(Ottawa) Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly is sending her deputy to China to try to thaw relations with Beijing, a government source said Monday.
Ottawa wants to “normalize bilateral relations with China” and the trip of Deputy Foreign Minister David Morrison to the Asian giant “is part of this perspective,” this source told AFP, under cover of the ‘anonymity.
This trip should take place in the coming days.
Bilateral relations have been strained since the arrest in 2018 by Canadian authorities of a manager of the Chinese giant Huawei and the imprisonment in retaliation by China of two Canadian nationals.
Although all three have since been released, tensions have continued, with Beijing criticizing Ottawa in particular for its alignment with Washington’s China policy. Canadian authorities, for their part, regularly accuse China of interference.
Mélanie Joly has not visited China since taking office as foreign minister in 2021, but she met her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in February, on the sidelines of the Munich security conference, in Germany.
“The current difficulties” in bilateral relations “are not what China wants to see,” Wang Yi said.
“We hope that Canada will stop promoting the theory of the Chinese threat and will stop spreading false information about alleged interference by China in Canada’s internal affairs,” he told Mélanie Joly.
For her part, the Canadian minister spoke of the need to “pursue pragmatic diplomacy” with China.