How Mark Carney sold Canada to China |
As Can Force One moved toward Chinese airspace, the delegation’s electronic devices were powered down and secured in signal-blocking bags. Burner phones were passed out: the only machines the public servants, staff and journalists would be allowed to use for the duration of their stay. The Canadian Prime Minister’s security team was taking no risks.
But Mark Carney himself was on his way to do something many back home would consider very risky indeed: signing agreements with Chinese President Xi Jinping on trade, global governance, energy, media access and law enforcement. The country Carney had called, only one year ago, Canada’s “biggest security threat,” was about to accomplish a magical transformation from frog to prince, from interfering foreign power to “strategic partner” in the “new world order.”
Faced with fears of a recession, stagnant GDP and a struggling jobs market, Carney is trying to address the impacts of America’s trade war with Canada by pursuing a policy of diversification. And while Canadian industry leaders and geopolitical experts support diversifying with trading partners such as India, Japan and South Korea, it is widely feared that a rapprochement with China puts Canada in a position of vulnerability.
It was all smiles, balloons and cotton candy in Beijing, where Liberals enthused about Carney’s deal to accept 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into Canada in exchange for China lifting tariffs on canola. But one journalist covering the trip was brave enough to point out to Liberal cabinet member Mélanie Joly that he was using a burner phone........