Next ambassador to China to play critical role

Appointment will reflect superpower’s growing importance to Canada

OTTAWA – Speculation is mounting in policy circles that Canada’s next ambassador to China won’t come from the foreign service, but instead will be a political appointee.

If true, it would mark the first such appointment to China and offer a clear signal of the superpower’s growing importance to Canada — while adding to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s growing list of friends and allies who now hold diplomatic posts.

Despite concerns about China’s human rights record and obstructionist positions it has taken on international crises such as Syria, the Asian nation has emerged as Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the United States and a major source of foreign investment — including $10 billion pumped into Alberta’s oilsands and B.C.’s shale gas deposits.

As a result, the Conservative government has put a premium on developing good relations with China in recent years, and Beijing is now seen as one of the most important and complicated Canadian diplomatic postings — perhaps even more than Washington.

“Obviously our relationship with the U.S. is key,” said former Conservative trade minister Stockwell Day. “But given what’s happening in Europe and where the growth of Canada’s GDP is coming from and will come from, namely Asia and China, it’s obviously a very key appointment.”

Managing the relationship in Beijing these past three years has been career foreign-service officer David Mulroney.

Fluent in Mandarin and possessing vast experience at the highest levels of federal government, including having served as Harper’s foreign policy adviser, Mulroney is seen as a key reason the relationship has evolved as well as it has. Mulroney is expected to return to Canada in a few months, leaving a big hole in this country’s foreign representation at an important juncture in Sino-Canadian relations.

The feeling from some experts is the government now recognizes the time has come for Beijing to receive the same treatment as the U.S. and Europe, with a political appointment.