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Canada's New, Liberal, Foreign Policy

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E.R. Campbell said:
David Akin, of Sun Media, reports, from Turkey that "At G20, Trudeau gets a warm welcome from China."

He writes that:

    "China has welcomed Justin Trudeau into the international family of world leaders like a long-lost son.

      Trudeau and Xi Jinping, China’s president, met Monday morning on the margins of the G20 Summit being held here.

      Xi started off by saying China was grateful for what Pierre Trudeau did in 1970, when Canada became one of the first countries in the West to officially recognize the Communist government in mainland China.

      “That was an extraordinary political vision," Xi told Pierre’s son. "China will always remember that.”

      Xi’s extraordinarily warm greeting to Justin Trudeau, coming less than two weeks after he’d been sworn into the job, is in sharp contrast to Stephen Harper, who had to wait more than three years for a nice word from a Chinese president."



Trust me, this is a gift, one the Chinese perceive as being valuable, and China wants something in return.

“Real change”? Why Power Corp, China (and maybe even Jean Chretien) are “back in the drivers seat” after Trudeau win.

http://www.ezralevant.com/real-change-why-power-corp-china-and-maybe-even-jean-chretien-are-back-in-the-drivers-seat-after-trudeau-win/

Justin Trudeau wasn’t kidding when he said communist China was his favourite country.

Trudeau’s transition team is being led by a top China lobbyist in Canada named Peter Harder. Besides being president of the Canada-China Business Council, Harder is on the board of directors of Power Corp.

That’s the massive company that was the power behind the throne of pretty much every Quebec politician for a generation.

Power Corp also has huge government contracts in communist China, including, for example, the contract for the Beijing to Tibet railway — a political project designed to swamp Tibet, by bringing in millions of ethnic Chinese settlers, to stamp out any lingering Tibet culture or politics.

Power Corp run by the billionaire Desmarais family. Andre Desmarais, the president of the company, married Jean Chretien’s daughter. Chretien went to work lobbying China literally within weeks of stepping down as prime minister.

So forget about civil liberties or democracy being part of the Canada-China discussion now that Trudeau is in 24 Sussex.

Now, many don't like Mr Levant and that's fine. However, possibly with the exception of the last sentence, he is stating nothing here that is not fact. I have always surmised that Power Corporation was always the real power behind recent Liberal governments(and possibly a Conservative one). Paul Desmarais helped prime minister Pierre Trudeau open up relations with China by becoming a founding chairman of the Canada China Business Council in 1978 and kept in close touch with succeeding prime ministers, no matter their political affiliation, including Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.

Methinks the familial ties to the Trudeau clan have never been stronger.

But that's just my  :2c:
 
E.R. Campbell said:
David Akin, of Sun Media, reports, from Turkey that "At G20, Trudeau gets a warm welcome from China."

He writes that:

    "China has welcomed Justin Trudeau into the international family of world leaders like a long-lost son.

      Trudeau and Xi Jinping, China’s president, met Monday morning on the margins of the G20 Summit being held here.

      Xi started off by saying China was grateful for what Pierre Trudeau did in 1970, when Canada became one of the first countries in the West to officially recognize the Communist government in mainland China.

      “That was an extraordinary political vision," Xi told Pierre’s son. "China will always remember that.”

      Xi’s extraordinarily warm greeting to Justin Trudeau, coming less than two weeks after he’d been sworn into the job, is in sharp contrast to Stephen Harper, who had to wait more than three years for a nice word from a Chinese president."



Trust me, this is a gift, one the Chinese perceive as being valuable, and China wants something in return.

How can PM Trudeau, with his stance on global warming, possibly get into bed with China, one of the worst (if not the worst) offender of CO2 emissions? Also, how does he square this relationship with China's human rights record when we are currently bringing in 25,000 refugees based on a humanitarian crisis?

