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 i

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 cou

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 commoditi

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 co

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

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 relati

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

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

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 thi

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

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 sugge

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