Minister Carr, in 2015 China and South Korea signed a free trade agreement. Subsequent to that, South Korea decided to install an anti-missile battery. China responded with the following actions: It curbed tourism to South Korea by manipulating tour packages, it found alleged fire code violations in a chain of South Korean department stores, and then it promoted popular boycotts against Korean exports like Kia and Hyundai.
I'm not saying we're installing an anti-missile battery, but Chinese officials have alleged that the current imbroglio we're in is related to the Huawei case. Going forward, given that China has no reservations about using heavy-handed tactics when it feels that national pride or national interests are at stake, at what point does the Government of Canada look at the fact that we have a trade deficit with China that's over $40 billion? At what point do we start looking at a list of Chinese imports to Canada and saying that we're going to start looking at what we take from their country, because they are treating us with absolutely zero respect?
I appreciate that you are following a scientific-based approach, and I think that's the correct way to go, but we also have to keep in mind the elephant in the room. This may in fact be a political problem and we're dealing with a government that has a history of using heavy-handed tactics against countries like South Korea, which we're a little more closely aligned with.