:
I call the meeting to order.
Welcome to the fourth meeting of the House of Commons Special Committee on the Canada—People's Republic of China Relationship.
I've heard skiing described as a series of linked recoveries, and I think that also describes our process for putting these sessions together late on Tuesday evening. We've had to do a bit of playmaking along the way here, but we'll go through the preliminaries for the benefit of the people on Zoom. We'll get that done, and then I think we'll also have a decision to make around the vote that's expected a bit later this evening.
Pursuant to the order of reference of May 16, 2022, the committee is meeting on its study of Canada-People's Republic of China relations.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. For the benefit of the witnesses and members, please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and then please mute yourself when you're not speaking. For interpretation, for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French audio. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.
I'll remind meeting participants that all comments should be addressed through the chair.
For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand if we're in that kind of a session. For members on Zoom, use the “raise hand” function. I'll keep an eye on the screen for you. Of course, we'll try to maintain a speaking order as best we can.
Before we welcome our witnesses, I believe Mr. Chong wishes to raise a point.
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Well, let's seek it. Is everybody in agreement? Do we have unanimous consent for that?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chair: I think we're in good shape. Thank you very much.
I'd like to welcome witnesses for our first hour.
Oh, there's one other thing before I forget. In our second panel, Dr. Sophie Richardson from Human Rights Watch, who you will see was scheduled to be here, unfortunately did not receive the proper headset in time to participate, and for purposes of interpretation, we have to make sure that the right equipment is being used. The clerk is making arrangements to have Dr. Richardson, who's a very valued witness in this process, appear at our next session—just to flag that for you.
Welcoming our witnesses for the first hour, as an individual, we have Dr. David Curtis Wright, associate professor of history at the University of Calgary, and as an individual, Guy Saint-Jacques, consultant and director.
Mr. Saint-Jacques, I believe we'll start with you for five minutes or less.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Translation]
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, members of the Special Committee on the Canada-People's Republic of China Relationship.
Thank you for inviting me to appear before you. My presentation will be mainly in English, but I will be happy to answer questions in French.
[English]
Let me start first with the China of Xi Jinping.
As you know, the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is ongoing. While we know that Xi Jinping will get a third mandate as secretary general of the party, the only suspense is whether he will have to compromise with other factions in the makeup of the standing committee of the politburo. Also, will he get a new title, chairman or leader of the people, which would give him status similar to that of Mao Zedong?
Based on his speech at the opening of the session, we know he is not changing course, as his goal remains to make China the greatest superpower by 2049. He warned CCP members to be ready to “withstand high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms”. He stressed also the need to tell the China story, to promote China's narrative, to present a China that is credible and respectable, and to better show China's culture to the world.
[Translation]
We also have to recognize that China has become much more influential in international organizations, where it is trying to control the debate, change the norms to its advantage and avoid criticism of its practices and policies. Most recently, this happened at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where China and its supporters managed to prevent a debate on the report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Bachelet, on the situation in Xinjiang.
[English]
Let me now turn to the bilateral relationship. Despite the release of Meng Wanzhou and the two Michaels one year ago, our relationship with China is still very difficult, with almost no political dialogue. China keeps saying that Canada must learn from its mistakes. This illustrates how difficult it has become for all western countries to engage with Chinese diplomats, as they reject any criticism and they follow the instruction of Xi Jinping to push back.
The good news is that China has agreed to the nomination of Jennifer May as Canada's new ambassador to China. Mrs. May is a career diplomat who will do well in Beijing because of her relevant prior experience and her competencies, including in Mandarin, and I wish her the best of luck.
Ottawa has been struggling with how to deal with China. We were first promised, a few years back, a revised engagement strategy with China by Minister Champagne, but the process got derailed. It then morphed into an Indo-Pacific strategy that has been working on for a year now. We learned recently that, after all, it won't be unveiled before the goes to the APEC summit next month, so that's another delay.... This is puzzling, to say the least.
While Ottawa is faced with the challenge of dealing with a bully that does not respect international law, it must still find ways to deal with it and push back when its values and interests are threatened. This should normally lead to an engagement strategy that is much more strategic and limited to areas where it is in our interest to pursue co-operation with China, assuming, of course, that it wants to entertain a more limited relationship.
For example, on the environment, Canada has already a reputable record of providing assistance. We could provide China with clean technologies, liquefied natural gas and green or blue hydrogen to help China reduce its coal addiction. On public health and pandemics, Canada should continue to collaborate with China, especially to ensure it doesn't cut corners. Nuclear proliferation is another area that requires more discussion.
[Translation]
It's also crucial that Canada work closely with its allies to develop common strategies to oppose China's abhorrent behaviour. One way to do this would be to strengthen the multilateral system and ensure that UN organizations, including the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, play their part and can be used to counter China.
In this respect, I was very encouraged by last week's speech by Minister before the Brookings Institution in Washington, where she emphasized the need to reduce our vulnerability to totalitarian regimes, both in trade and politically.
I teach a course in Taiwan history at the University of Calgary. Every other year, I teach it. I'm now completing a book on the White Terror in Taiwan, or Chiang Kai-shek's crackdown on suspected Communist agents between 1947 and 1986 or so.
