Carney lands in Beijing looking to land deals and mend fences broken in the Trudeau years
OTTAWA — As Prime Minister Mark Carney lands Wednesday in Beijing to kick off a potentially important diplomatic trip to China and the Mideast, analysts say the mission removes any doubt that Canadian foreign policy has taken a clear pivot towards trade and investment since the departure of Justin Trudeau.
Carney’s trip to China and then Qatar, foreign policy specialists say, is clear evidence that Canada’s relationships abroad are now focused on boosting the Canadian economy, as Ottawa tries to fill in the gaping export hole left by the Trump tariffs on key Canadian sectors. During the Trudeau years of 2015-25, Canadian foreign policy included a number of non-economic priorities, such as the international advancement of gender equality, democracy, human rights and other social issues.
Trudeau’s highlighting of these social or democracy issues was often unwanted and sometimes seen as preachy by other countries, including by growing economic powerhouses China and India. Carney is now trying to thaw some of those relationships that had turned frosty.
Ottawa’s new approach to foreign policy is heavily influenced by the lost exports to the U.S. over the last year, said Thomas Juneau, an international affairs specialist at the University of Ottawa, but adds that it’s likely that Trudeau and Carney would have had different priorities anyway. “I think there’s absolutely been a sharp turn since Carney has been in power.”
After the April election, Carney wasted little time in signalling that his government would have a different approach in its relations abroad.
In his May mandate letter to his cabinet ministers, Carney said the new Liberal government, in sharp contrast to its predecessor, would prioritize the pursuit of a stronger economy in both domestic and foreign affairs. The document, which spans just a little over two pages, made no mention of feminism, which Carney has said is not a term he would use to describe his foreign policy, unlike Trudeau .
“We must redefine Canada’s international, commercial and security relationships,” he wrote.
In October, during a pre-budget speech at the University of Ottawa, Carney set a new target in saying that Canada will aim to double its exports to non-U.S. markets within the next decade. If accomplished, that would generate an extra $300-billion in trade.
A month later, Carney became the first Canadian prime minister to visit the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy, oil-rich Gulf state with a dubious human rights record. He met with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and signed agreements to boost trade and investment.
As part of that same trip, Carney attended a summit of the Group of 20 world leaders in Johannesburg, South Africa, and made it clear that Canadian foreign policy had started focussing on countries and regions that presented the greatest opportunities for trade and investment. He said more established Canadian trade partners such as Europe, the United Kingdom and Mexico would be prioritized ahead of, for example, Africa because the latter offered fewer economic opportunities. “We have a responsibility to have the highest return,” said Carney.
This week, Carney is travelling first to China, the world’s second most populous country and Canada’s number two export market for the first visit to Beijing by a Canadian prime minister since 2017. He will then travel to Qatar, which is rich in wealth and experience in the energy sector. A trip to India this spring is also a possibility, sources say, although nothing has been finalized.
Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa, said Carney’s trips show that the “virtue signalling” of the Trudeau era has been replaced with a clear foreign policy focus on trade and investment.
“Every trip he’s made abroad has been to hustle up more business for Canada,” he said of Carney.
Tyler Meredith, a senior policy advisor in the Trudeau government, said he understands Carney’s surprising level of ambition and focus on foreign affairs, in light of the reduced exports to the U.S. This year will be an important one for the future of the Canadian economy as the government looks to use infrastructure, increased defence spending and expanded non-U.S. trade to fill in the gap left by the Trump tariffs, Meredith said.
“We will have to do more business.”
Trudeau, analysts say, had lofty goals beyond trade and investment.
In 2017, he advanced a new strategy for foreign aid programs that included a vow to allocate at least 95 per cent of Canada’s bilateral aid to projects that featured the aims of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. As that policy solidified in the ensuing years and was promoted by Trudeau and foreign affairs ministers such as Chrystia Freeland and Francois-Philippe Champagne, relations became frostier with a number of countries that felt lectured by Canada and didn’t appreciate it.
On gender equality, the government spent hundreds of millions in supporting the rights of women and LGBTQI+ groups in developing countries. Trudeau also appointed Canada’s first Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security, whose goal was to advise on the role of women in peace and global security matters. And perhaps most significantly, Trudeau and his team sometimes made it clear to trade partners that they were lagging behind Canada in addressing some of these social issues.
Sen. Peter Boehm, chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, said the current focus on trade and investment hasn’t changed that much from the Trudeau years. There’s been a greater emphasis on non-American trade since Carney took office, the former diplomat said, because of the Trump tariffs but trade has always been a foreign policy priority. Boehm pointed to Canada’s talks with the MERCOSUR countries in South America as evidence of the Trudeau government’s interest in advancing trade and investment.
But the University of Ottawa’s Juneau said Trudeau’s rhetoric on feminism and other non-economic issues was consistent and pointless because it accomplished nothing, while making trade and foreign relations more difficult. “Canada has absolutely zero influence on (anybody’s) human rights’ record.”
