Canada-China Relations committee  Sure. Thank you for the question. If the committee could take away the reality that trade diversification goes through the United States, I think that would be a good thing. As much as we seem to understand it, we constantly try to forget that reality. When we're trying to diver

Canada-China Relations committee  I do absolutely. I think we often forget the importance of demography and aging populations. China has an aging population. There's lots of commentary about how perhaps its economy has peaked. If you look at the aging demographic profile of China, that makes lots of sense. If yo

Canada-China Relations committee  You'll have lots of time, because it's straightforward for me. It's the CPTPP. I think one-off trade deals are a bad idea. I think that CPTPP is a first-gen agreement, meaning that it's a top agreement with high standards. We should want to trade with economies that can play at t

Canada-China Relations committee  I'm not sure we'll win that game, and I truly think that China will continue to import from Canada when it serves China's interest. At the moment, we're under the WTO's MFN tariffs. They're already quite low in most things. We could pursue some narrow sectoral trade arrangement

Canada-China Relations committee  If there's evidence in certain specific regions where we know that forced labour is ubiquitous, then yes, I would say that adopting the negative list approach would be smart. It doesn't surprise me—and I think I'm familiar with the position of the Canadian government—that they do

Canada-China Relations committee  I'm familiar with the list, but I don't know how they developed it.

Canada-China Relations committee  Using their list or at least following a similar process could make a lot of sense. During the USMCA negotiations, an area of real dispute between Canada and the U.S. was the transshipment of Chinese steel. The United States had concerns that steel bound for the United States was

Canada-China Relations committee  I think it is obviously a moral issue but also an economic issue, and some of that is due to all the reasons we know. Modern-day slavery and forced labour are awful. For the countries that practise it, it also means that goods are cheaper in those places. For instance, in the

Canada-China Relations committee  I think we could be doing a number of things. One is that we have to be looking for problems, and that takes resources and money. Canada tends to adopt a reactive approach in that we rely on the reporting in voluntary attestations of what's in shipments. We take people's word for

Canada-China Relations committee  Absolutely. If we care about these things we should implement them well, but if we don't care about these things we should stop talking about them. That's my honest view.

Canada-China Relations committee  Some of this is beyond my expertise. I can certainly speak to the trade side of things and to some of the regulatory pieces. Having everyone sing from the same song sheet is helpful. This is across departments of government and across federal-provincial partnerships, and it incl

Canada-China Relations committee  I think a lot of it does come down to political will. I have been very impressed by the speed with which the ISED minister, Minister Champagne, has put political will behind the EV battery plants. We've seen rapid movement around regulatory approvals in all departments of governm

Canada-China Relations committee  Thank you. Has any diversification happened yet? It's difficult to say. Part of the challenge in assessing that is that the Indo-Pacific strategy was officially launched a year ago. While the Minister of Trade and others are very fond of saying that Canadian trade is higher tha

Canada-China Relations committee  Thank you for the question. How will the Indo-Pacific strategy help us succeed? To be honest, I'm not sure we will move from our current situation. Upwards of 75% of Canadian exports are now going to the United States. I'm not sure we'll see much of a change to that. I would ag

Canada-China Relations committee  Canada, as chair this year, is in a unique position to help steer that conversation. The accession of new members to the CPTPP, though, is by consensus, and the reality is that, while Canada and some others have serious concerns about the entry of China, there are other members t