Chinese ambassador: Labour standards a non-starter in free trade negotiations
OTTAWA — China’s ambassador has firmly rejected a key pillar of the Trudeau government’s trade agenda, branding its attempts to entrench labour standards in a free trade pact as a non-starter for his country.
Ambassador Lu Shaye said Tuesday that Canada’s “so-called” progressive trade agenda has no place in the free trade agreement the two countries have been pursuing in fits and starts for several years.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been unable to persuade China’s leaders to formally entrench labour, gender, environment and governance issues in the negotiating framework of the free trade talks.
Trudeau spent four days in China in December, but left without a formal commitment to moving the free trade talks past the exploratory phase into formal negotiations.
Without elaborating, Lu said the two countries have reached “consensus on extensive issues, but [there] still remain some differences on the so-called progressive trade factors.”
“For the Chinese side, we have stressed many times ... we really want so-called, non-trade-related factors or issues to not be included in the negotiation of an FTA,” Lu said via an interpreter at the Chinese embassy in Ottawa.
China is taking note of how Canada is pursuing the same agenda in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But Lu said Canada’s insistence on pushing labour standards in the NAFTA talks with Mexico to raise wages would only lead to the shuttering of Mexican auto plants and lost jobs. “If the Mexico side accepts such kind of standards, many of the factories have to close down and their workers have to be laid off,” he said. “So, for the negotiation of the FTA [between Canada and China], it is the national conditions that really matters.”
There appears to be little forward momentum towards the start of formal negotiations between Beijing and Ottawa on a free trade pact.
Joseph Pickerill, spokesman for International Trade Minister François-Philippe Champagne, said Tuesday there was “nothing to report right now on trade talks,” but he noted there’s ongoing political engagement. He cited the recent visits to China by Champagne, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and this week’s trade mission of Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and representatives from 60 cultural industries.
“This is one of the most complex but also potentially lucrative markets in the world, and that requires a smarter, longer-term and more strategic approach to engagement with China,” said Pickerill. “As the minister says, trade is over decades and this particular relationship, expanding economic engagement will take the time it takes to get it right.”