I've been thinking and worrying about Taiwan for over four decades now. I first went to Taiwan in 1980 when I was still a teenager, and I have been criss-crossing the Pacific to and from that beautiful island ever since. I am still as besotted with it today as I was in September 1980, but now I worry more than ever about mainland China's military threat to the island.
In the free and democratic world, we feel an easy and natural affinity with fellow democratic countries and societies and long deeply to be in solidarity with them and protect them, if we can, against threats by non-democratic and anti-democratic dictatorships, but ironically and tragically, some of the steps that democratic countries wish to take towards protecting Taiwan's democracy may in fact achieve just the opposite result.
As far as Taiwan today is concerned, are high-profile visits by political bigwigs from democratic countries the best way to support Taiwan? What if they make us feel good but make hundreds of millions of people in mainland China feel very bad indeed?
As I wrote in the Calgary Herald on August 6 this year:
On the mainland, a large majority of Chinese support unification with Taiwan, even by force if necessary, not out of mindless pugnacity or sheer cussedness, but because they feel deeply, in their bones, that China's loss of Taiwan in 1895 is a longstanding grave historical injustice to China, one that must not remain unredressed indefinitely.
My wife of 38 years, who is with me here tonight, was born in Taiwan to Chinese parents who fled the mainland in 1949 in the face of the Communist takeover. She both strongly dislikes Chinese Communism and understands very well that the overwhelming majority of people who identify as Chinese, including her, will never accept Taiwan formalizing and normalizing its current de facto independence. For her and the overwhelming majority of people in mainland China, China's loss of Taiwan to Japan in 1895 remains a deep humiliation, one that will never be erased until the effects of the Treaty of Shimonoseki are fully reversed.
Today, she greatly fears that the failure of or refusal by many Taiwanese today to take this threat seriously will end in unspeakable tragedy for Taiwan.
I am sure that the situation in Ukraine right now does indeed give the CCP and the People's Liberation Army significant pause and great cause for concern, but this does not mean that the CCP will abandon the option of military force against Taiwan. China may defer its plans to invade Taiwan, but it will never abandon them.
Make no mistake: China will attack Taiwan if it becomes convinced that Taiwan will always decline any and all overtures for peaceful annexation. China's sabre-rattling and gruff pronouncements about Taiwan may look bellicose and buffoonish, and they may well be, but this does not mean China is bluffing. It is not.
I do not presume to advise this committee on all aspects of Canada-China relations, but your difficult—and prickly right now—management of these relations will require careful, prudent and multivalent formulations. I ask only that this committee take Beijing's firm and recently reiterated commitments regarding Taiwan into account as it navigates the troubled waters of Canada's relations with China.
A line in the ancient Chinese text Tao Te Ching says this: “No other folly or calamity is greater than underestimating one's opponent.”
I implore this committee and this Parliament not to underestimate or downplay or discount Beijing's resolve in this regard.
Thank you.
I appreciate our witnesses giving their opening remarks.
I know my father was deeply humiliated when he fled mainland China ahead of the Communist advance southward, never to return to that land, immigrating to Canada in 1952, and severing his entire life, as millions of others have done over the last number of decades, because of the authoritarianism and human rights violations of that state. I want to make sure, Mr. Chair, that goes on the record.
I have a question for Mr. Saint-Jacques. As he mentioned in his opening statement, the government is working on an Indo-Pacific strategy that has been talked about for some time. Does Mr. Saint-Jacques believe this document should identify the People's Republic of China as a strategic rival, as has been done by some of Canada's closest allies, such as Germany, the United States and other very close formal allies?
:
Thank you, Chair, and thank you again to both the witnesses for being here.
I'm probably going to focus a bit more on Mr. Saint-Jacques tonight.
Just to give Dr. Wright notice, we may want you to come back when we get more into Taiwan, which will be a study in the very near future. That's just to give you a little heads-up that I think your expertise could be helpful.
Thank you, Mr. Saint-Jacques, for your comments. As always they were thoughtful and strong, and you avoided jargon or rhetoric, which you do very well, so thank you for that.
I want to give you a chance to finish your remarks, because I always think your finishes are strong. I was getting a little sense, without your using the jargon that the government has been using, around the areas of co-operation, competition, challenge and co-existing—the four Cs that Minister Garneau used.... You didn't use them, but they seemed to be in line with your approach as we come out of, perhaps, what was formerly a naive approach to China and into a more “eyes wide open” approach.
Do you have any comments on that?
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Thank you, Mr. Oliphant. In fact, I was getting to the part of my speech where I was congratulating the government on the adoption of the declaration against arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations in February of last year, and I was going to add that in fact now is the time to maybe put some teeth into that declaration by talking with allies to agree on common responses, including sanctions, if China uses such tactics again.
I agree, as I said in my remarks, that we have to engage with China. That being said, I'm not sure that China will want to engage with us. Messages coming, for instance, from the Chinese ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, are discouraging. He keeps saying that we have to learn from our mistakes, but, assuming they want to play games and that Ambassador May is able to make progress, we have to define areas in which it's in our interest and also in the interest of China to work with us.
I mentioned environment and climate change. Canada has had long-standing co-operation with China. We helped to create the Chinese ministry of the environment through the development assistance provided by CIDA. We helped to create the dairy industry. We helped in many areas, and we were financing the functioning of the China Council until a few years ago.
