Carney sets out to deepen ties with China. Has the threat landscape changed?
On the sidelines of the APEC summit this coming week, Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to meet with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, in the hopes of deepening economic and trade ties.
PM says he will raise concerns about foreign interference in meeting with Xi Jinping
Racy Rafique · CBC News
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On the sidelines of the APEC summit this coming week, Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to meet with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, in hopes of deepening economic and trade ties.
It's the second meeting between the two leaders in less than a year, and this time it will take place in Shenzen, China, where the summit is being held on Wednesday and Thursday.
While Carney has been working to rebuild Canada's economic and trade relationship with China, experts warn that it doesn't mean the threat to Canada has weakened.
Canada's relationship with China might have improved, but the "serious national and economic security threats to Canada ... have not fundamentally changed," said Vina Nadjibulla, co-founder and CEO of the Centre for Strategic Statecraft, a new non-partisan think-tank with offices in Vancouver and Ottawa.
"What has changed is not China's behaviour but Canada's strategic circumstances and the Carney government's approach," she told CBC News. "With growing uncertainty in our relationship with the United States, there are compelling reasons to stabilize relations with Beijing, pursue economic opportunities and diversify our trade."
In an interview on Rosemary Barton Live that aired Sunday, Jody Thomas, national security adviser to Justin Trudeau when he was prime minister, echoed Nadjibulla's views, adding that "the prime minister is pursuing an economic relationship, I hope, and I think with the understanding of the national security threat posed by China."
Speaking to reporters in Montreal on Tuesday, Carney said he will raise concerns about foreign interference in Canada, adding, "The advantage of these meetings is you can raise issues directly and frankly."
Carney said he would be bringing up the importance that Canada attaches "to the non-interference in our affairs by China and other countries."
The economic and trade relationship between Canada and China "is something that is deepening but has clear guardrails in terms of the areas in which we're involved," he said.
Nvidia spy scandal implications
It's hard to talk about national security threats from China without pointing to the much-publicized affair between Jensen Huang, who resigned on Thursday as CEO of chip-making giant Nvidia, and an alleged Chinese spy.
For Nvidia, the turmoil over the sex-and-spy scandal and Huang's resignation have cost in excess of $1 trillion US in market value. The political ramifications for U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration remain to be seen.
The Nvidia scandal has wiped away $1T in value. What that means for your investments
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"What I hope doesn't get lost in all of this is the incredible vulnerability of this kind of concentration in our industry, in our economy and in our politics," former U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai told CBC News chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
"How vulnerable you become when you are so reliant on one company that makes one particular product that is apparently there to prop up the major growth industry in your economy. We here in the United States find ourselves in an incredibly precarious place."
WATCH | Former USTR on the political implications of the Nvidia scandal:
Is the Nvidia scandal fracturing Trump's administration?
2 hours ago|
Duration
9:32
Katherine Tai, former U.S. trade representative under president Joe Biden, weighs in on the blame game between Trump's cabinet secretaries as the fallout over Nvidia continues. Tai tells CBC News chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton that the timing of the scandal post-midterms is not a coincidence.Carney shared a similar observation at Tuesday's news conference in Montreal.
Referring to China, Carney said, "In terms of the security risks of our partnership, they are much, much, much less than the security risks, for example, [faced by] the United States."
But Nadjibulla said the situation is a bit more nuanced than that.
Vina Nadjibulla, co-founder and CEO of the Centre for Strategic Statecraft, a new non-partisan think-tank, is shown in Ottawa in June 2023. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
While the U.S. and China are "peer competitors" engaged in a global struggle for economic, technological and military leadership, Canada is in a fundamentally different position, she said.
"We are a much smaller, more open economy, with considerably less leverage in dealing with Beijing. That makes us more vulnerable to certain forms of economic coercion and political pressure, not less."
But even then, the question is not whether Canada faces the same level of risk as the U.S., Nadjibulla said. The question is whether Canada has the tools and capacity to manage the risks it does face.
Former national security adviser Jody Thomas points to Canada's own recent experience with alleged Chinese spying: the Canadian NATO intern who was arrested in July on charges of espionage allegedly tied to China.
Thomas said that incident and the Nvidia situation shed light on how China operates — but also how Canada needs to adapt to potential threats in the artificial intelligence space.
"What I think it means for Canada is that the approach the prime minister is taking with having a minister responsible for AI, setting up the [National Council on Artificial Intelligence], advising in terms of how to use that AI, how to regulate AI and how to ensure that the safety guardrails are developed."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Racy Rafique is a producer for CBC's national television program Power & Politics. She also works as a writer covering federal politics for CBC's parliamentary bureau from time to time. Racy was a 2023 CBC Joan Donaldson Scholar and is a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University. You can reach her at racy.rafique@cbc.ca.
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