Later Wednesday, Trudeau met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing.
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Conservative trade critic Gerry Ritz, who served as agriculture minister under former prime minister Stephen Harper, expressed misgivings about the Liberal government’s ability to resolve the dispute, given that Canada’s softwood lumber deal with the USA remains unrenewed.
“China and Canada have multi-vector cooperation in trade and the economy”. Do that, and “you will certainly be bigger than your father to a lot of Chinese people”, the man said. He called the current prime minister “the future of Canada” and “a miracle to me”.
Canadian firms can benefit, too, he added. The group includes Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and South Korea, which signed on previous year in the face of opposition from the United States.
For its part, China has been urging Canada to negotiate a free trade agreement.
At a question-and-answer session with the China Entrepreneur Club, Jack Ma, founder of the tech company Alibaba Group and one of Asia’s wealthiest people, paid “special thanks” to the elder Trudeau during a love-in for his son.
Canada’s future prosperity in increasingly tied to China, the world’s second-largest economy, a senior government official said last week.
Trudeau and Li agreed to annual meetings and the eventual establishment of a mechanism to discuss national security and rule of law.
Last spring, the Chinese-led bank announced its 57 intended charter members.
The commentary also points out that China is not the only hope on which Canada’s fate is hinged.
“My government believes very, very much in the importance of investing in infrastructure”, Trudeau said Tuesday during a roundtable discussion with business leaders.
The 2014 detention on espionage charges of Canadian citizen Kevin Garratt, who had run a Christian-themed coffee shop near the North Korean border, has also raised tensions.
“And by supporting this institution that’s primarily initiated by China indicates that we’re trying to build trust that China will use this institution for the greater good in a liberal, internationalist way and not simply as a device to expand its geopolitical reach”. The prime minister did not say what China has told him about Garratt’s case. With an increasingly skeptical population at home, including a business community not certain that free trade with China is in their best interests, expectations are low for a dramatic economic breakthrough during his week in the country. “Chinese consumers also have that issue on their mind”, Li added.
Chinese officials in Ottawa have said the two countries were having “positive consultations” and the issue could be “resolved properly through joint efforts”.
Garratt’s family said in a statement released by their Beijing-based lawyers they were “extremely frustrated and disappointed” by the lack of progress in securing his release.
He noted Trudeau highlighted the need to strengthen ties between the two countries to allow for more opportunities to talk frankly about these issues.
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Canadian farmers sold $2 billion worth of canola seed past year in China – or 40 per cent of the country’s exports of the crop.
