We can reduce our economic vulnerability to China by deepening our ties with the world’s largest democracy
Too often, the relationship between Canada and India has been about our past. It’s become about how, through the years, we have failed to connect with each other. Some stories, like the Komagata Maru or Air India, are profound tragedies that we must never forget. I firmly believe that the key to a secure future…
Declaring what China is doing to Uighurs genocide is a good first step. But will Canada follow through?
Canadian Parliament recently took a stand on a human rights issue as courageous as Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney’s opposition to South African apartheid in the 1980s and Stephen Harper’s apology for residential schools in 2008. On Feb. 22, by a vote of 266 to zero, the House of Commons voted to recognize China’s treatment…
We can no longer adopt a Taiwan policy based on appeasing communist China
It has now been over fifty years since the representatives of the Kuomintang government in Canada were told to pack up their Embassy in Ottawa and return to Taiwan to make way for Canada's diplomatic recognition of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in October 1970. Over the past 50 years, the political context that…
His response to the Uyghur genocide motion stands out simply because it put all his hypocrisy on display at once
Political failures usually come in one of two flavours. The first are acts that expose a gap between reality and the stories politicians tell about themselves. Sometimes this occurs when a politician’s criminality is exposed. But much more often, it is the banal things that display glaring hypocrisy and enrage voters. Remember Bev Oda? I…
Or are we prepared to hang a “For sale” sign on our values as a nation?
Canada must call on the International Olympic Committee to relocate the 2022 Winter Olympics out of China. It won’t be the first time Canadian leadership on the world stage meant taking a risk to stand up for human dignity. In 1985, in a hallway outside the United Nations General Assembly, Brian Mulroney added a few…
China is acting with the intent to destroy and they are leveraging the full weight of the government to do so
More than a million Uyghur men and women have been detained in a vast network of camps in northwestern China. The Communist state has acknowledged the existence of these camps, and claims they are used for the “re-education” of Uyghurs and other minorities. For years, the Chinese state has been destroying the graveyards and religious…
Our speak softly and carry a limp stick approach has had no effect other than to embolden Communist China
For centuries, Arab states across North Africa made fortunes from piracy. Now in the 21st century, a new pirate state is taking prisoners and holding them for ransom. In the past, raiding the coasts of Spain and Italy, scouring the Mediterranean and ravaging into the Atlantic as far as Iceland, Barbary corsairs captured over a…
China is effectively playing the victim card
If there’s one thing we’ve learned throughout this pandemic, it’s how the science related to the virus can be constantly politicized. And to change COVID-19’s origin story, that’s exactly what China is doing. Many are talking about vaccine nationalism, with concerns that some nations are racing to access as many vaccines as possible. It’s disappointing,…
Reducing our dependence on any one particular market or supplier makes us much less vulnerable to arbitrary and unfair treatment
“It’s not fair!” How often have parents heard this loud, angry declaration from young children at any real or perceived injustice? Children have an innate sense of fairness that demands to be respected. Hence the practice of asking one child to divide a piece of cake and the other to choose first. Fairness has become…
International power politics employed by the likes of Russia have resulted in many countries looking for new energy sources
By Mark Milke and Ven Venkatachalam Canadian Energy Centre Russia cut off the natural gas supply to Ukraine in mid-winter 2009, ostensibly over a pricing dispute. It was a reminder that energy can be used as an economic and political weapon by autocratic regimes – in this instance, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. We have more recent…