Good evening, Mr. Chair and Committee members.
Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts on your study.
The greater the density of ties between two societies, the greater the ability to survive during difficult times. Dense societal ties ensure resilience when official ties are strained.
One of the strengths of the Indo-Pacific strategy is its recognition of the importance of non-official ties, notably in pillar three.
What is the role of government in building people-to-people connections? The strategy outlines specific ways of connecting people, such as investing in visa processing, air services agreements, scholarships and humanitarian assistance. However, if Canada is truly committed to engaging with Asia, what can governments do to foster enduring societal ties for the longer term? Cultivating meaningful economic ties is critical in trade and industry, small business, clean tech, agri-food and the like, but let me spotlight two other possibilities.
In his remarks to this committee in November, Mr. Frank Des Rosiers mentioned that indigenous business leaders participated in a trade mission to Japan last January. This initiative, alongside the Indigenous Peoples Economic and Trade Cooperation Arrangement, IPETCA, as it's known, demonstrated the significance of indigenous businesses in the global economy and their role in advancing Canadian and indigenous engagement in Asia.
Considering that two-thirds of the world's indigenous peoples live in Asia, facilitating these initiatives could play a critical indigenous-led role in building ties across the Pacific.
A second possibility concerns universities. For division of powers reasons, some creativity is needed here, as with tri-agency funding. What is clear, however, is that Canada's universities serve a critical long-term role in supporting the Indo-Pacific strategy. The role of universities is not limited to teaching undergraduate students about history, politics, language, literature and geography or generating research. Universities send students to Asia on exchanges, field trips, co-ops, internships and study tours. They send them for language training and field work. With more than 1.4 million students in Canadian university classrooms each year, universities are an obvious and untapped focal point for strengthening Canada's ties to Asia. So too is the growing number of Canadian university alumni in prominent positions in the region who want to engage with Canada.
While the strategy's aim of increasing China-related capacity at its missions is laudable, where will the experts come from? What about India, Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam? Excellent work is being done in Canada, but the number of experts is nowhere near what it should be and nowhere near that of our peers. Taking Asia seriously will require a generational investment in universities by all levels of government, including a dedicated Canada research chair type of scheme to foster capacity building on Asia.
Let me add two cautionary notes. First, while there are clearly genuine threats to security that arise from foreign governments, focusing too much attention on threats can distract us from developing deeper expertise on Asia. Demonizing foreign actors and stoking fear can undermine social solidarity and people-to-people ties. This is a time for us to invest in learning more, not less, about the diversity of Asia. We have to hold our rhetoric in check.
Second, while it is critical to distinguish between real and perceived threats, for universities, and for the role they play in democracies, the costs of failing to do so are high, especially for academic freedom. Universities are diverse, cosmopolitan institutions that thrive on critical thinking, empathetic listening and reasoned disagreement, but testing ideas also requires engaging with world views that challenge our own. An awareness of security threats is important, but university researchers should be resolutely encouraged to exchange ideas and engage robustly with their peers in Asia. Intellectual decoupling is a dangerous game.
The Indo-Pacific strategy might be read by some as a document about geopolitics and national security. A more nuanced reading, however, recommends a more holistic approach that focuses as much, if not more, on fostering dense, multi-layered and enduring connections between Canada and Asia.