Canada-China Relations Committee on Feb. 5th, 2024

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.

We'll now go to Mr. Bergeron for six minutes or less.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us this evening. For Ms. Paskal, I believe it is even quite late.

Ms. Fitz-Gerald, in an article you co-wrote with Dr. Jonathan Berkshire‑Miller that was published in iPolitics, you stated that Canada continues to be unsure whether it would be worthwhile to properly define its interests, and it has done nothing recently to define them in terms of a national security strategy, a defence strategy or a clear foreign policy.

Some would even say that the Government of Canada tends to put the cart before the horse, that it's working on a defence policy without having defined a foreign policy and that it's developed an Indo-Pacific strategy without having defined its foreign policy. What are your thoughts?

[Dr. Ann Fitz-Gerald]

Yes, I believe the cart is before the horse in many cases. As to policy strategy, different things are relevant to different countries and different strategic cultures. In order to prioritize and not have aspirational—as opposed to achievable—frameworks, strategies and concept papers, we need to lay down what is at the root of all these strategies. That's why we argued in that article for the articulation and codification of national interests. For instance, a defence policy is all about protecting, preserving, promoting and defending those interests.

The codification and articulation of a national interest can also strengthen the social fabric of a country, which is terribly important for a diverse country like Canada. To go into any corner of the country and have communities be able to stand up and say, “The heart of Canadian society is A, B, C, D and E” is tremendously powerful. I've seen this by facilitating the national security strategies of many other countries.

I think a national security framework is something that other government frameworks are subordinate to. National security, as the previous panel pointed out, is hip to hip these days with economic security. National security is almost everything. It's the biggest macro strategic tool of government. At the heart of it is something that does not and should not move with different political administrations, something that's the anchor of the ship in rocky waters: national interests. Having a dialogue around them, laying them down and allowing them to be the root of subsequent strategies are important.

At the moment, I feel that the Indo-Pacific strategy, the feminist international foreign assistance program and so on—jumping a bit further down—are very important cogs of the system, but they're cogs. There should be a system that articulates priorities and is very clear about what Canada is not going to do at the moment, as well.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Paskal, I was perhaps expecting to hear you say a few words in the language of Molière in your opening remarks, but we will probably have the opportunity to hear you speak French later.

As I'm sure you're aware, the committee travelled to Washington a few weeks ago to speak with our U.S. counterparts. I think we concluded that we need to continue the dialogue with them and that they will eventually come here to Ottawa.

Although I feel everyone should keep their own issues at home, we do need to somewhat align our Indo-Pacific strategies. Based on our common ground and what we don't agree on, would you say that the two Indo-Pacific strategies are complementary, or do they conflict?

[Cleo Paskal]

Thank you.

I'll do my best to answer you in French. Actually, it's been so long since I've had the opportunity to speak French that I lack the vocabulary. I'm a little embarrassed about that, but I'll give it my best shot, and I do apologize in advance.

I'm actually in Miami right now because of the storm in London, and I'm sorry I can't speak to you from there.

That's a very good question. Obviously there's a lot of synchronicity between the two strategies. However, both Canada and Quebec—which is represented throughout the Indo-Pacific region—can take other measures that are completely different to provide security to countries in that region, which would help everyone given the context.

In the last round, you asked a question about Canada's bid to obtain a seat on the UN Security Council, which is a very good example of the issue we're concerned about. We worked with the Australians and New Zealanders to try to get the Pacific islands' votes. They don't want to follow orders out of Canberra or Wellington, they want us to come to them in person and have a friendly conversation to explain who we are, what's important to us and what we feel we have in common with them for our future together.

It's really important that we travel to that region, as Canadians or Quebecers, to better understand local realities and show them the differences between Canada and the United States or France. There's no reason to cut corners: we need our feet on the ground in these countries so we can talk to the people who live there and listen to them.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Paskal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thanks, Mr. Bergeron.

Ms. McPherson, you have six minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses. This has been very interesting.

Ms. Paskal, I want to quickly follow up on my colleague Mr. Bergeron's comments.

What I could take from your testimony when you talked about bilaterals and how important they are is that it would be very useful for parliamentarians to visit the region and engage in parliamentary diplomacy. I assume that would be very helpful, and it's something that I know this committee is going to be talking about after. Thank you for raising that with us.

One of the other things I want to ask all three of you is about the idea of post-secondary institutions and the role they play. I think all of you have mentioned that in some way. I actually met with the presidents of the 15 top universities in Canada earlier today, and they expressed some real concern about the Indo-Pacific strategy and the implications for them.

Of course, we have the idea that we need to block and build. Ms. Paskal brought that forward. There's the idea of decoupling versus de-risking, but also the idea that we want to build relationships when they are useful, when they help us build our national capacity. We want to have relationships in working with university alumni, in recruitment for our post-secondary and in research.

How do we manage relationships? How do we ensure our post-secondary institutions are able to do the work we need them to do but do not put Canadian public interests at risk?

I will start with you, Ms. Fitz-Gerald.

[Dr. Ann Fitz-Gerald]

It's a great question. Lest I be a bit provocative here, I understand fully well why higher education is led at the provincial level in a federal system. However, I feel that it's a very powerful tool, a national instrument of power, and needs some grand strategic direction.

For instance, it's amazing, I find, that every university is trying to grapple with AI standards and rules at the moment. It's a waste of productive time for all universities to be doing this individually. There's the research security strategy. Again, these are central issues that require a powerful framework and don't need to be differentiated at the provincial level like other things do. I feel we can project our higher education capacity. In my view, it's a time, with post-Brexit Britain and a probable return of Trumpian politics to the south, that Canada should be attracting the best in the world.

