obligation is to help to drive this new outreach into the Indo-Pacific and to consolidate those relationships.”
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Many of the Indo-Pacific countries where Canada is strengthening defence ties have their own complicated relationships with China.
Canada and Japan signed a classified information-sharing agreement in July, 2025, creating the legal framework for the two countries to exchange sensitive intelligence and jointly develop defence technology. In January, 2026, they also signed a deal allowing the transfer of defence technology and intellectual property between them.
In October, 2025, Canada and South Korea announced a security and defence co-operation partnership and later signed a deal establishing the legal framework to share classified military and defence information.
In November, 2025, Canada and the Philippines signed a Status of Visiting Forces Agreement allowing military personnel from both countries to operate and train within each other’s territories.
In the past, Canadian warships have traversed the Taiwan Strait with other Western countries and in particular the United States, effectively challenging Beijing’s claims over the waterway. The U.S. calls its transits of the strait “freedom of navigation” operations.
Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, said China finds itself in a more powerful position today because of the protectionist actions of the Trump administration, which have fragmented and alienated Western allies that previously had assembled a common front to deal with China under the Biden administration.
“China has a lot of leverage and is finding itself in a position of strength, so I think they are going to put increasing pressure on everyone, Canada included,” she said.
Ms. Nadjibulla said Canada should continue to “exercise freedom of navigation to treat Taiwan Strait as international waters, and ideally do so in partnership with Australia, with the United States and with Europeans.”
She pointed out that Canada sailing the Taiwan Strait was welcomed by countries in the region. She said Canada is charting a separate course with China from the U.S. and despite criticism from the Trump administration.
“Our policy on China should not be dictated by Washington, and our policy on Taiwan should not be dictated by Beijing,” Ms. Nadjibulla said.