PM and the Dalai Lama
It’s been building for some time, and maybe the protest against Keystone XL was just the final straw, but it’s clearly over between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Dalai Lama.
As Harper prepares for his second state visit to China in mid-february to discuss oil exports and greater economic ties, it can be assumed his government has moved beyond its enthrallment with the Tibetan spiritual leader in its early days in power.
The Dalai Lama is a lot of good things. What he is not, however, is able to buy millions of barrels of Canadian oil, or shiploads of lumber, wheat or beef. Or invest billions of dollars in Canada’s economy. The Beijing government does all of those things. It is Canada’s second largest trading partner, with the value of merchandise moving between the countries reaching $57.7 billion in 2010.
These days, foreign policy under Harper’s Conservatives appears to be driven far more by economics than by concern over human rights. What happened? Who got to them? • Lots of things — most linked to the Canadian economy. • Lots of people — most linked to Canada’s trade-dependent economy.
It is well documented how Harper’s hard-line position toward China after he was first elected in 2006 led Beijing to cool on a relationship that flourished through the Team Canada missions by the previous Liberal governments.
From 2006 to 2009, notes University Alberta economics Prof. Wenran Jiang, there were no major Chinese investments in Canada. Overall trade between the countries tripled from 2001 to 2010 but, as Jiang points out, Canada actually declined in terms of its overall percentage of China’s foreign trade during the decade.
After the financial crisis rocked the North American economy in 2008, the offers of honorary citizenship for the Dalai Lama and private Parliament Hill meetings between Harper and the spiritual leader were all in the past.
When the champion of Tibetan independence arrived in Vancouver for a September 2009 peace conference, neither Harper nor any senior member of his government met him.
Since 2009, when Harper made his first visit to Beijing, Canada- China relations appear to be making up for lost time.
Jiang says it was largely the result of lobbying from industry groups that questioned the wisdom of Ottawa’s aggravating the world’s fastest-growing economies.
“After a few years in power, the Tories became less ideological and less partisan,” Ji- ang said. “They became more experienced.”
Today, there is no more visible sign of improving SinoCanadian relations than in the oilpatch. Since 2009, China’s state- owned oil companies have invested $16 billion in oilsands, pipelines and shale oil and gas assets, by Jiang’s calculations.
They’ve recently started taking outright control of energy companies, beginning with mid-size oil and gas producer Daylight Energy last fall.
About the time Sinopec was buying Daylight, the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Prize laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, made news by joining activists to oppose construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from the oilsands to Texas.
Harper, apparently still prone to commenting on domestic politics of Canada’s trading partners, had called U.S. approval of Keystone “a no-brainer” only to see it delayed until after President Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign to avoid fallout from supporters in the environmental community.
If Harper snubbed the Dalai Lama, he got a dose of the same medicine when his own ideological soulmate, Washington, delayed the Keystone decision over politics. He responded by stepping up federal efforts to champion diversity of oil markets.
Promoting Asian markets as a more lucrative destination for Canadian crude gave the Tories a chance to thumb their nose at the dithering Americans.
Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver have pushed back hard against environmentalists fighting the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast.
If the Dalai Lama is symbolic of the concerns over China’s policies, then Northern Gateway represents the economic opportunities in a country with more than 1.3 billion people.
The lopsided balance of trade — Canada exported $13.2 billion of goods in 2010 and imported $44.5 billion — could be mitigated with increased oil exports.
After the quarrelsome start with Beijing, Harper’s Conservatives have adopted a probusiness approach to China, and observers say human rights are rarely mentioned at senior levels.
In a letter from the Nobel Prize winners against Keystone, the authors noted development of a pipeline supporting oilsands “would be wrong for humanity.”
In the news release to announce his trip to China, Harper did not mention humanity or human rights but was effusive about improving the relationship with China “by focusing on deepening economic ties.”
Oh yeah, it’s so over with the Dalai Lama.