Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was surprisingly silent on China during\u00a0her major\u00a0foreign policy speech in the House of Commons Tuesday leaving Canada’s evolving relationship with the Asian superpower unclear, says former Quebec premier Jean Charest.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Charest, now a partner in the law firm McCarthy T\u00e9trault, has\u00a0extensive business dealings in the region. He was reacting to Freeland’s\u00a0decision to mention China only once in her\u00a0half hour speech laying out Canada’s foreign policy priorities.<\/p>\n
“The world will shift a great deal in terms of its economy, in terms of its politics, towards that part of the world, towards Asia,” Charest told CBC News.<\/p>\n
“So, I must say, I think a number of people will be waiting to see what the next step will be on China because this speech doesn’t really give us a view of what the government’s position is in relation to building a new relationship.”<\/p>\n
The federal government is conducting exploratory talks with China to determine whether the two countries should pursue a free trade agreement. Online consultations with the Canadian public and industry on that topic wrapped last Friday.<\/p>\n
Freeland’s speech gave no hint of what the federal government gleaned from\u00a0those consultations.<\/p>\n
Regardless, Charest\u00a0says that Freeland’s speech was too reactionary to what is going on south of the border.<\/p>\n
“I take the foreign policy statement as being very contemporary, very much a reaction to the election of Mr. Trump and very much a reaction to what happened and transpired at the G7 and the NATO meeting in Europe only 10 days ago,” Charest said.<\/p>\n
The irony, says Charest, is that U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy moves, such as his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate change deal, are pushing the world towards China, which is eager\u00a0to fill the void left by the U.S.<\/p>\n
He points to the Chinese president’s speech in Davos last January, where Xi Jinping said China was ready to pick up the mantle on issues such as climate change and world trade.<\/p>\n
“We need to get our heads around that and figure out which kind of relationship serves our interest and allows us to engage with China in a way that recognizes the role they will be playing in the rest of the world,” Charest said.<\/p>\n
One of Canada’s former ambassadors to China was just as perplexed by the lack of references to the Canada-China relationship.<\/p>\n
“The statement is rooted in classic Liberal foreign policy, which blithely assumes that the world needs more Canada. It’s actually going to get more China,” David Mulroney wrote in an email to CBC.<\/p>\n
“It’s not evident we’ve done the hard thinking about the priorities and trade-offs required of us to survive and thrive in a world in which China’s reach and influence are expanding,” he added.<\/p>\n
Canada has sought to engage with China since the Trudeau government\u00a0came power. Trudeau and\u00a0Freeland have\u00a0made official visits\u00a0and so have other ministers, including International Trade\u00a0Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne and\u00a0Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr.<\/p>\n
Carr is in China right now on a trade mission focused\u00a0on clean energy, and selling Canadian softwood to into the Chinese market.<\/p>\n
When asked about her speech,\u00a0Freeland told reporters she was speaking to Canadians about Canada.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to be saying to Canadians this is about us, and this is about us standing on our own two feet, having a foreign policy that expresses, as an independent and sovereign country, what we need to achieve in the world to guarantee our safety and security and also to promote our values,” Freeland said.<\/p><\/p>\n
Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/freeland-china-mulroney-charest-1.4148790?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was surprisingly silent on China during\u00a0her major\u00a0foreign policy speech in the House of Commons Tuesday leaving Canada’s evolving relationship with the Asian superpower unclear, says former Quebec premier Jean Charest.\u00a0 Charest, now a partner in the law firm McCarthy T\u00e9trault, has\u00a0extensive business dealings in the region. He was reacting to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-78789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}