Canada-China Relations committee  Very briefly, yes, we did the right thing because we woke up to the fact that the Chinese are calling the shots in the AIIB, and we have very limited influence there. If you want to play their game, keep your membership, unfreeze it. If you don't want to play their game because it's not advancing your own national interest, then suspend it.

Canada-China Relations committee  I wouldn't be losing sleep tonight over the BRICS, but I might five years from now if it expands in the way the Chinese would like it to expand. In the written remarks I submitted to the committee, I raised some of the flags that are out there about the BRICS. On some of the countries that have joined, I'm not sure we should be worried, to be honest.

Canada-China Relations committee  When it comes to the Indo-Pacific strategy, I think the real question is, what are we selling? At the end of the day, our comparative advantage comes from selling commodities. When it comes to China, we don't need free trade agreements to do that because the prices of commodities are set on global markets.

Canada-China Relations committee  To come back to the proposition about what the Americans would do if they imposed sanctions, a lot depends on the nature of those sanctions. If it's trade restrictions, to be honest, we buy more from China than we sell, so it will hurt the consumer. A lot of what we import are consumer durables.

Canada-China Relations committee  There are two questions there. One comment I would make is that Taiwan has a dual importance to the United States. One is as a democracy, and that's the values proposition, but the second is as the world's dominant maker of computer chips. I think the Americans, and others, have woken up to the fact that it's not good to have a single source of supply there, so they're making a very active effort now to diversify.

Canada-China Relations committee  Given the Chinese reaction to the election, I would say it's destabilizing. They were hoping for a different outcome. Does that mean that they're going to do what they have threatened to do? A lot of that depends on how the new leadership in Taiwan handles and manages its relationship with China, as well as on the deterrent messages that the United States and its western partners send to China.

Canada-China Relations committee  They have taken that role in part for geographical reasons. Many of those peacekeeping missions have been in sub-Saharan Africa, which is a key, shall we say, area of investment for China under its development programs, its belt and road initiative and its desire to acquire bases, not just on the eastern side of Africa but now also on the western side of Africa.

Canada-China Relations committee  Notwithstanding the comments about China's population decline, absolutely. They can underwrite the missions. We decided long ago that peacekeeping was too expensive for us and that there were others who could do it more cheaply. Well, it's expensive for the Chinese, but they are prepared to write the cheques, for obvious reasons.

Canada-China Relations committee  I used that term, but you said the same things.

Canada-China Relations committee  Canada got a tremendous boost during the unipolar moment after the Cold War ended. Our soft power, if I can use that term, travelled well, because it didn't encounter much resistance. International institutions today have become arenas of great power and soft power competition.

Canada-China Relations committee  Talking is not the same as capitulation, and sometimes the two get confused, particularly in public discourse. I would agree with everything Gordon said, but I would add two caveats. One is that we shouldn't go soft. Diplomacy is about hard talk. It's not just sweet talk. I think that when it comes to China, as we saw with the declaration against arbitrary detention, we're much more effective when we engage in team talk, which is to say that we build coalitions, informal coalitions, and deliver the same message at the same time—in this case, to the Chinese, because they don't like to be called out in numbers.

Canada-China Relations committee  Yes.

Canada-China Relations committee  My comments were very much focused on the Chinese game that is being played in existing international institutions. They're putting a lot of their people into key positions. You see that in the staffing of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, but it goes beyond there.

Canada-China Relations committee  It's not in our interest to do so. We will then, as I've suggested, really be leaving the ground to our enemies, our adversaries, our competitors, who will fill the void. We're already seeing that: The Americans are experiencing that because they were pulling back. As I've suggested, when it comes to promoting democracy and human rights, one of the principal avenues for doing that has been through peacekeeping—through peacebuilding missions in which Canada helped to write the resolutions, the enabling resolutions.

Canada-China Relations committee  At the end of the day, people will look and our allies will look at our capabilities, which have not increased substantially in the past two years. Yes, we're doing things to upgrade surveillance in the Arctic, and that's important for the defence of North America, but we're not moving, for example, in the same direction that our Australian friends are moving.