New Delhi, Jan 20: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent trade agreement with China was ill-timed, given unresolved security and diplomatic disputes, a report has said.
Concerns over unresolved disputes
The report from Canadian media house National Post said Canada should have delayed deeper trade ties until lingering confrontations, such as the imprisonment of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig to avenge the 2018 detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, and many other such issues, were fully resolved.
Allegations and past losses
The report also cited allegations of Chinese interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections and losses caused by a “little-known Chinese vaccine-maker, CanSino Biologics, to produce a COVID-19 vaccine in May 2020.”
This hush-hush project was unsuccessful — millions of dollars were spent “upgrading a production facility that never made a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine,” the report said, citing another report.
Tariff terms under scrutiny
Canada agreed to a most-favoured-nation tariff rate of 6.1 per cent on Chinese-made electric vehicles, expecting China to lower tariffs on Canadian canola seed to about 15 per cent on March 1, the report said.
“Canada’s deal with China was a poor decision. It’s pretty clear that China, and not Canada, got a significantly better deal. The still-very-green prime minister somehow believes he’s identified the key to dealing with the Chinese Communists on a level playing field: give them everything they want, and more,” the media house said.
Public perception and geopolitical context
The report highlighted that most Canadians remain distrustful of China as a trade partner, adding, “Prime Minister Mark Carney clearly felt differently.”
PM Carney’s trip happened because his “relationship with the US, the world’s largest economy and our biggest trading partner, has soured,” the report said.
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The Prime Minister felt the only viable solution was to increase ties with China, the world’s second-largest economy and Canada’s second-biggest trading partner, according to the report.
US President Donald Trump said that the renegotiation process of the Canada–US–Mexico Agreement “was of little importance,” the report cited him.
(Disclaimer: Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
