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Alex Lo

What a difference an administration change makes in Ottawa, even though both the current and preceding governments are from the Liberal Party.
Three years ago, Canada under Justin Trudeau labelled China a “disruptive global power”. Last month, his successor Mark Carney reached agreement with Beijing to revive the strategic partnership the two nations signed in 2005, with Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand saying the framework would be “renewed and refocused”.
“We must be nuanced in our diplomacy,” she told the Canadian press. “What we are aiming to do is to recalibrate the relationship, so that it is constructive and pragmatic.”
As a goodwill gesture, Beijing this month announced an end to a five-year-old ban on group travel to Canada that had outlasted the Covid-19 pandemic, shortly after Carney met President Xi Jinping in South Korea. According to a Xinhua report, Xi told Carney the two nations were showing a “trend of recovery and positive development” that should “bring China-Canada relations back onto the right track”.
It is, of course, not just the relationship with China that needs renewing, but also that with other Asian nations as Canada pivots to the region economically.
Last month, Carney also drummed up trade and business ties with regional and business leaders at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Kuala Lumpur and advocated lowering tariffs and other trade barriers.


Canada has mostly Donald Trump to thank for this turnaround.
“The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over,” Carney said in March. “It’s clear the US is no longer a reliable partner.”
Canada’s bilateral trade with China totalled C$118.7 billion (US$84.65 billion) last year, second only to C$924.4 billion in trade with the US. A more pragmatic Ottawa sees much potential upside for China trade, which could compensate for US trade lost due to tariffs and other barriers.
“We are going to be seeking to ensure that foreign policy serves the domestic economy. Let’s not make any mistake that China is a major global economic player,” Anand said.
Interestingly, Canadians’ perceptions of China and the US have reversed. In a survey released last month by the non-profit Angus Reid Institute and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, 27 per cent of Canadians were found to hold a favourable view of China, up from 16 per cent earlier this year and nearly triple the all-time low of 10 per cent recorded in 2021.
Meanwhile, a Pew Research Centre survey released in June found that 34 per cent of Canadians viewed the US favourably, down from 54 per cent in 2024 – that is, before Trump returned to the White House.

Of course, Canada also wants to thaw relations with India, the other Asian giant, to hedge against China. Last month, New Delhi and Ottawa issued a joint statement, promising “to take calibrated measures to restore stability in the relationship and to pursue a constructive and balanced partnership grounded in respect … and growing economic complementarities”.
Ottawa’s relations with India and China have been downright nasty in recent years. Rightly or wrongly, many Canadians regarded the more than 1,000-day detention of fellow citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in China as little better than hostage-taking while Indian state operatives were accused of involvement in murder plots against two Sikh Canadians.
The arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei executive and daughter of the company founder, in Vancouver in December 2018 led Beijing to retaliate with the arrests of the two Michaels on spying charges. Relations did not improve even after all three were released, as Trudeau followed the US in imposing a 100 per cent tariff on electric vehicles from China in 2024.
Now, though, the two sides seem ready to make nice again.
With India, the situation may be harder to rectify. The Trudeau government had accused New Delhi of being involved in the 2023 assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a suburb of Vancouver – an accusation the Indian government dismissed as “absurd”. The death was followed by a foiled murder plot in New York against Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, an associate of Nijjar. The authorities in the US and Canada believe the two cases are linked.
Both men had campaigned for an independent Sikh homeland in the Indian state of Punjab and had been accused of being terrorists by New Delhi. The murder plots have deeply unsettled and angered many within the Sikh community in Canada, the largest outside India. They form a formidable voting base for the Liberals.
Between India and the US, China may be Ottawa’s best bet.


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Under Trudeau, Canada had nasty relations with China and India. Thanks to Trump, the new Canadian administration is pivoting to Asia


Under Trudeau, Canada had nasty relations with China and India. Thanks to Trump, the new Canadian administration is pivoting to Asia.


Justin Trudeau

Xi Jinping

Donald Trump

United States

Huawei Technologies

Canada

Meng Wanzhou

Mark Carney

India

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Carney’s Canada finally gets real about China

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Under Trudeau, Canada had nasty relations with China and India. Thanks to Trump, the new Canadian administration is pivoting to Asia

Under Trudeau, Canada had nasty relations with China and India. Thanks to Trump, the new Canadian administration is pivoting to Asia