Some will say that Harper engaged heavily in China, which is true. However, the Conservatives  heavily criticized the HR record of China and pulled out of Kyoto as it became apparent that without China, India, and the US signing on that Kyoto was pointless. I also wonder what a warming of relations means for previously blocked attempts by the Chinese to buy Canadian resources...
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
ERC, I tend to agree with Campbell Clark also, but personally, I think he missed one mark: Yes, most leaders are out of their depth in Foreign Affairs at first. But Trudeau senior never got out of this depth in my estimation.

And, I am very afraid Trudeau junior will be worse. He may have been a drama teacher, but he obviously can't act. When I saw him on TV from Ottawa just before flying out, I was dismayed: He looked  like he was smiling, happy to be in front on camera and his whole attitude seemed to be: Look I am going on this nice trip and this little Paris thing is not going to sour my mood.

Then I thought, OK, he got caught off guard - that happens -But no, he had that same look when we saw him in Ankara. Every other world leader look somber, even downcast, but here he was looking like a kid in a candy store, and being the only person there still peddling his "infrastructure for the world" economic development plan (which people who briefed him at Foreign Affairs before the trip must have told him did not interest the world, and that he should stick with what DFAIT developed for any PM in advance of this meeting).

Oldgateboatdriver said:
The first thing they'll insist on is probably for Canada to  stop bringing their human rights record up at every opportunity their was.


Agree, fully with both posts, OGBD.

I have, often, used Isaiah Berlin's famous fox vs. hedgehog analogy to suggest that Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was true hedgehog: he decided, back in the mod to late 1940s, that nationalism was the cause of all the world's ills and he seemed to believe that Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Castroist communism was the leading edge of a "post-nationalist" world. I have also said, too many times to repeat, that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lacks gravitas, what the Brits call "bottom." I stick by that analysis.

 
dapaterson said:
China reaching out is a tremendous opportunity for Canada.  But the question of what they want is one we (the royal we) need to assess and understand before launching off.


Agreed, again ... they will want something besides not being hectored about human rights.

Just because it's China doesn't mean, a priori, that what they want will be bad for us; but, equally, just because it's China doesn't mean it will be a good deal, either.

 
Bird_Gunner45 said:
How can PM Trudeau, with his stance on global warming, possibly get into bed with China, one of the worst (if not the worst) offender of CO2 emissions? Also, how does he square this relationship with China's human rights record when we are currently bringing in 25,000 refugees based on a humanitarian crisis?

Some will say that Harper engaged heavily in China, which is true. However, the Conservatives  heavily criticized the HR record of China and pulled out of Kyoto as it became apparent that without China, India, and the US signing on that Kyoto was pointless. I also wonder what a warming of relations means for previously blocked attempts by the Chinese to buy Canadian resources...


And I agree a third time ...

I also agree, in large part, with you recceguy; Power Corp and the Desmarais clan and a few others (think Onex as a CPC supporter) wield great, too great, behind the scenes influence in Canadian politics and policy.
 
David Akin, Sun News, says, in an internet post from Turkey:

    "Just finished a press conference with the PM. He was pressed over and over and over to reconsider shutting down Canada's anti-ISIS combat mission. But over and over and over again he said, ain't gonna do it."
 
In an article in the Ottawa Citizen Lee Berthiaume says that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, "the government has committed to“step up” its training efforts in the fight against the Islamic State and will withdraw Canadian warplanes from Iraq and Syria before March.

    Speaking at the tail end of the annual G20 summit, where leaders from the world’s 20 richest countries had gathered for the past two days, Trudeau said Canadians “have expressed, certainly over the past months and within the election, that
    they wanted to see a ceasing of the bombing mission.”

    But he said they also want to see Canada continue to “engage robustly” in the fight against ISIL, which is why the government is planning to ramp up its efforts to train Kurdish and other local forces in the region to take on the extremist group.