On health, I don't know the situation now, but we used to have very good collaborations between Canadian scientists and Canadian doctors and their Chinese counterparts. Unfortunately the arrest of Meng Wanzhou derailed such co-operation.
This being said, I was quite encouraged to hear in her speech last week in Washington, because in my view she understands very clearly the challenges we face with China, which is a country that has become more and more aggressive and assertive on the international scene and one that does not listen very well to criticism. China has also started to decouple its economy from the rest of the world, which means Canada has to work a lot more closely with allies in all kinds of political and commercial subjects to try to develop common approaches and positions with regard to China.
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Unfortunately, I think you're right: Canada's importance internationally has indeed diminished. I think it started when the Harper government was in power and has continued under Mr. Trudeau's government, unfortunately.
It's important to understand that in the current context, international issues are closely linked to domestic issues. If we don't invest enough internationally, it can come back to haunt us.
In the past, Canada's diplomacy was very active, which was an added value, particularly appreciated by Washington. We were able to interpret the views of developing countries through our development assistance program, and we had a lot of influence in some African and Asian countries as well.
The fact that we haven't been invited to join the AUKUS alliance or other recently created forums may indicate that we're paying the price after years of neglect.
From a defence perspective, Canada clearly needs to invest more, particularly in the Canadian Arctic. Again, this has to be linked to China, which is very interested in the Arctic because of the fishery and mineral resources there. I would say that we are under‑equipped. Increasing our investments would be a way to demonstrate to NATO that we are serious about defending not only the North American continent, but that organization as well.
They are applying it to Victor Ho, and I am cognizant of the fact that not just I but a number of parliamentarians, in fact, would be in violation of the national security law, given our comments and our vote in the House on designating the treatment of the Uighurs as a genocide. We could all be subject to arrest and put on the wanted list, no less.
I'll set that aside for a minute, because I have much to say about that, but I want to get to the Taiwan question.
Given the threatening posture that's escalating with China towards Taiwan, from this perspective, what action do you think Canada should take to prepare itself with regard to this escalating tension, and what should we be doing with allied countries, Dr. Wright?
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It's very important to make the trade regime more reliable and predictable.
I was surprised, at the start of our latest problems with China, when they put a ban on our exports of canola. Why didn't we go immediately to the World Trade Organization to lodge a complaint? We have to use those mechanisms to push back on China.
I think we are also at the stage where.... As I said, a good first step was the adoption of this declaration to try to prevent hostage-taking in state-to-state relations.
On the trade side, we are at a point where we have to work with allies to try to develop common positions. To give you an example, there are very few countries that export barley, canola, soy or wheat to China. The next time China wants to impose punitive sanctions on Australia, through its barley, Canada and the U.S. should agree they will not increase their exports above their historical share of the Chinese market. That would immediately send a message to China that it no longer has the ability to divide us.
In fact, the EU is in the process of adopting a new anti-coercion instrument. The bipartisan Countering China Economic Coercion Act has been introduced in the U.S. Congress. I think we have to look at concrete examples like this to push back on China.
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The question of Taiwan will, I think, boil down to a matter of regime survival.
If—and this will never happen—Xi Jinping were just to announce “Okay, we're giving up on Taiwan. We're not going to use coercion at all. We're just going to woo Taiwan into coming over and joining with us,” there would be widespread public disagreement and anger. I think that even a division or more of the PLA could get involved.
The second red generation that is Xi Jinping's main pillar of support largely runs the PLA today. The PLA doesn't interfere with politics, but if it came to something like this, I think that the PLA might get involved. Xi Jinping knows this. Giving up on Taiwan would be tantamount to recognizing the possibility of regime overthrow, and when that is a possibility, the regime is capable of doing anything.
That's the message of 1989 with the Tiananmen massacre. Deng Xiaoping said in a key meeting with the core group of the politburo that they would pay any price and endure any hardship to keep their political power.
Taiwan is a core interest, and it's a core matter for the survivability of the regime. I think, quite frankly, there is not a whole lot that we could do militarily. We can make it very clear that there will be an enormous cost, that China will be outcast internationally and that it will face massive world boycotts, but in the end, the CCP won't care.
I'd like to thank the Special Committee on the Canada-People's Republic of China Relationship for inviting me to testify this evening and participate in these very important discussions.
My contribution to the ongoing discussions will be rooted in my expertise in international relations in the Indo-Pacific region and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in particular.
My opening remarks will focus on China's ambiguous relationship with the liberal international order, commonly known as the international rules-based order. In doing so, I will draw on considerations that are relatively consensual and fairly well established in foreign policy and defence analysis, but which I think are worth recalling because they offer useful insights about the future of our relations with China.
[English]
People, including policy-makers, tend to learn from past experience, and this typically informs how they are going to interpret information and events. People basically perceive what they expect, and their expectations—it is important to draw from what we know about the way policy-makers engage in foreign and defence policy—are not necessarily always accurate, especially if they're rooted in misleading analogies. This lesson we can draw from foreign policy analysis has important implications for how we approach our relationship with China.
