Internal documents suggest Trudeau wants China blocked from Pacific Rim trade deal
While the Liberals insist a Pacific Rim trade bloc should welcome any country that meets its standards, an internal document suggests Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wants China kept out of the deal.
Trudeau’s comments stem from a call he held last fall shortly after the swearing-in of former U.K. prime minister Liz Truss, who has since been replaced by Rishi Sunak.
A Canadian diplomat in London sent Ottawa an “unofficial readout” on
Sept. 11, 2022 that summarized their call, which the Canadian Press obtained through the Access to Information Act.
The document states that Truss believed America and the European Union should be part of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, also called the CPTPP, a bloc that includes Canada and will soon involve Britain.
“PMLT mused that the U.S. and EU should join CPTPP. PMJT used this opportunity to note that this is exactly why it is important to have such a high bar for the U.K. getting into the CPTPP — so it makes it [too] hard for China to get in. PMLT agreed,” reads the internal document.
The language seemed abnormally frank to Carleton University economics professor Meredith Lilly, who served as former prime minister Stephen Harper’s trade adviser.
“It is certainly unusual to see this, and I don’t think that this is something that would be phrased in this way in public dialogue,” she said.
Canada has insisted that it has no stance on whether China should be able to join the trade bloc, instead saying that any country can be admitted if it meets criteria set by members of the group, including unionization rights and environmental targets.
Canada’s Trade Minister Mary Ng repeated that message when asked directly about Chinese membership in the group last Friday.
“CPTPP is a consensus partnership among all of the trading partners. And we’re going to have to work through how we treat the accession requests,” she told a conference held by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
“Compliance and enforceability around environmental standards, standards for labour, the inclusive nature of it, a track record of being a trading partner that is in compliance with the rules — those are the kinds of things that [we] have in the conversation.”