Absolutely. The consul general from Montreal arrived—I gather also had meetings with other ministers—and made it quite clear that there could be economic consequences for any erosion of ties between the Government of New Brunswick and China, including threats around lobster sales and a number of other specifics.
In my conversation with him, he clearly hadn't done much background reading on where I come from. I have a range of publications that were recently made accessible online around China democracy issues, ranging back about 15 years.
His first goal was to make it again sound as though this was simply a misunderstanding. He repeatedly said, “Look, the way you should allay any concerns you have is to come and visit China. You can come. We'll be happy. We're going to show you around. We'll show you a great time. You'll see that China is in fact a democratic country.” I expressed some surprise on hearing that, but it basically continued along those lines.
There was a significant push-back when I made the point that you made in your line of questioning—that this is a country that is routinely willing, in the first instance of receiving any criticism, to say that this is an interference in its internal affairs, its domestic affairs, and it violates the rights of national self-determination and the autonomy of the state. When I questioned how this didn't apply, he said that this was about schools. I said, “Well, that's odd. If this is about schools, then you're talking about lobsters as well. There seems to be a bit of a mixed message here.”
Again, that didn't particularly surprise me. If you read the reports from our own intelligence services, from the Australian government, from other democratic governments around the world, including some emergent democracies that are far further down the GDP list than we are but are increasingly awake and aware to what China is up to, this is part of the pattern.
You start off with the soft sell. You start off with the all-expense paid trips. I don't think it's any coincidence that we see a large number of western politicians suddenly parroting Beijing's line on a multitude of different issues, because most of those folks have taken advantage of Chinese hospitality.
The next stage up from that is the veiled threat: If you do this, then even though this is purely about education, inexplicably lobsters become part of New Brunswick's education system. Even though this has nothing to do with the Communist Party or the government—this is all about a very informal education exchange—again, Beijing could be willing to make decisions around its economic relationship with Canada based on what happens here in New Brunswick.
The efforts to threaten and cajole, I don't think would have been acceptable from anyone else. I can only imagine the horror with which most folks in Canada, me included, would react if we ever had representatives of the American government behaving in a similar way.
I'm not surprised. This is part of a traditional pattern. Again, my hope is that through conversations like this, we can move to recognize the threat that China poses and move quickly to try to distance ourselves from a country that does not share our values.