For example, Chinese policy-makers will tend to expect China to be stigmatized or treated unfairly by the west in international fora, and they will behave accordingly. This means that sometimes we'll see behaviour on the part of Chinese actors in exploiting loopholes or advancing particular interpretations of the rules in a way that is self-interested. This is not particularly surprising behaviour, however, on the part of a great power.
We also see a tendency among western policy-makers to expect China to behave like other states, and particularly Russia, among other revisionist powers with values that have clashed with our own throughout history. Policy-makers in the west also typically expect that what China is doing in areas that it would consider to be its core interests means that it will seek to do the same in other regions of the world—for example, the Arctic—but we should be wary about a number of these analogies and whether they actually hold up.
Another lesson we can draw from foreign policy analysis is that people, including policy-makers, tend to see the actions of others as much more planned, centralized and coordinated than they actually are. That's even more so when reliable information is scarce and in the case of authoritarian states.
There is a tendency to assume that everything China does is part of a coherent long-term plan or grand strategy, when in fact it is as likely to be the result of a disaggregate set of ad hoc uncoordinated decisions from individuals and groups with competing interests, preferences and world views.
While it is obvious that we should be concerned about the growing centralization of power in China, this doesn't mean other interest groups within the domestic politics ecosystem do not have various interests and preferences when it comes to China's pushing for a more assertive position in the international sphere.
People, including policy-makers, also fear what they do not know. Those are typically the unknown unknowns, so the fact that we don't know China's true intentions or China's true motives will typically lead to speculation, to assuming the worst in virtually every domain of China where we observe China's behaviour that can be a source of concern. This can lead, however, to confirmation bias being built into policy and potentially also to implications in terms of self-fulfilling prophecy that we should be mindful of.
I'm not sure we can ever know, to be honest, what China's true intentions are, and this is for a number of reasons. Again, China, is not a black box.
I don't think, either, that the intentions of policy-makers are as clear or coherent as we think they are, and finally, motives and intentions typically change over time according to evolving circumstances.
This underlines the importance of supporting sound country expertise on China and Canada with knowledge of developments in domestic politics.
It's my understanding that in the last 30 to 40 years we've really provided a lot of our manufacturing jobs over to China, that the western world has really led its foreign policy concerning China with the idea that the more we build trade and relationships, the more China will become like us. I'm sure you've heard this. That certainly has not been the case. We have a lot of vulnerabilities with China, as we saw during the Meng Wanzhou situation and with the canola ban and pork and many others, so we are very vulnerable in some ways with our trade. Of course, China needs to feed over a billion people, so it does need food, and Canada is a large supplier of that, but we certainly saw China take advantage of that.
I'm just concerned that it seems very much that their intentions are not necessarily for our interest and are certainly serving their own.
You may have heard recently that our chief of the defence staff, General Eyre, has said that his position is that China wants to remake the world to suit its needs. It's very much the position of our military, obviously. Can you comment on that? Are they seeing this wrong in your opinion, or do our defence capabilities need to step up to meet this challenge that he sees?
:
You're absolutely right to point out that our expectations of China's becoming more like us have not materialized, and we need to adjust to that reality. Absolutely.
I don't think, though, that we can derive from that the conclusion that China will behave in particular areas all the time in ways that conflict directly with our interests and preferences. It's important to be able to identify the areas where, indeed, a difference of interests, values and preferences needs to be reacted to or addressed, and areas where our interests and preferences might align in ways that we don't necessarily suspect. It's important to remember that.
The fact that our expectations of China's transitioning into a liberal democracy through its embeddedness in the global economy have not materialized doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to engage China and be able to find ways to convince them to engage in forms of behaviour that align more closely with how we see the rules underpinning the international order in ways that can sustain our interest and preferences in this regard.
I don't think it's a mutually exclusive thing, but I think we need to move past these expectations that we're going to be able to see a transformation of China in a way that China becomes one of the like-minded in virtually all domains. Getting rid of these expectations and reacting to that is important.
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Yes, I talked about the Arctic.
In fact, there is a lot of concern and speculation about a possible increase in China's presence in the Arctic, and again we tend to look for hidden motives or agendas. I was talking about the unknown unknowns earlier. In this case, there are fears of a growing Chinese presence in the Arctic. These fears are legitimate, since it's difficult to see where China wants to go with this in the Arctic.
That said, on paper, China is quite clear about its intentions in the Arctic. It obviously has a vested interest in developing its access to strategic resources in the Arctic and pushing for a definition of passages in that region that would allow it freer access to international waters.
I think it's healthy and constructive to look at what China is promoting. It isn't hiding its intentions. It's obvious that China is an actor that has interests and is promoting them on the international stage. However, I think the analogy that China has similar motivations in the Arctic to what it's doing in the South China Sea doesn't hold water. In fact, China isn't going to claim sovereignty over territories in the Arctic any time soon.
It has enough interests that may conflict with our national interest. If that's the case, then obviously Canada has to respond. None of this is—
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My questions will be along the same lines as Ms. Normandin's, and they were very wise questions. I'm a bit sad because this is her first time in committee and here I am asking the same questions she did.
[English]
I want to thank the witness for her time with us today. I think she's doing an important thing as we start this new phase of our committee work. She is calming us down and being rational and evidence-based.
