First of all, going back to your colleague's point about Prime Minister Carney's statement in Davos, Canada should be doubling down on alliances and deepening relations and coalitions with like-minded countries, partners and allies.
Rather than trying to negotiate exactly that relationship you're talking about—a one-on-one with China—in a context where the Chinese Communist Party is going to have most of the leverage, strength and coercive power, Canada needs to be focusing on building coalitions with like-minded countries with similar and aligned trade barriers, cybersecurity standards, human rights, labour standards and so on. We should be presenting the Chinese Communist Party with a unified alignment of countries that have the same standards and will not backfill for each other.
That will help protect each other, and through that sort of mechanism, it will ideally align as much as possible with the United States. You can then have a stronger negotiating posture with China. You should be looking for policies that deliver certain benefits in sectors within Canada where it is still safe to have trade and investment. They're going to be strictly limited. These sectors should not be taking actions that in any way deliver benefits to a regime that is ultimately seeking dominance and centrality in the world in ways that are harmful to Canada.