In order to have frameworks that can operate in a higher education environment in a digital- and data-driven world, which requires alignment with immigration systems and so on, there need to be discussions regularly at a central level.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Ms. Paskal, do you have anything to say?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

I was going to draw your attention to some hands up on the screen.

[Cleo Paskal]

Quickly, yes, it would definitely be very helpful. For example, in the Pacific Islands context, the U.S. does most of this engagement through the East-West Center, which is funded by state departments and based in Hawaii and D.C. Canada is not considered part of the Indo-Pacific, but in the context of the East-West Center, figuring out how to join some of the organizations that have already trod those pathways and that already have those networks in place might help us speed along our engagement.

However, a big problem is going to be the visas. We need to figure out better ways of facilitating visas. If you're sitting in Palau, for example, the visa to get to Canada is issued by Canada's office in Canberra, which is an eight-hour flight away and extremely expensive. A lot of these technical issues need to be cleared out of the way.

In terms of the parliamentary visits, those would be incredibly helpful because democracy is really under attack. If you look at a place like the Solomon Islands, where they've already delayed elections, having parliamentarians come to let the proto-authoritarians know that we're keeping an eye on them and reassuring those who are fighting for democracy in their own country that they have allies beyond their shores would be incredibly helpful.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Ms. Horton, go ahead, please.

[Deanna Horton]

Thank you very much.

I would agree with everything that's been said, but I notice that when you're looking at trade missions, you often have universities and community colleges on those missions. I think there are a lot of universities with strengths in the Indo-Pacific.

Last week I taught a class at U of T for which the students were in India. With the digital tools available and with more government support—and I recognize that it is a provincial issue—there is a lot of room for more involvement and more support for Canadians studying in Asia.

We have so many Asians studying in Canada, and very few Canadian students going to Asia. I think what should happen is that students, rather than going to Europe for their junior year abroad, should be going somewhere in Asia. That's where the future is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

That's just about your time. Thank you, Ms. McPherson.

We'll now go to a second round.

Mr. Seeback, you have five minutes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We're talking a lot about security here, so I want to quickly look at one of the sections of Canada's Indo-Pacific strategy, which says to “make meaningful contributions to the region’s security...and enhance our defence and security relationships [and] bolster Canada's long-standing collaboration with, and contribution to, the Five Eyes.” It seems to me that some glaring things are notably not included in this. The two that pop out to me have both been mentioned before: AUKUS and the Quad.

I would love to hear from all the witnesses today on that, because to me it seems like a very large strategic mistake that Canada wasn't on the ground early on in both of these things. What can we do to try to fix that?

[Dr. Ann Fitz-Gerald]

I'll have the first go.

I think we can encourage publication of the defence review, which I understand is supposed to be happening at the moment, to see some priorities. I think we need to be more predictable to our allies. We can't be spread thin across the conventional capability that has limited utility these days.

Even the conventional capability we're seeing in the Middle East, in Africa and in other parts of the world is based on an insurgency model. It's the same insurgency model as in Doha-Malaysia campaigns in the past, but it's taking to the waves; it's taking to digital insurgency.

The capability needs to change. We have a great deal to bring to that capability in terms of defence diplomacy. You may remember that when we did have that capability in the early 2000s and late 1990s, we made an enormous impact in the world in defence diplomacy. It's an inexpensive way to make a great impact that could feature heavily in our strategy. If it were geared towards AI and cyber, it would be snapped up by our AUKUS allies.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Does either of the other two want to go ahead?

[Cleo Paskal]

I went first last time, so Dr. Horton can go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Dr. Horton, go ahead.

[Deanna Horton]

I will just add that the second pillar of AUKUS should be of interest to Canada, and I am hoping that will be followed up on. I would also add, though, that we have a lot of capacity in things like training and the soft aspect, as mentioned earlier, of defence diplomacy in a way. That does not require the hardware that seems to be difficult for Canada. On even things like that, we can work with other partners.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to work with other like-minded partners in Asia. There is not a lot we can do alone. We all have to work together.

[Cleo Paskal]

It would have been great if we had joined Quad and AUKUS. That would have made us a very different profile in the region.

I'd also like to bring up something that hasn't been brought up, which does seriously affect our security profile in the region. It's Canada's relationship with India. India had a very successful G20 meeting. It has very deep and growing relationships with Japan. We obviously have our problems with India, but the loud problems with India.... The Indo-Pacific, or at least a big chunk of it, is India's turf, not Canada's turf. If we have problems with India, then it becomes a problem for Canada.

The other thing I'd say in terms of security, as mentioned in my opening, is that right now a lot of the problems are on the political warfare level and have to do with corruption. Many of these countries need lawyers more than they need warships. They need people to go after Chinese organized crime, to go through financial records and help figure out who's getting paid off.

That sort of thing we could do quite easily. We could send over experts from various other Canadian government agencies or ministries to help them clean up their systems. Unless we do that, unless we can get rid of the corruption or at least minimize Chinese corruption, that's the blocking...and we won't be able to build anything else that's effective.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

You're just about out of time, so thank you, Mr. Seeback.

We'll go to Madam Lalonde for five minutes.

[Marie-France Lalonde, Liberal, Orléans, ON]

Thank you very much to our witnesses. I certainly appreciate the perspective that's been brought forward this evening.

I would like to hear a bit more about the comments made by Ms. Horton or Ms. Paskal. I'm not sure who it was. Maybe any of you could help.

The IPS specifically indicates Canada's intention to strengthen our strategic partnership with ASEAN. What is the larger role of ASEAN within the region? How could we improve that relationship?