The two countries confirmed the agreement Thursday in a joint statement that followed the first leg of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s official visit to China.
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Moving forward, the Prime Minister will continue to strengthen relationships with individuals – and companies – around the world in order to ensure that middle class Canadians have the greatest chance to succeed.
Trudeau says the hub on the world’s largest online shopping site will clearly brand Canadian goods and services for Chinese consumers. He also said Canada was “looking very favourably” at joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a Chinese-dominated institution that the US has steadfastly refused to join. It will feature special promotions for unique Canadian products such as apparel, ice wine, maple syrup, seafood and health products. “I’m here in China this week to talk about all of the great partnerships that we’re working on, and that are going to happen between Canada and China”, Trudeau said in his brief remarks.
During their discussions, the Prime Minister and Mr. Ma agreed to further support collaboration in several areas, including facilitating the growth of tourism through the use of AliTrip and AliPay services.
The two men, who also met in January in Davos, Switzerland, appear to have developed some chemistry.
“See, we’re Canadians – we travel with our values and we don’t hesitate to share them whenever and wherever we see opportunities”, he said before glancing purposefully at the table in front of the stage. Both countries are exploring future measures to facilitate the travel flow of tourists and are working on tourism promotion activities in Canada and China, including, for example, the Canada China International Film Festival this month in handsome Montréal.
Those are “not easy conversations to have”, but are necessary ones, Trudeau said at a reception held by the Canada-China Business Council in Shanghai.
Dominic Barton, the global managing director of consulting company McKinsey & Co., said in a recent interview that Alibaba has done tremendous things for China by allowing small mom-and-pop companies there to do business with the rest of the Asian country.
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China wants Canada to cut the level of foreign contaminants, known as dockage, considered acceptable in its canola exports, by more than half.
