Foreign Affairs Minister, Melanie Joly, has warned that Canadians should consider the “geopolitical risks” of doing business in China amid increasing expectations for the policy change she confirmed would be coming “within a month.”
The Minister gave the warning during a talk for the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She said: “What I would like to say to Canadians doing business in and with China: you need to be clear-eyed.
“The (decisions) you take as businesspeople are your own. As Canada’s top diplomat, my job is to tell you that there are geopolitical risks linked to doing business with the country.”
During her speech, Joly revealed the plan of Canada to deepen its ties with the Indo-Pacific region — and to employ a tougher approach to threats emanating from that area. She said the “full, funded” Indo-Pacific strategy “will be launched within a month.”
The announcement came after Global News reported that Canadian intelligence officials have warned Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that China has allegedly been targeting Canada with a broad campaign of foreign interference, which included funding a secret network of no fewer than 11 federal candidates running in the 2019 election.
Speaking recently, Joly gave the assurance that the government “will do more to tackle foreign interference.”
She said: “We won’t let any foreign actor meddle in our democracy. Period.”
Joly added that Canada needs to address foreign influence at home and in the “digital sphere”
She said the government would invest in “deepening our understanding of how China thinks, operates and plans. How it exerts influence in the region and around the world.”
She said major embassies in Canada’s network will have “dedicated experts” to strengthen the government’s understanding of the goals and challenges of China.
She said: “This will become a focus of our diplomatic effort.”
While Joly gave few details about the plan and did not reveal how much money will be budgeted for it, she assured the audience that Canada’s new approach to China “will be outlined” in the Indo-Pacific strategy that would be released next month.
She said: “We can’t have an Indo-Pacific strategy without it.”
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