Forget NAFTA, the roaring silence around trade talks with China is even more troubling
There’s deep concern about precedents that include Chinese enterprises owning Canada’s natural resource enterprises, and Beijing’s demand to use imported Chinese labour
As Canadians digest a stream of news and punditry about NAFTA renegotiations, there’s another trade relationship — possibly more consequential for our future — that’s being forged in comparative silence.
The second China-Canada Foreign Ministers Dialogue was recently held in Beijing, with Canada’s Chrystia Freeland sitting down with her counterpart Wang Yi to “ explore ways to further consolidate Canada-China ties ,” as Xinhua news agency put it. Upcoming Canada-China trade talks topped the agenda.
But despite anxiety in Canada over China’s demands in any new deal, and what’s at stake should Canada dramatically increase our trade with the Chinese, we know little about what was even discussed. Freeland flew home with no post-meeting news conference. No communiqué was issued.
Given the shocking spectacle that crowned last year’s edition of this dialogue when Wang arrogantly berated a Canadian journalist who asked about China’s human rights record, many might suspect the secrecy is Beijing’s precondition to any further talks. Based on my past experience as counsellor at the Canadian embassy in Beijing, I find this quite likely.
When John McCallum, now Canada’s ambassador to China, was a federal cabinet minister, he was a champion of expanding connections between Canada and China , and doing it on Chinese terms. McCallum, who was at the recent meetings with Freeland, evidently buys in to Beijing’s “friend of China” platitude .
He apparently accepts the Chinese Foreign Ministry line that China is the future, and sustaining Canada’s economic growth means Ottawa should acquiesce to Beijing’s “distinctive” domestic governance and strategic aspirations abroad.
As Justin Trudeau himself said in 2012: “ We deceive ourselves by thinking that trade with Asia can be squeezed into the 20th-century mould. China, for one, sets its own rules and will continue to do so because it can. China has a game plan. There is nothing inherently sinister about that.”
McCallum, the cabinet minister, likely would have agreed, even if turning a blind eye from human rights abuse in China is tacit consent of arbitrary imprisonment, torture, suffering and death.
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If Ottawa was reticent to reveal what was said at the meeting, the Chinese media was more forthcoming. The China Daily reported that Wang said “China and Canada should maintain high-level exchanges and exchanges at other various levels, promote the construction of a China-Canada free trade zone and expand anti-corruption and law enforcement cooperation.”
Canada has a problem with this last point, which implies extraditing Chinese nationals from Canada despite our concerns over China’s lack of due process of law and extensive use of the death penalty.
China doesn't play fair.
Gosh.
No Big Corporation plays fair.
... and China is the biggest of the big...
The Extradition matter is a sticky point. Canada will not extradite anyone to a country that applies the death penalty for the offence committed. It caused for a number of years a chilly relaionship between Canada and China, until finally I assume China pledged not to terminate the Chinese official who had absconded with a small fortune of government money, so in fact he was then extradited and the relationship eased.
Quite a few years ago I recall watching a TV program, I think it was Law and Order but could be wrong, where American justice officials promised Canada that a criminal who would face the death penalty would not be made subject to it in order for them to succeed in extraditing him, and then said among themselves that they would not keep that promise. I became quite angry about that, even though it was fictional.
Canada will not extradite anyone to a country that applies the death penalty for the offence committed.
The EU takes it a step further. No deportation to a country that practices the death penalty, period. (If need be, the accused may be tried in the EU.) And of course, applicants for membership may not apply the death penalty.