In the cases of China and India, both of which represented frosty relationships during the Trudeau years, Carney is signalling that the government is “turning the page,” Hampson said.
Beyond the change in focus, some analysts say it’s also a pivot that foreign affairs is clearly a Canadian priority. In the two decades under Harper and Trudeau between 2006 and the 2025 election, Canada had a rotating cast of 11 foreign ministers.
Despite Carney’s efforts, however, the government may find that rapprochement with countries such as China and India is difficult.
With China, for example, the relationships between Beijing and western governments have long been challenged by the differences in their political systems and values. With Canada, the relationship took a sharp turn for the worse in December, 2018 when Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver by Canadian authorities at the request of their American counterparts. The U.S. wanted Meng, chief financial officer of telecom giant Huawei, a crown jewel of corporate China, extradited so that she could be charged with misleading financial institutions about her company’s dealings with Iran, which may have violated U.S. sanctions.
Just days later, China arbitrarily detained Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig, a geopolitical advisor and former diplomat, and businessman Michael Spavor and accused them of espionage. The so-called “two Michaels” were held in difficult conditions for more than 1,000 days before being released the same day that Meng was freed from house arrest in Canada.
But that was neither the beginning nor the end of hostilities between Canada and China.
The Canadian governments under both Trudeau and Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper had done and said things to anger Beijing. Harper had insisted that Canada would not “sell out its values” to gain trade with China.
Under Trudeau, Canada was critical of China’s use of the death penalty against Canadians convicted of drug offences, trying to intimidate and influence Canadian politicians and unfair trade practices. Canada was also not shy about sanctioning Chinese officials for human rights abuses at home, including repression in Tibet and elsewhere, and against minority groups such as Uyghurs and other Muslim communities.
In 2024, Canada followed the lead of the U.S. and some other western countries in slapping 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs), an important strategic sector for Beijing Those EVs, well regarded and cheaper than those made in the west, could have threatened the Canadian auto industry and relations with the U.S.
Beijing responded by slapping 100 per cent tariffs on key Canadian exports canola oil, canola meal, rapeseed oil, peas, and 25 per cent tariffs on pork, fish and seafood products.
As Carney prepared this week to board for Beijing, Canadian government officials were keen to tamp expectations that any type of comprehensive trade deal would emerge from the visit.
Many analysts say a broad deal between the two countries is unlikely without Chinese EVs gaining significantly better access to the Canadian market. There are lofty hurdles however. The Canadian auto industry charges that Beijing’s economic model involves massive subsidies to produce low-cost EVs and other goods, then dumping those products on foreign markets, leaving those markets with a weakened domestic industry and a reliance on Chinese producers.
A recent report by TD Economics expressed a similar view, saying that Beijing’s $230-billion in subsidies to its automakers has caused overcapacity that have given Chinese producers an unfair advantage.
There’s also the possibility of upsetting the upcoming review of North American trade. The existence of Chinese EVs in Canada would likely trigger a strong response from the U.S. and Mexico, and there’s no comparison between the importance of China and the U.S. in Canadian trade. According to 2024 data, 75.9 per cent of Canadian merchandise exports go to the U.S., and about 4.1 per cent bound for China.
Carney’s stop in Qatar, and his earlier visit to the UAE, follows a similar, although less complicated, rationale to increase trade and investment.
The chances on finding a match or two, however, may be notably greater. The oil-rich Gulf states have piles of money to invest and experience with big energy projects, said Hampson, while Canada needs to increase private sector investment, particularly in energy infrastructure.
“There’s lots of opportunities,” said Hampson. “We need pipelines.”
Saudi Arabia is also apparently not on Canada’s no-visit list.
Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu met Tuesday with Khalid bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih, Saudi’s minister of investment, to discuss, according to a government press release, industry and investment partnerships that could advance the two countries’ attempts to diversify their trade.
If a visit to India does take place this spring or later, Canada’s new prime minister will need to mend more fences. Carney took a step last year when he used Canada’s hosting of a G7 summit to invite Modi, a clear offer to move on.
Foreign policy specialists said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among those foreign leaders who didn’t appreciate Trudeau’s social focus, nor what critics dubbed a largely “performative” visit in 2018 that may be best remembered through photos of the Trudeau family in various Indian regalia.
Modi, widely viewed as a Hindu nationalist, reportedly also didn’t appreciate Trudeau’s 2016 comment that the Canadian cabinet featured more Sikhs than its Indian counterpart.
The bilateral relationship took another bad turn three years ago when Trudeau publicly accused India of being involved in the killing of a Canadian Sikh separatist leader in Canada. Diplomats from both countries were expelled.
If Carney intends to take important steps toward improving Canada’s trade and investment woes, he’ll need to expel some of the bilateral problems from the recent past.
National Post
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