Thank you for your question.
What I meant by my comment that China is the major trade partner is that it's not just that Canada needs to think about its own trade interests with China, but that for every country in the Indo-Pacific, the major trading partner is China. Just as Canada is very dependent on our bilateral trading partner the United States, all of those countries are very dependent on their trade relationship with China.
That goes for something like the CPTPP. Canada and Mexico are very much different animals in that arrangement, because all other countries in the CPTPP have very strong trade ties with China first and then the United States and/or other markets second. That means we need to be aware of the ways in which we are trading with those other countries. They are behaving the same way towards us that we behave when we think about trading with the United States. We're both thinking about our respective elephant in the room, and we need to make sure that our own trade rules and trade behaviour are cognizant of that. That's one point.
The second point is that we shouldn't be afraid to stand up to China, particularly in instances where Canada's national interest is at play. We know that China will weaponize trade against Canada. In my view, China will continue to import products from Canada when it wants to—when it is in China's interest to do so. There's some evidence that when it banned Canadian canola, it was not just about the detention of the two Michaels. There happened to be, during that same period of time, a record canola crop in China, so it was quite convenient to reduce the amount of Canadian canola going to China at that time.
I think we have to be extremely smart about it, and we must not at any time, in my view, sacrifice our goals as a country out of fear that China might turn around and reduce market access.