    “We have made the commitment to step up our efforts training local troops, and that’s something that by all accounts is an important part of the military efforts against ISIL,” Trudeau said. “And I know Canada will continue to, and be seen
    to be continuing to, do its part in the fight against this terrorist scourge.”"


Many people, including Rosie DiManno in the Toronto Star think that "The world cannot stand shoulder to shoulder with Paris while standing down in Syria.

    That barefaced message must surely now have been brought home to nouveau Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose first act after winning office was to call off Canada’s military participation in the airstrike coalition against Islamic State
    in Syria and the swath of Iraq the group controls.

    A half-dozen aging CF-18s may be a paltry contribution to the U.S.-led operation but joining in the bombing sorties was still something of substance, of integrity. Not merely symbolic, either, though symbolism matters; being on the
    right side matters. That demands more than mouthed platitudes.

    That right side still includes opening doors to the miserable exodus of refugees fleeing civil war-ravaged Syria. It’s not their fault Islamic State has exported terror beyond the caliphate of its dreams to a precious and beloved European
    capital that had already once this year been targeted by agents of death."


The pressure to "stay the course" will grow stronger ... for a while. The pressure to keep campaign promises will also remain strong ... for a while. It will be interesting to see which prevails.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
Agreed, again ... they will want something besides not being hectored about human rights.

Just because it's China doesn't mean, a priori, that what they want will be bad for us; but, equally, just because it's China doesn't mean it will be a good deal, either.

I wonder how China feels about oil exports being restricted from Alberta due to a tanker ban in the North?

rime Minister Justin Trudeau has called for a moratorium on crude oil tanker traffic for B.C.'s North Coast.

Trudeau outlined the directive in a mandate letter to Canada's transport minister, Marc Garneau, on Friday. In it, he asked Garneau to formalize the agreement with three other ministries: fisheries, natural resources and environment.

It's unclear what impact a moratorium would have on Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, which would carry bitumen from Alberta to Kitimat, B.C. The project was approved in June 2014 with 209 conditions.

"This ban ends the dangerous Northern Gateway pipeline proposal," said Karen Mahon, from ForestEthics, an environmental group that advocates for the protection of B.C.'s coast. "Without tankers, crude oil has no place to go, that means no pipelines, no oil trains moving tarsands to the northern B.C. coast."

Enbridge said in a statement that despite the mandate for a moratorium on tanker traffic, it is confident the federal government will consult with 26 of 45 First Nations that have signed on with the project about what impact a tanker ban could have on them and also a perceived economic boost for Western Canada.


Enbridge describe the Northern Gateway project as having "one of the most exhaustive reviews of its kind in Canadian history."

"We have made significant process building support on the B.C. coast and along the pipeline corridor," said spokesman Ivan Giesbrecht.

"Along with the project's aboriginal equity partners, we are looking forward to an opportunity to sit down with the new prime minister and his cabinet to provide an update on the progress of our project and our partnerships with First Nations and Métis people in Alberta and B.C."

Still, Enbridge says the earliest the pipeline could be built is 2019, prompting some analysts to question whether the company is fully committed to the project given the obstacles it still faces.

The moratorium would require legislation and would no doubt prompt debate in the House of Commons.

The mandate letter from Trudeau comes a week after U.S. President Barack Obama rejected TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline, saying it did not serve his country's national interests.

Both Trudeau and Obama will be part of the G20 meeting in Antalya, Turkey, this weekend and the United Nations climate change conference in Paris starting on Nov. 30

Also on Friday, Trudeau asked his minister of fisheries and oceans to re-open the Kitsilano Coast Guard station in Vancouver.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/crude-oil-tanker-traffic-moratorium-bc-north-coast-1.3318086


Tangential Comment:

One way around pipeline bans is long trains, short tracks.

