Trade, human rights on agenda for Trudeau’s China visit

Statement from PM’s office doesn’t mention free trade

Trade and human rights are among the topics Prime Minister Justin Trudeau intends to raise during a visit to China next month.

Trudeau’s office finalized details on Sunday of the trip, which will take place between Dec. 3 to Dec. 7.

A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office says Trudeau will promote a progressive trade agenda and tourism initiatives.

The Trudeau government has been wrestling in recent months with whether to launch talks on reaching a free trade agreement with China.

Sunday’s statement made no mention of free trade and government officials have said no decision has been made on whether to pursue such negotiations.

The government recently consulted with businesses, academics and civil society groups and a report of the talks warned that such a deal could kill Canadian jobs and make it difficult to compete with China’s lax labour and environmental standards.

“A strong relationship with China is essential to creating jobs, strengthening the middle class, and growing the Canadian economy,” Trudeau said in Sunday’s statement. “I look forward to meeting again with China’s leaders to strengthen our relationship and set the stage for even greater trade and investment co-operation.”

The statement also said Canada intends to continue frank dialogue with China on topics like human rights and good governance.

Trudeau is to start his visit in Beijing where he is to meet a number of Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping. He is scheduled to move on to the city of Guangzhou where he’ll give the keynote speech at a global business conference and meet with various business leaders about trade and investment.

Trudeau made his first official visit to China last year.

China is Canada’s second biggest trading partner. Canada’s exports to China totalled nearly $21 billion in merchandise last year.

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Mark Taylor is a busy man — tasked with delivering a leader, 87 candidates and a campaign war chest for a party that talks big, dreams bigger, but so far has been unable to roll up its sleeves and get much done.

“I’ve seen the ebbs and flows of parties through my history and I’m just really excited about the trajectory this party is on,” said the new executive director of the Alberta Party.

“It’s not just we want to have 87 candidates. I want to have 87 nomination races. I’m really looking for in the neighbourhood of 200 candidates.”

It’s an auspicious target for a party that bills itself as the natural home of the centrist voter — socially progressive and fiscally conservative — and sees an opportunity to come up the middle in the blood feud between Premier Rachel Notley’s NDP and Jason Kenney’s United Conservatives.

But in the bottom-line business of politics, the Alberta Party has lagged in every metric since it rebooted its mandate on a centrist axis in 2010.

In the 2012 election, it ran 38 candidates but polled just 1.3 per cent of the vote and got shut out. In 2015, it ran three fewer candidates and polled 2.2 per cent, but did manage to elect then-leader Greg Clark in Calgary Elbow.

The party doesn’t release membership numbers, but fundraising over the first nine months of this year has been poor — just over $77,000. The party didn’t contest a 2016 byelection in Calgary and isn’t fielding a candidate in the upcoming byelection in Calgary Lougheed. There are signs of progress. Clark’s one-person caucus recently became two when NDP Calgary backbencher Karen McPherson crossed the floor. More than 400 people came to the party’s annual general meeting Nov. 18. There were 59 last year.

A new board of directors has representatives from across the province. Taylor said they have been rebuilding their constituency associations and now have more than 60.

New blood has come on board including former conservative strategists Stephen Carter and Susan Elliott, as well as former PC president Katherine O’Neill.

Clark, say sources in the party, acceded to suggestions earlier this month that a fresh face was needed to galvanize the party, so he stepped down to allow for a leadership vote set for Feb. 7.

Carter pushed for a leadership race that he sees as a spark to go with the nuts and bolts of building constituencies and finding good candidates.

“(The Alberta party) has to decide it wants to grow. It has to decide it wants to be a real political party,” said Carter, who shepherded successful election wins for Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi and former PC premier Alison Redford.

“There was a time (the party) was going to do politics differently. I appreciate the sentiment, but politics is politics.

“You have to be in this game to win this game.”

The revitalization is getting a boost from so-called Red Tories, who are unhappy with the renewed social conservatism of Kenney’s United Conservatives. The Alberta Party’s general meeting included a number of former PCs, including former cabinet ministers Doug Griffiths and Stephen Khan.