Thank you.
What I was talking about in Policy Options five years ago was the notion that we have to be smart in our diplomacy. We have to work with allies and we have to take measures that we can achieve—we need to be realistic. The notion that somehow speaking honestly about China is hawk-like, I think, is one of the reasons we never get to a realistic China policy, because people say, “I know China is doing all these things, but there's nothing we can do.” There are a lot of things that we can and should be doing.
One of the things that China seeks to do is to get into your head. They get into your head and get you thinking so much about how catastrophic China's reaction will be that you actually do even less than China was concerned about. You put the red lines out further than China was concerned about, and Canada has been doing that repeatedly.
The reality is that Canada has what China needs. The north of China is a virtual desert. China's agricultural land has been tainted by its industrial pollution. China needs the products that Canada, Australia and the United States produce. They need this over the long term, and we have to remember this.
The other thing I'd say is that China is currently posing a threat to our autonomy as a country. Telling us that we can no longer enforce our extradition treaties is forcing us to change our policy. We have currently shut down our economy because we're concerned about coronavirus. A lot of environmentalists have said—I don't agree with them—that we need to shut down our energy industry to deal with climate change. What price do we put on autonomy? I don't think we have valued it enough.