Justin Trudeau hopes to revive relations between Canada and China during his official visit to the country next week, said he was Friday at a press conference.
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Talking to Reuters, Canada’s trade minister stated that the trade relationship could not advance until the issue is dealt with, causing Beijing to condemn Ottawa for linking the two matters.
Trudeau’s itinerary will be packed with business-related meetings as well as the G20 leaders’ summit.
Trudeau made the remarks in a dialogue session with Chinese entrepreneurs, during his first visit to China after he took office as Canadian prime minister last November.
Canada has been inflexible and “unfair” in its approach to talks that began seven years ago over Chinese concerns about rules for the make-up of canola shipments, Luo Zhaohui told The Canadian Press in an interview Thursday.
Trudeau has said he will continue voicing Canada’s human rights concerns to China’s leadership.
Ritz offered Trudeau some advice when broaching China’s less-than-stellar human rights record: don’t do it in public.
But economists like Jim Stanford warn Canada should be careful when it comes to opening up new trade channels with China – because it could make the existing relationship even more lopsided.
Since China is one of the largest markets for Canada’s canola, Canada has to find a solution before the deadline ends. Many of them were busy negotiating other deals, he said.
Canada-China relations do appear ripe for a breakthrough after many years of ambivalence from the Harper administration.
It will be all the more hard since they must not shy away from raising the touchy issues of human rights.
“You have to do it on your terms”, he said, adding there is “tremendous opportunity” in China’s growing middle class. Some northern experts say having a prime minister regularly visit the region sent a signal to other countries and drew government attention to the region.
“The prime minister has a WeChat and Weibo account and we will be using these during the trip”, a senior government official said.
Harper, to his credit, personally brought up the cases of two Canadian citizens imprisoned in China – the Uyghur religious leader Huseyin Celil and Kevin Garratt, imprisoned on trumped-up espionage charges.
The sales of the oilseed, which is normally crushed to yield vegetable oil and animal feed, risk undermining Canada’s negotiating position with China, as trading seems to be continuing.
“We can not take the next step in our relationship with China until the canola issue is resolved”. The documents also show that federal officials realized it was inevitable companies would need temporary foreign workers to proceed with the energy projects in western Canada.
One analysis estimated free trade with China would expand Canada’s exports by about $7.7 billion and its gross domestic product by about $7.8 billion by 2030.
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In January, Reuters reported that Canada joined the United States, Germany, Japan and the European Union in expressing concern over a new counter-terrorism law in China and two draft laws, on cybersecurity and on the management of global NGOs, respectively.