Use pipelines to go where jurisdicition permits.  Use trains to jump the gaps - as in the US-Canada border.  AFAIK XL is cleared to the border in Canada and, internally, from the border in the US.  The issue is permission to build a pipeline across the border.  But know such restriction is in place on Warren Buffet's BNSF.

oil_car_535_401.jpg
 
E.R. Campbell said:
Many people, including Rosie DiManno in the Toronto Star.....
DiManno now thinks Canada should even have  a military, yet alone use it (for anything besides shoveling out her snowed-in Toronto bus stops)??!    :eek:


I certainly don't remember doing any hallucinogens today.
  :stars:
 
Michael Den Tandt, writing in the National Post suggests that, on this foreign policy issue, anyway, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is "oddly tone deaf." I disagree. I think it is, right now, just a matter of to whom he is listening.

He is not listening to the national media commentariat or the Conservatives, even the rational ones, he is, I think, listening to ...

             
luxtzu5j007hjcofvyi8.jpg


                    ... and Prime Minister Chrétien is telling him that:

                        1. Military operations do not remain popular for long;

                        2. Campaign promises matter, you cannot keep them all but keep the ones you can; and

                        3. Canadians want to sleep, safe and warm, in their beds at night ~ principled foreign policy doesn't keep you warm.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
....

                        3. Canadians want to sleep, safe and warm, in their beds at night ~ principled foreign policy doesn't keep you warm.

And it is easy to sleep safe and warm when you pull the blankets up over your head.....
 
Chris Pook said:
And it is easy to sleep safe and warm when you pull the blankets up over your head.....


.......or you have a .38 Special Eskimo carving to threaten intruders with.
 
recceguy said:
.......or you have a .38 Special Eskimo carving to threaten intruders with.

And a wife with the will to use it?
 
Canadians want to sleep, safe and warm, in their beds at night ~ principled foreign policy doesn't keep you warm

George Orwell:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Less rough men, less sleep......
 
Thucydides said:
George Orwell:

Less rough men, less sleep......

Problem:  If the rough men are effective the sleepers are ignorant of their activities and figure the rough men are an unnecessary expense and a social embarrassment.
 
Chris Pook said:
Problem:  If the rough men are effective the sleepers are ignorant of their activities and figure the rough men are an unnecessary expense and a social embarrassment.

    O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
    But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
    The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
    O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play.
 
recceguy said:
Africa is China's problem now. They want to develop it, they can take care of it.


Be careful what you wish for ...

Several of the world's leading economists and entrepreneurs are saying that Africa is the "next frontier" for global economic growth. Do we really want to leave it to China?

http://www.cnbcafrica.com/news/special-report/2014/10/13/afrasia-james-benoit-mauritius/
http://www.ibtimes.com/africa-poised-unprecedented-long-term-economic-growth-seven-drivers-could-transform-africa-worlds
http://www.g7g20.com/comment/emilie-dock-africa-an-engine-of-future-global-growth
https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/sppl_e/sppl283_e.htm
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/africa-future-global-automotive-sales-engine-growth-vaidyanathan
http://www.siasat.com/news/africa-india-can-become-engine-growth-world-says-jaitley-858422/

Now, you don't need to agree with any of those opinions~ and I, for example, would discount anything Pascal Lamay says (4th link), but can they all be wrong? The Indian finance minister (last link) doesn't think so ... he (India) wants in on the action.

Maybe some military/peacekeeping support to Africa is not a bad (economic) idea ...
 
E.R. Campbell said:
Maybe some military/peacekeeping support to Africa is not a bad (economic) idea ...
Wait for it ....
 
Even the Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson cannot quite figure out why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided to keep his campaign promise to withdraw from the air war against Daesh just now. His column is reproduced under the fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/jeffrey-simpson-as-allies-gear-up-trudeau-ramps-down/article27287248/
gam-masthead.png

As allies gear up, Trudeau ramps down

SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

Jeffrey Simpson
The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015

If indeed the French are Canada’s “cousins,” as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described them, his government has a funny way of showing affection.