I want to follow up a bit on that. I'll speak very personally. When I began my time as a member of Parliament, I had a very strong and open understanding of China. I wanted to have stronger relations. I had two trips to China that were eye-opening. They were my first two trips.
Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were then arbitrarily detained for over a thousand days. That is still with me as an individual. It's still collectively with the people of Canada. I think we are still hurting from that arbitrary detention.
We're now moving into a new phase, looking for an opening to see if we should, or could, open a different door with China. The “Should we?” question has to do with better, peaceful relationships in our world and that kind of stuff. Is it in Canada's interests? Is it in the world's interests? Is it in Canadians' interests?
If we wanted to that, what is your recommendation on how we do it? Sometimes, I just don't know. We're passionate people and we've been hurt. Now we're trying to look for a possible new way.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My question is somewhat general. When two superpowers who respect the rules-based international order have a dispute, they will often take a step back, ponder solutions and come back to the table to discuss them.
Someone told me that you can't expect that from a country that doesn't respect the rules-based international order. For example, Russia might interpret any step back as an opportunity to occupy the space.
First, could this analysis also apply to China and the way it intervenes when there's a dispute?
Second, what role could smaller powers, including Canada, play as a diplomatic alternative with China, but also generally in the Indo-Pacific region?
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We'll call our meeting back to order for our third round.
Thank you, all, for doing your democratic parliamentary duties. Welcome back to our third hour.
I'd like to welcome our witnesses for the third hour today: as an individual, Dr. Thomas Juneau, associate professor, graduate school of public and international affairs, University of Ottawa; as an individual, Vincent Rigby, visiting professor, Max Bell school of public policy, McGill University; and from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Jonathan Berkshire Miller, senior fellow and director, Indo-Pacific program.
We'll ask each of our guests to provide us with a five-minute comment, then we will go into one round of five minutes each, for each of the parties represented here.
We'll start with you, Dr. Juneau, for five minutes or less.
:
Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.
Vincent and I will talk about the key findings and recommendations in a report we published with the University of Ottawa's graduate school of public and international affairs in May this year. The report was co-authored by Vincent and me with the support of a task force of a dozen senior retired officials, including deputy ministers of foreign affairs and defence, four former national security advisers, two former directors of CSIS, former ambassadors and others. The report is available online and I'm happy to pass it on to the committee in electronic form.
The report deals with the deterioration of Canada's threat environment and, overall, makes 65 recommendations on what we can do. Many of those recommendations are relevant to the committee's work on China.
The starting point of the report is one that will be familiar to everybody here, which is this: Canada faces a growing range of threats from great power competition, including, of course, the rise of an increasingly aggressive China, terrorism and extremism—both domestic and international—and a range of transnational issues, including climate change, pandemics and so on. The report's core message is that we are not ready, collectively, to address the growing range of threats Canada faces today.
Successive governments in Canada, in our view, have tended to neglect national security issues. To a large extent, we did that because we could. We are blessed by geography in this country; we are sheltered in North America, and we are under American protection. However, our main point in the report is that this luxury is eroding. As these threats intensify, our fear—and this is based on the collective wisdom, in our task force, of quite literally hundreds of years of experience at the highest levels of government—is that we will pay an increasingly high price, because we are not ready to address them. To be clear, China is not the only threat we discuss in the report, but it is, of course, a major and central one.
The committee is well aware of this aspect, so I will go on very quickly. China poses a threat to Canadian interests through cyber-attacks, economic espionage, foreign interference, growing military assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and so on.
The value add of the report is in this next question: What can we do? Of the 65 recommendations we make in the report, quite a high number are directly or indirectly relevant to China. I'll mention only a couple of broad ones, then Vincent will take over with a few more specific ones.
The first I want to mention is a general one, in terms of our response: the need for a whole-of-society response to the range of threats China poses. The intelligence community cannot respond on its own to most of the challenges I just mentioned. Of course, it has a central role to play, but it needs to work with other partners in the federal government—economic departments and so on—and with provincial and municipal governments, the private sector—think about economic espionage—and civil society—think about, in particular, foreign interference with the Chinese-Canadian diaspora. We need to do a much better job in this country, at this level, with the federal government's ability and willingness to lead, coordinate and share intelligence on threats and advise on how to deal with these threats.
Within the federal government, sometimes, obstacles to information-sharing among national security agencies impede our ability to respond. It's even more of a problem, beyond the national security community, among the rest of the government—economic departments like ISED and so on—and when you look beyond Ottawa at other levels of government, the private sector and civil society. However, these other actors all have an important role to play in dealing with that range of threats.
The second recommendation I want to mention is on transparency. Our first line of defence against many of the threats posed by China—and others, for that matter—is not always CSIS, the RCMP or CBSA. In many cases, it is. In other cases, it's societal resilience—for example, against economic espionage or foreign interference. The target of these threats is not, in most cases, the federal government itself. A lot of factors go into building societal resilience. We could have an entirely different discussion on that, but one is trust in government, which is a challenge in democracies today, including, but not only, in Canada. There's no magic recipe to build societal resilience, but greater transparency has to be at the centre of that.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the invitation to be here tonight. It's a great pleasure and an honour.
