Thank you, Madam Chair.
Last year, this government announced a recalibration of our relations with China. In practice, this meant bowing to Beijing's pressure and adopting the Chinese Communist Party's own terminology by labelling our relationship a “strategic partnership”.
What Canada has always wanted from China is straightforward: a greater share of its vast market for Canadian goods and services. Successive governments have chased this dream. Former prime minister Chrétien championed team Canada missions, prioritizing trade while downplaying serious concerns over human rights violations. Every leader up to Justin Trudeau has tied our economic future to increasing exports to China, yet we must face the reality of our failure in this endeavour.
In 2024, exports to China represented a mere 3.8% of our total global exports. That's $29.9 billion. This is a fraction of the windfall that Canadians could have reasonably expected when China's policies of opening and reform began four decades ago. To put this into perspective, our exports to the European Union stand at 4.8%, or $34.5 billion Canadian. We do better with Europe than we do with the much-touted economic miracle of China.
Now the government hopes that Mr. Carney can succeed where a generation of leaders has fallen short. He will not. The mercantilists in Beijing will never allow Canadian imports to compete fairly against Chinese domestic products, particularly now that China's economy is languishing under Xi Jinping's anti-market, statist policies.
We must stop treating China as a traditional nation-state. It is a conglomerate of state, industry and the military-security apparatus that is entirely unified under the Chinese Communist Party. At the 19th Party Congress last decade, Xi Jinping made this explicitly clear by stating: “Party, government, military, civilian, and academic; east, west, north, south, and centre, the Party leads everything.”
When Beijing demands a strategic partnership, it is demanding our collaboration in enabling its overall geostrategic purposes. Nothing illustrates this danger more than the recent agreement signed in Beijing: a memorandum of understanding on co-operation in combatting crimes. This entails an exchange between the RCMP and China's Ministry of Public Security of data, intelligence and best practices.
Canada gains almost nothing from this agreement. However, the data the Chinese now expect us to hand over poses a severe threat to our national security and to the diaspora communities within our borders, particularly Canadians of Uyghur and Tibetan origin. Furthermore, sharing our best practices simply hands Chinese security agencies the very information they need to understand the RCMP's techniques and exploit our vulnerabilities in countering foreign subversion from China.
What is the price of our compliance? It's a temporary canola tariff reduction that expires at the end of the year, vague MOUs on energy and clean tech and an upgraded bilateral joint economic and trade commission, with trade ministers meeting annually.
These are not diplomatic victories. They are economic leverage. The government is under immense pressure not to displease Beijing. This means turning a blind eye to espionage agents, permitting Chinese regime investment in our critical infrastructure and stalling effective measures like a robust foreign influence registry to expose Beijing's proxies operating on Canadian soil.
Handing over our security apparatus's data and remaining silent on foreign subversion in exchange for fleeting, fractional trade benefits is a profound miscalculation. I am deeply concerned that this government's recent memoranda and its so-called strategic relationship with China are not and will never be of net benefit to Canada.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the excellent interpreters of this committee for their work.