Yes, that's correct.
I would say that there are, first of all, actions that China takes that are directly antithetical to Canadian interests. Many of those have been catalogued in the media and in government reports over the last several years.
One needs to step back and ask why the party state is doing these things. Why the transnational repression? Why foreign interference? Why efforts to alter the effects of elections, even if they weren't ultimately successful? Why the extensive espionage? Why the repeated coercion through economic means, hostage taking and other things?
It's because the Chinese Communist Party is trying to condition Canada's behaviour to defer to Beijing's preferences and to establish a new hierarchy of power in which Canada is not simply a helper of the United States. It's because China views the United States in fundamentally adversarial terms.
It wants to break up western alliances. It wants to drive wedges between western countries and ultimately deal with us individually through a dynamic in which it is by far the larger and more powerful party. It ultimately wants to subvert and influence Canadian politics and society so that Canada doesn't do anything that is displeasing to the Chinese Communist Party.
More broadly, it wants to knock America off its position as the most powerful country in the world and supplant it as the central state in world affairs, not necessarily to take on all the burdens and responsibilities of hegemony but certainly to take a significant amount of the power. It does not want to be constrained by the United States or by any other coalition of countries. It wants to weaken the west.
This week, for example, the German Federal Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is in Beijing. China wants to supplant Germany as the industrial powerhouse of the world. It wants to master all of those high technologies, and it wants to use those supply chains and access to its market to condition behaviour that serves its interests.
By weakening Europe, by breaking up Europe, by driving wedges between Europe and the United States and between other allies—for example, between Japan, Australia and others—it wants to divide and conquer. It's not necessarily territorial conquest as we're seeing with Russia, but It is certainly an increase in its own influence to reshape the world according to its own image and views.