Thank you.
Good afternoon, honourable Chair Sgro and members of the Standing Committee on International Trade. It is my great honour to testify before this important standing committee.
I am a professor of political science at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. I'm sure you've heard a great deal from other expert witnesses on trade opportunities for Canadian businesses in the Indo-Pacific. In my testimony as a political scientist, I would like to provide a broader perspective on Canada's Indo-Pacific strategy, of which I believe our trade policies should be a part.
I would like to make three major points. One, I believe our trade policies, including the ongoing trade negotiations of the Canada-ASEAN free trade agreement and the Canada-Indonesia comprehensive economic partnership agreement, should be part and parcel of the forthcoming Indo-Pacific strategy. The Indo-Pacific strategy, in my view, is as much about building partnerships with countries in the region as it is about countering China's influence. In fact, the two objectives are not mutually exclusive. They reinforce each other.
To achieve these twin objectives, I believe Canada should take a long-term perspective in its approach to the Indo-Pacific, one that focuses on bolstering local capacity and improving regional prosperity. In the pursuit of trade policies, Canada should prioritize these goals in addition to securing market access for Canadian exports to the region. If we perceive the Indo-Pacific strategy as the cornerstone of a broader statecraft of dealing with the rise of China, then I think building lasting partnerships with the Indo-Pacific nations should be made a priority. These goals are in line with the Biden administration's Indo-Pacific strategy released in February of this year.
Two, there are several ways to build lasting partnerships. In addition to securing market access, I would urge the government to prioritize measures to improve labour and environmental standards as well as digital inclusiveness. Creating pro-worker and environmentally friendly trade agreements are of pertinence to Southeast Asian countries that fall behind north Asia in terms of the level of GDP, which may lead to a compromise of these issues in pursuit of economic opportunities.
A growing proportion of trade is now taking place through digital mediums. However, in many developing countries in the Indo-Pacific, digital inclusiveness and related data security issues should not be taken for granted. They are important in improving the capacity of the Indo-Pacific nations to mitigate the adverse effects of open trade. I believe if Canada is interested in partnering with the region in the long term, we ought to think about assisting them in building mitigating capacity.
In my third and last point, I want to bring China into the picture. Minister Joly recently concluded a diplomatic visit to Indonesia and Vietnam. Even though China ranks only fourth in terms of the sources of foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia, some countries are more reliant on Chinese capital than others. Recent surveys actually suggest wide-ranging disparity in attitudes toward China in Southeast Asia. While the elites in general want to pursue a balancing strategy between the United States and China, some governments of autocratic tendency, such as that of the newly elected president, Bongbong Marcos, the son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, are entirely pro-China.
That said, various surveys also suggest that there are palpable anti-China sentiments at the societal level throughout the region. I have argued for Canada's role in building civil society capacity to allow Southeast Asian countries to be more discerning of China's growing influence as well as to enable the citizens to provide checks and balances against the governments' investment decisions whenever necessary. In my recently published book about Malaysia, The Street and the Ballot Box, I contend that strong civil society can be instrumental in mobilizing large segments of society to bring about better political outcomes through a more robust opposition.
In conclusion, the emerging economies in Southeast Asia often need Chinese investment to build infrastructure or to power a labour-intensive manufacturing industry, leaving them with limited options to decline any Chinese investment offers even if they were on unfavourable terms. I believe Canada, along with other western democracies, has the ability to bolster the region's capacity to engage with China on more equal footing. This deserves, I believe, a prominent place in Canada's trade policy as well as its Indo-Pacific strategy.
Thank you again for the opportunity to offer my perspectives.