Resetting relationship with China will be difficult, experts say

As the Canadian government begins to pursue a rapprochement with Beijing, experts on China say resetting ties between the two countries would require Prime Minister Mark Carney to walk a narrow diplomatic tightrope.

To ultimately succeed, they say, he must somehow persuade Beijing to drop tariffs on Canadian canola without agreeing to lower restrictions on Chinese electric-vehicle imports or sideline Canada’s human-rights priorities.

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand was in Beijing last week in part to advance discussions on a potential meeting between Mr. Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at thawing a frigid bilateral relationship.

That face-to-face conversation could take place before the end of October and China is hoping the result will include ending the 100-per-cent tariff on Chinese-made EVs that Ottawa imposed in mid-2024.

China slapped 100-per-cent tariffs on Canadian canola oil, meal and peas in March – as well as 25 per cent on seafood and pork – in direct response to Canada’s tariffs on Chinese EVs. Months later, Beijing imposed a 75.8-per-cent duty on canola seed. It has made clear that it will drop those duties in exchange for EV concessions.

Roughly 40,000 canola farmers across Western Canada have already lost tens of thousands of dollars each as a result of losing access to their second-largest, $4.9-billion market.

“China is essentially using our canola farmers against us, against the Canadian government’s public policy,” Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa’s graduate school of public and international affairs, said in an interview on Sunday.

“If we crumple on EVs,” she said, “they will do it immediately on other issues like critical minerals, access to our Arctic, our silence on Taiwan.”

The top priority of the government should not be trying to fix the canola problem by opening up our EV market to China, said Ms. McCuaig-Johnston, who has previously spent several decades in various senior public-service roles. Rather, she said, the focus should be getting our canola exporters to build relationships with other countries in the region.

Business Council of Canada president Goldy Hyder said in a statement that diversifying global partnerships, including across the Asia-Pacific, remains a priority for Canadian businesses.

Diversification was part of the reason Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Kody Blois, Mr. Carney’s parliamentary secretary, included South Korea and Japan in a trade mission last month that was primarily focused on China. However, Mr. Moe has made it clear that any solution to Canada’s canola problem with China must be led by Mr. Carney.

“It isn’t going to be myself – the Premier of Saskatchewan – and the President of China that are going to stand up at the end of the mission and say we have signed a deal,” Mr. Moe said during a Sept. 4 news conference. “It needs to be the Prime Minister of Canada.”

Philip Calvert, a former Canadian diplomat who is now a senior fellow with the University of Alberta’s China Institute, said the public may not see a lot of concrete actions come out of any potential meeting between Mr. Carney and Mr. Xi. The point of such a meeting, he said, would be to send signals through each country’s respective systems.

Mr. Calvert said it is important to reset relations with China because of its sheer economic might.

“I don’t think there’s going to be terrific closeness with China,” he said, adding that he thinks it will be a “more rational, arm’s-length approach that’s necessary to our interests.”

Offering any concessions to China risks drawing the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump while Canada is engaged in crucial trade talks with its largest trading partner. Ms. McCuaig-Johnston said that during a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Carney at the White House earlier this month, both leaders agreed that the U.S. and Canada would be better off working together to compete with China.

Given the economic uncertainty right now, University of Toronto economics professor Peter Morrow said it is probably helpful for Canada to engage with another large country such as China. At the same time, he said, Mr. Carney will need to be wary of making any promises to Mr. Xi that might affect his standing with Mr. Trump.

“There’s this, sort of, who is going to blink first aspect of this,” said Mr. Morrow, who is an international trade expert.

Then, there are Canada’s long-standing human-rights concerns with China to consider. In 2022, the House of Commons endorsed a resolution condemning China’s treatment of minority Uyghurs as “genocide.” However, according to Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, the government has since shied away from continuing such criticisms.

“They are step-by-step backtracking from those issues,” Mr. Tohti said in an interview on Sunday. “I don’t know how low we are going to go, but it is not a good sign for Canada or for Canadians who put human rights and ethics on the front line.”

Canada Tibet Committee executive director Sherap Therchin said he is not opposed to engaging with China, but said Canada cannot overlook China’s record of human-rights abuses or Ottawa’s $57-billion trade deficit.

Mr. Therchin said that trade imbalance could be used by China to coerce Canada into censorship on other issues, such as China’s so-called internal affairs.

“The more China has advantage over Canada in terms of trade, the more leverage we lose,” he said.

When China executed four Canadians earlier this year, ostensibly for drug-related offences, Ms. McCuaig-Johnston said she believes “that was to send a message to our government about EVs.”

“They are just holding governments to ransom, and in that way, they are ruthless,” she said.

Ms. McCuaig-Johnston said she previously held a very pro-China view and even served as vice-president of the Canada-China Friendship Society as recently as 2016. Her work with the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project’s advisory board ran afoul of the Chinese government. Today, she holds a very different view of China.

“What Xi Jinping himself has done is change China completely,” she said. “It is no longer the trustworthy partner that it used to be, and we are naive if we do not act in that context.”

Tags: canola oil, duty, imports, U.S., canola meal, seafood, canola seed, China, peas, pork, tariffs, canola, electric-vehicle, Canada, human rights