During a 30-year career in the public service, I have appeared many times before parliamentary committees as a government official. This is my first appearance, as the chair said, as a private citizen. I must say that I feel slightly less stressed than I did when I was a government official, but I guess we'll see how the next hour goes. Maybe we'll have a different conversation at the end.
In one of my last acts before I retired last year as the national security and intelligence adviser to the , I gave a speech to the Centre for International Governance Innovation, CIGI. It was one of the rare occasions when an NSIA has spoken out publicly on national security issues.
The theme of my speech was Canada's response to a changing global environment. I argued that the world was at an inflection point. It was experiencing seismic political and economic shifts and facing a complex array of new and old national security challenges.
At the centre of this change was heightened geopolitical competition. This competition was reflected in a tilt of the international balance of power towards the Indo-Pacific region, and the defining element of this multipolar transformation was, of course, the rise of China.
I identified Beijing's political, economic, military and technological emergence as one of the key international developments of this century. I suggested that China would continue to be a significant international force in the years to come and that China would become much more assertive in its region and beyond.
It expanded its power and influence, including through the belt and road initiative. It also attempted to directly undermine states it perceived as competitors, often—as we know all too well in Canada—within their own borders. China leveraged a well-integrated economic, military and diplomatic tool kit, as well as human and cyber-enabled espionage, to achieve its objectives.
Based on this analysis at that time—and this would have been June 2021—I concluded that the People's Republic of China represented a key strategic threat to the west and to Canada. It's a year and a half later, and I see no reason to change my assessment. Indeed, the Ottawa U report, which I co-authored with Thomas, put an exclamation point on my views.
China remains assertive on the global stage, as we have seen with its threatening behaviour towards Taiwan, its suppression of democracy in Hong Kong and its continued treatment of its Uighur minority. Its activities in Canada continue. The latest CSIS annual report identifies China's activities in such areas as foreign interference, espionage and cyber-threats.
The 's speech at Brookings last week identified China as one of the world's dictators that are guided by entirely different principles from our own. She placed emphasis on economic security, saying that China was adept and intentional in using its economic ties with us as leverage to achieve its geopolitical objectives.
Collectively, these types of activities undermine our democratic institutions, our fundamental rights and freedoms, our social cohesion and our long-term prosperity.
If we agree that such a threat looms, how should Canada respond? Building on the Ottawa U report and Thomas's earlier comments, let me make a few quick suggestions before we go to any questions.
First, we need a new national security strategy that brings together all the government's assets, from intelligence to defence to diplomacy and international development, in an integrated and coherent way to counter the national security threats of the 21st century, including state actors. We have not had such a strategy since 2004—almost 20 years. We stand out among our Five Eyes allies in this regard. They regularly publish such documents, and I'm sure all of you know that the United States published its national security strategy last week.
Second, as part of that strategy, we need a specific integrated plan to counter the activities of hostile state actors. This would include China, but also Russia, Iran and others. This includes identifying specific measures and tools to counter espionage, foreign interference, disinformation and cyber- and economic threats.
Third, we need a home and an away game. National security covers both domestic and international dimensions. In this context, I look forward to the expected Indo-Pacific strategy that will be coming out soon, we hope, and which should bring our foreign policy, defence and development tools together to tackle threats in the region. It should focus on China in the region, in my view.
Finally, we need to work with partners. At home, as Thomas just pointed out—and to re-emphasize the point, because I think it's a really important one—this means other levels of government, the private sector, universities and research institutions, which are under threat from foreign actors like never before. It's not just state to state anymore; individual Canadians can be impacted.
Sharing information with Canadians in a transparent fashion will be critical in making this happen and, of course, internationally this means our close friends and allies, including in the Five Eyes and the G7. China likes nothing more than to divide and conquer. We need to stay together.
Mr. Chairman, we live in a complex and dynamic world in which, as the said in her recent speech, we have to find ways to coexist with competitors who do not share our values. This includes China, where we can potentially find common ground on issues like climate change and the management of pandemics, but we must do so with eyes wide open, clearly recognizing their strategic intent, and be ready to respond both at home and abroad to threats to our interests and values.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to speak before you today on such a critical topic to Canadian interests.
I'll be frank. Time is not on our side—obviously, not just the five minutes, but on this topic itself.
Increasingly, the international rules-based order appears to be hanging by a thread. Large nuclear-weapon states such as Russia and China continue to coerce neighbours—albeit in different manners—to achieve their maximalist interests. Meanwhile, smaller countries like North Korea pursue weapons advancement aimed at holding regional countries like Japan and South Korea vulnerable to nuclear blackmail, often with tacit support and backing from Beijing.
Chair, for too long Canada has been approaching its foreign policy toward China in tactical rather than strategic terms, thinking only of short-term goals rather than long-term challenges. Unfortunately, it took the unjust detention of two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, for nearly three years for Canadians to awaken to the real challenges in dealing with an increasingly authoritarian actor in Beijing.
In this context, it is overdue for Canada to frame a serious, clear and coherent strategy towards China that is situated within the context of a greater Indo-Pacific strategy, as my colleagues mentioned.
