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.”
…
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.
…
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.
It’s also not a watermelon.
What it is, in fact, is a trade deal.
It’s a trade deal with an unreliable partner, as China shows once again.
Opinion: you are a rag of a paper therefore your “opinion” is worthless
