Yet, just over a year removed from that visit and over the many months during which the much lauded Canada-China Financial Investment Promotion and Protection (FIPA) has sat, waiting for cabinet approval (something that could have been done as far back as last October), and it seems as though the bilateral relationship’s new level appears to be rather flat and very boring.
After he meets with 10 foreign ministers “and colleagues from across the Asia-Pacific region” at the ASEAN conference this week, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird will travel to China. The announcement that Baird would go was included at the bottom of a release from his office on his trip to the ASEAN meetings, and offered little by way of detail on what he might have to discuss with his Chinese counterparts. Baird, the statement said vaguely, will “forge relationships that can benefit Canada’s economic interests while also promoting Canadian values.”
Baird’s office expanded on the latter part a bit Tuesday. Rick Roth, Baird’s press secretary, told me via email the minister will discuss things like the crisis in Syria, Iran’s nuclear program, threats like North Korea, and will take “every appropriate opportunity” to discuss human rights.
On trade specifically, Roth pointed out that China is Canada’s “second largest two-way trading partner after the United States” and that “bilateral trade is increasing rapidly,” and that there was $70 billion in two-way merchandise trade in 2012 – some 7.6 per cent of Canada’s overall trade. And, “by helping Canadian business expand and succeed in the Chinese market, we are also helping to create jobs, growth and prosperity at home, a priority for Canada.”
Which would all sound quite encouraging – and very much in line with the kind of positivity Harper brought to Beijing last year – but for the fact that the Canada-China FIPA has sat untouched and un-ratified. There are possible reasons for that, but none seem quite convincing enough.
One First Nations group is challenging the FIPA in court, alleging that in signing the deal, the government failed to fulfill its duties under section 35 of the Constitution Act, which provides protection for aboriginal rights. The government has argued since that it sees no causal link between the FIPA ratification and “the alleged adverse effects” on the First Nation in question, the Hupacasath. Most of its argument for that is based on the fact that the Chinese don’t currently have any investments in Hupacasath territory.
Inside the Conservative party, too, there is some reticence about striking deals with China. At least three Conservative MPs expressed worry about the Nexen takeover, which saw the Canadian energy company sold to Chinese state-run National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Harold Albrecht wrote to the industry minister to say that allowing the takeover “would not demonstrate examples of free trade or fair trade.” He said it was “an example of the most unfair trade possible: expecting job-creating entrepreneurs to compete against the full resources of a global superpower that appears able to flout the disciplines of currency markets and the most basic standards of human rights.”
And while those letters from MPs didn’t deal with the FIPA directly, polling shows that Canadians at large are wary of a deal with China. In March, Angus Reid found in its poll for the Asia-Pacific Foundation, that while 53 per cent of Canadians were in favour of building a pipeline to facilitate oil export to Asia, only 42 per cent wanted a comprehensive economic partnership with China.
Or it could just be that the FIPA is on the backburner because things are complicated.
While in the 1970s, Canada’s relationship with China was positive it was “almost… without substance,” says professor Gordon Houlden, the director of the University of Alberta’s China Institute, who is in favour of the deal for the protections it would offer Canadian businesses in China, operating in a system he says is sometimes “extraordinarily opaque.” The irony to the relationship as it stands now, he said, is that “as you start getting more substance, you start getting a lot more disputes.”
Still, that’s all speculative, so I asked International Trade Minister Ed Fast’s office Tuesday if they could offer an explanation as to why the FIPA has yet to be ratified. Rudy Husny, Fast’s press secretary said, “the agreement will come into force once both parties complete their domestic ratification process.” So, in other words: no. Let the speculation continue.
Better trade relations with China were supposed to do two things for the Conservatives. Primarily, it was to allow this government to brag about how it expanded trade and opened new opportunities for Canadian companies – the whole “growth” part of the election mantra. Faced with the uncertainty of the Keystone XL approval (and the caveats that might come with it), reaching over the Pacific to China was supposed to give the Conservative government some leverage internationally. First a FIPA, then a pipeline. So long, U.S. dependence.
The knock-on effect of the fact that both are still up in the air at this point is humbling for the Conservatives on the international stage, but most importantly damaging back at home, where they can’t at this point suggest they have made much headway in expanding markets anywhere very serious (the CETA with the EU is also in perpetual limbo). In other words, to this point they’ve not been able to gain the upper hand rhetorically on their political rivals on one of their most important files. They have not built the ammunition they expected they could in order to separate themselves before voters in 2015 as expected, and to be able to bill their party as the one that gets trade done versus one they call anti-trade or the other which they like to say is just kind of generally incompetent.
Now, even if those two parties are exactly as the Conservatives like to describe them, it hardly makes much difference in the end. Those aren’t the parties that made promises, the Conservatives are. While reiterating them on the campaign stump in 2015 is all fine and good, it does tend to remind people about how those promises have yet to be fulfilled.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Colin Horgan
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