In terms of what that might look like, Canada must first finalize and implement an independent and interest-based strategy for the Indo-Pacific that engages its regional partners. Countries like Japan, Australia, India and South Korea are all important in one way or another, as is working with Taiwan. Canada should also look to complement its engagement with a renewed vigour and focus on robust and comprehensive relationships in Southeast Asia with countries like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. If we strengthen trade ties, increase security co-operation and improve our diplomatic linkages, we can meaningfully offset some of the challenges posed by China's increasing challenge to the rules-based order.
Moreover, multilateral organizations and trade agreements, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the CPTPP, alongside other ad hoc mini lateral alignments, all provide potential anchors for a renewed approach to this region.
Let me be clear: The Indo-Pacific strategy that's being developed should not ignore or dilute the challenges of China, nor be monopolized by or fixated on Beijing. A real clear-eyed approach to Beijing and the risks it poses, both to our neighbours and to the rules-based order more broadly, must be a foundational element to any strategy in the region.
Toward China itself, Canada must be far stronger and clearer on issues of human rights. This includes clearly and consistently calling out China's egregious behaviour against Uighurs in Xinjiang, Tibetans and other religious minorities, as well as condemning China's clear and escalating violations of the Sino-British joint declaration over Hong Kong. In each case, we should avail ourselves of our ability to apply Magnitsky sanctions against known human rights abusers. We should explore paths for greater refuge and resettlement for individuals at risk of political imprisonment.
However, we must consider other challenges as well. China's desire to dominate the critical materials and raw materials supply chain, for example, is a long-term challenge with serious national security implications that Canada must address in tandem with its partners in the region.
Meanwhile, heated tensions and provocative acts that threaten the stability of Taiwan are simply the latest in a sustained list of concerns with Beijing's increasing military posture in the region. Indeed, stability in the Taiwan Strait is directly connected with China's other assertive moves in the maritime domain.
The Indo-Pacific, frankly, is facing a host of shared security challenges, from maritime piracy and crime to heated territorial disputes. In this vast maritime space, stretching from East Africa to the Pacific island chains, the foundations of regional commerce and security are secured through freedom of navigation and secure sea lines of communication, yet there are several key challenges to this order and China is posing these challenges.
In the South China Sea, for example, Beijing continues to practise salami-slicing tactics aimed at ensuring its de facto control of much of this key waterway. Meanwhile, Beijing also continues to raise regional concerns through its constant insurgence into the maritime airspace surrounding Japan's Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.
Finally, Canada needs to diversify its trade away from China and towards partners in the region, understanding the risks of overreliance on the Chinese economy. This should include the creation of a dedicated mechanism amongst democracies to support one another when countries like China use economic coercion to achieve their ends. Such action would send a strong message that targeting trade for political purposes—as China did with Canada's canola, cattle and pork exports—will be unsuccessful.
Most importantly, and in conclusion, our relationship with China must be contextualized in the broader Indo-Pacific region. We should consider bilateral ties with Beijing no longer as an exceptional relationship, but rather as simply one important relationship among many in a diverse region. Canada must urgently rebalance its relationship with China and ensure that it advances its interests, both in national security terms and, importantly, in tandem with its partners.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for appearing.
I was struck by your opening remarks about the need to work more closely with allies and partners, not just in the Indo-Pacific region, but around the world. I was surprised, as I think many people were, about the July 7 press conference. It was a joint press conference—unprecedented, I think—between the head of the FBI, Director Christopher Wray, and the head of MI5 at the MI5 headquarters, Thames House, in London this past summer. Christopher Wray and Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, gave an unprecedented press conference, saying that China presented the biggest threat, not just to the United Kingdom and not just to the United States, but to allies in Europe and elsewhere.
They also indicated that the government in Beijing had definitely interfered in the congressional elections in New York state this year. I think many Canadians have concluded that Beijing interfered in the last federal election as well. Therefore, your comments ring true.
My first question is a very simple one. Have you had any indication that the PCO, other central agencies or the departments responsible are looking at a new national security strategy for Canada, since we haven't had one since 2004? Is there any indication that the government is seized with this idea of coming forward with a new national security strategy to parallel the Indo-Pacific strategy?
:
There's a lot there. I'll try to pick up at least on some aspects. As much as everything we said about China at the beginning absolutely stands, when I think about the order of threats Canada faces, or potentially faces, number one is in some ways the United States. When I say “in some ways”, I mean by some scenarios, which are by no means guaranteed, where the situation degenerates in the U.S. That can pose a greater threat to Canada, because of our massive dependence on the U.S.
The civil war scenario, I think, is very unlikely, but scenarios of contested elections, of more unpredictability in their foreign policy, of more unilateralism, of retreat from NATO and other organizations, and of intelligence-sharing in the Five Eyes and so on are potentially very concerning.
The problem we face is that we have no other option. People have been saying for 50 years that we need a third way and that we need to diversify our trade and other relations. Because of geography, we'll never be able to fully do that.
If you bring in the China dimension, what that means for me is that Canada has to make significant efforts to diversify its relations, including with democracies in East Asia, South Korea, India and Japan. We saw a new intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan announced last week. That's great. That's what we need to do more of to link these two issues, but it's hard. It's not easy, because culturally we are so focused on the U.S.
:
Maybe I can tackle that one. I want to make a point, though, just about polarization in the United States. There's the potential impact on the Canada-U.S. relationship, the old line that when the United States sneezes, Canada catches a cold. If there's extreme instability south of the border with respect to democratic backsliding, there will be an impact.
