Justin Trudeau’s journey in foreign affairs is now well known. From a fervent “admirer” of China, who, when he came to power in 2015, wanted to launch a new era of cooperation between Ottawa and Beijing after the great darkness of the Harper years, the Liberal Prime Minister now finds himself forced to change his register after a hard apprenticeship and several events which have since revealed the true nature of the communist regime.
No one can forget the embarrassing statement of the newly elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada who, in 2013, said he had “a certain level of admiration for China, because their dictatorship allows them to make a sudden economic shift”. There followed a series of declarations and gestures aimed at marking a break with the foreign policy adopted by the former conservative government and at reconnecting with the multilateralism of which his father had been the greatest champion. It was Pierre Trudeau who reestablished diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1970, two years before the United States. And justin
Trudeau hoped to ride the Chinese leaders’ gratitude to his father to get into President Xi Jinping’s good graces.
“I am well aware that we have the opportunity now to breathe new life into our relationship,” Mr. Trudeau declared at the G20 summit in Turkey in November 2015, a few weeks after his election, when he was about to meet Mr. Xi for the first time. Of course, I hope that this will be an era of greater cooperation and mutual benefit for Canada and China in the years to come. »
What followed did not go as planned. Admittedly, the Meng Wanzhou affair and the arbitrary detention of the two Michaels have irremediably changed the situation. China’s hostage diplomacy exposed Beijing’s heavy-handed approach and led to some loss of innocence in Ottawa. But even without this sad episode, relations between Canada and China were destined to deteriorate under Mr. Trudeau.
Ever-escalating geopolitical conflicts between the United States and China are forcing Canada to choose sides. Washington sees the “China threat” as the greatest geopolitical challenge of the 21st centurye century. According to the United States, China is seeking to become the world’s greatest economic, technological and possibly military power. And it is ready to steal American technologies, interfere in elections in democratic countries and extend its stranglehold in the Indo-Pacific region to do so. For Mr. Trudeau, it’s the end of recess.
Video captured on the sidelines of the G20 summit this week in Indonesia showing Trudeau being snubbed by Xi for allegedly leaking details of a brief private conversation between the two men to Canadian media, the day before, has traveled around the world and has been analyzed from every angle by experts in international relations. According to the summary of Mr. Trudeau’s entourage, the Prime Minister would have raised “serious concerns about interference activities in Canada”. However, Mr. Xi seems to have another interpretation of this exchange. “The conversation did not go like that,” we hear Mr. Xi Jinping say in a tense tone to Mr. Trudeau.
Some see this video as a stunt by Mr. Xi aimed at embarrassing his Canadian counterpart. “It was designed to be a reprimand and to be a public rebuke,” explained the New York Times former Canadian ambassador to China, David Mulroney. It was very much an uncle’s sermon to a young boy. Others believe that the incident will have allowed Mr. Trudeau, who was firm in front of his interlocutor, to present himself from a new angle.
Criticized during the Meng Wanzhou affair and in its wake for having been too soft, here he is now defending democratic values in front of the greatest dictator in the world. With Canadians increasingly skeptical of China, their Prime Minister is showing the world that Canada will no longer be bullied by Beijing or ignore its repeated abuses of international rules. Politically speaking, Mr. Trudeau emerges rather as a winner.
We are currently witnessing what looks like a power struggle within the Trudeau government to define Canadian policy with China. As ministers Chrystia Freeland and Francois-Philippe Champagne argue for a policy more aligned with that of the United States and based on containment (containment) of China, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly, prefers a more nuanced approach that allows Canada to distinguish itself from its neighbour. “We will challenge China when we have to. We cooperate with China when we have to,” Ms.me Joly during a speech last week in Toronto in which she unveiled the main lines of the new Indo-Pacific strategy that she is preparing to table next month.
However, the long-awaited strategy of Mme Joly risks being quickly overtaken by events. The video that went around the world this week is proof of that.