China trip set to begin
Trudeau, Xi face off on future of trade
Smiles and warm handshakes, ceremony and splendour - all of it will be on vivid display on Monday when Chinese Premier Li Keqiang extends a red-carpet welcome to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
But the spectacle that will envelop Trudeau’s arrival at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People will shroud a starker reality: Canada’s uphill fight to forge a fair trading relationship with a big, ambitious country that plays by its own rules.
The government is playing down the possibility that this trip would mark the start of formal free trade talks, but the prime minister will be looking to attract Chinese investors and move economic relations forward. China is eager to get on with actual negotiations after several long rounds of “exploratory” discussions with Canada.
But Canada needs something else first: guarantees from China the talks won’t be strictly business.
Senior government officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, say Canada wants China to agree to a framework for free trade talks that will include its so-called progressive trade agenda - environmental and labour, gender and governance issues.
International Trade Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Saturday that Canada has raised those issues in exploratory talks in order to gauge the reaction of the Chinese.
Chinese officials have repeatedly said any free trade deal with Canada should be divorced of human rights considerations.
But Canada wants to continue to add what it sees as this broader progressive trade agenda that it successfully entrenched in its free trade deal with Europe and in the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Pacific Rim countries, not including China.
As one of the architects of the current world trading order after the Second World War, Canada wants to protect and advance the rules of progressive international trade. Exactly how Canada persuades China to take a broader
view has become a major preoccupation across many federal departments, officials say.
“This is our turf in many respects. We’re not really going to let anyone else rewrite the rules,” one official said.
The recently completed rounds of the exploratory talks were “about gathering intel, about understanding the situation.”
Canada isn’t interested in negotiating a basic goods-and-services agreement similar to
Australia’s pact with China, nor is it interested in negotiating piecemeal, sector by sector, the official said. That’s because if Canada and China strike a deal in aerospace, for instance, the principles that guide that agreement wouldn’t necessarily be applicable when a dispute arises in another, say agriculture.
Champagne said in a recent speech that Canada wants to establish a broad framework “where issues can be addressed and rule of law is paramount.”