The other concern, though, is that if the U.S. is roiling with instability—and the civil war-type scenario, again, I would say is “black swan” and remote—it's going to impact U.S. foreign policy and the U.S.'s ability to operate globally. To confront a China threat and any other threat will potentially be compromised, because they'll be so inward-looking. That would be one of my concerns.
With respect to polarization in Canada, Thomas and I are actually working on a paper right now on domestic violent extremism. We see this as an emerging threat. A lot of it's coming out in the convoy discussions, etc.
One of my concerns with respect to China is just in terms of resources, to be perfectly honest with you, because our intelligence agencies and national security agencies dealing with domestic violent extremism.... The director of CSIS will tell you that's an emerging threat and something we have to pay a lot more attention to, but we have limited resources.
Again, it's a bit like I was saying with respect to the U.S. If, suddenly, domestic violent extremism becomes the number one priority of our national security agencies, how are we going to operate globally and how are we going to confront the China threat?
There are lots of other dimensions to it as well, and I don't have time to get into them, but the limited resources we have to deal with the spectrum of threats out there right now would be something that would jump out at me.
:
Thank you very much for your question.
I'd like to clarify that Mr. Juneau-Katsuya and I are not related. We've never even met.
You're quite right to point out this issue. We actually talk about it a lot in the report we released with the University of Ottawa earlier this year. The issue of information sharing is extremely complex. Sure, it's easy for people on the outside to say we need to share more information, but in practice it's not that simple.
Some laws exist for good reason. In a democracy, there needs to be some control over this type of sharing to ensure privacy and protect sources, among other things. That said, even considering all the restrictions that must remain in place in a democracy, Canada is clearly not doing a good job of sharing information. The reasons for this are cultural, institutional and, in some cases, technological, as computer systems are not necessarily compatible.
At the end of the day, in terms of a strategy for the Indo-Pacific region, our report states that serious effort must be made to address the structural problem of information sharing and the human resources problem, which figures prominently in our report even though we did not mention it earlier. Otherwise, our ability to deal with espionage-related threats will be limited.
:
Maybe I can tackle that.
We had a whole section on governance in the report, and we made a couple of recommendations. The first was to create a cabinet committee on national security that would be chaired by the Prime Minister. Again, we're a little out of step with respect to our Five Eyes allies and even the G7. We're the only country that doesn't have this type of committee chaired by the Prime Minister.
We would like to think that if this committee were established and met on a regular basis, with the Prime Minister and key cabinet ministers in the national security and public safety space getting regular intel briefs and dealing with issues every couple of weeks, this would help solve some of the information-sharing issues. You'd have a natural vector, a place where all of this intel was ultimately going to land on the Prime Minister's desk with key ministers. Having that sort of target zone would help in some respects.
Again, more strategically it would also really help. We find that the government tends to be a bit too ad hoc and responsive on national security issues these days. The incident response group is great, but it's responsive. It's not thinking about the longer term.
The other recommendation we have is to actually create a stronger intelligence function at the centre in PCO. We have a group there right now called the international assessment secretariat. We recommend that we take ITAC, the integrated terrorism assessment centre, and consolidate it with IAS at PCO. It would almost be like a mini kind of director of national intelligence, like we have in the U.S.
I don't want to push that comparison too far, but it would be a coordinating body. We don't have a big intelligence community. We shouldn't be having these problems. This would be a funnel to bring all that intelligence together and make sure it is going to the right places and ultimately being funnelled up to this committee and to the Prime Minister, who is the key person who needs to have this to inform his or her decision-making at the end of the day.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses.
Mr. Berkshire Miller talked a bit in his presentation about imposing Magnitsky sanctions. Canada, of course, has been very reluctant and very slow in the situation with Hong Kong and the breaking of the “one country, two systems” rule. It was a promise made to Hong Kongers. It was not made just to Hong Kongers, but to the international community as well.
There are repercussions. We're seeing that now, with the national security law reaching here to Canada. A Canadian journalist, Victor Ho, is being targeted and has been put on the wanted list.
My question to all of the panellists is this: Should Canada embark on sanctions? If so, what measures should we undertake? What do you think the repercussions would be?
Why is Canada so afraid to take action?
:
I would answer yes, absolutely, but with a massive “but”. This is something that we saw clearly in the debate on sanctions against Iran in the last couple of weeks.
Our ability and our capacity to monitor and enforce sanctions in this country is massively overstretched, and Canada has a reputation among its allies—as well as among the bad guys—of not being good at enforcing sanctions. We declare them and we don't follow up. At some point that's damaging, because it signals to the bad guys that when we impose sanctions, we don't follow up and we don't enforce them.
The answer is yes, but there is a major need to significantly increase the resources for our sanctions capacity at Global Affairs, CSIS, the RCMP, the CBSA and elsewhere. The $76 million that the government announced last week is a good first step, but it's really not enough. We don't have a lot of detail, but I'm not even sure it's enough to do what they said they'd do on Iran, let alone on Russia and other countries on which we are not fully imposing the sanctions that we've declared. That means human resources, but it also means improving the process, including on information sharing, but on other aspects too.
There's a big gap between what we say and what we do.