No sooner had Paris been maimed by terrorist attacks by the Islamic State than Mr. Trudeau reaffirmed that Canada would indeed be withdrawing from the direct military fight against Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

He did not say his government would reconsider in the light of the attacks. He did not say his government would consult with allies, including French “cousins.” He merely repeated what he had said in the election campaign: Canada is not withdrawing from the struggle against IS but from any direct military commitment. Canada, in other words, is “back” in a rhetorical sense, but not in a real one.

Distracted by more pressing matters, the government of our “cousins” said nothing, but the French (and other allies) cannot be amused by Mr. Trudeau’s decision. They are considering how to ramp up military efforts against the Islamic State; Canada is ramping down.

On Monday, at a meeting with reporters in Antalya, Turkey, Mr. Trudeau was unable to explain coherently why Canada’s six C-18 fighter jets should be withdrawn from the fray. Instead, he underlined the utility of Canadian trainers working with Kurdish forces, as if that were the end of it.

To understate matters greatly, the battle against the Islamic State and other manifestations of jihadi terror will take a very long time, bring nasty developments of all kinds, and cannot be concluded by military means alone.

But it is difficult to imagine any scenario in which some military means will not be required, since IS has implanted itself in swaths of Syria and Iraq to which foreign fighters go for further indoctrination and training, resources are secured by selling antiquities, bootlegging oil, extortion and other criminal activities, and where a fierce ideology prevails that includes sex slavery of young girls, rampant executions and the most draconian imposition of sharia law ever seen in modern times.

Humanitarian assistance will, of course, continue to be necessary for the victims and dispossessed, but such assistance deals with the symptoms, not the cause, of IS-inspired turmoil. Training Kurdish fighters, as Canada has been doing, is of marginal use given the severity of the challenge involved in containing and curtailing the Islamic State. Canada, a bit player, has been doing a bit. Now it will do less, unless the Trudeau government recognizes the election campaign is over.

Figuring out how to combat IS must start with a threat assessment: How dangerous is the Islamic State? When the United States invaded Iraq, with all the doleful consequences that followed for that country and the region, the Bush administration completely exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein. He was reprehensible in many ways and had invaded Kuwait, but he also hated al-Qaeda and Iran and posed no threat to the United States, apart from being an irritant.

IS, however, is qualitatively different, in that the territory it occupies has attracted, and continues to attract, fighters from many countries – some as far away as Australia – where they are trained and further imbued with the hateful interpretation of Islam gone crazy. The Islamic State has also contributed to destabilizing, indeed one might say destroying, two states: Syria and Iraq, although other groups have helped in that destruction.

Just imagine a Middle East in which an IS proto-state became a fixture in the region, with an apocalyptic ideology of massive battles against apostates such as Shias, moderate Sunnis, Christians and other non-Muslim minorities in which the most barbaric of practices are used and justified in the name of Allah.

Now that IS-inspired people have brought down a Russian jetliner over Egypt, exploded a bomb against Shias in Beruit, and created carnage in Paris, the full horror of the Islamic State’s ambition and the barbarity of its ways have been brought home once again to all but the blind and ignorant. Perhaps, now, more countries previously believing themselves removed from the reach of the Islamic State will consider with others what to do, including militarily.

Nothing will make progress against IS easily or quickly. Between 20 and 30 groups, depending on the definition, in other countries now identify with IS. The cancer of Islamic jihadi movements has metastasized, a process that began about a quarter of a century ago. The sickness has more to do with internal convulsions within Islam – Shia/Sunni rivalries, struggles for influence (Saudi Arabia/Iran), fights within Sunni Islam – than hatred against the West, although there is plenty of that.

What compounds everything is the failure of too many Arab Muslim states to provide decent, representative government, protection of human rights and a reasonable standard of living for their people – failures chronicled in studies by Arab experts for the United Nations. With so much poverty, and so few prospects for improvement, no wonder handfuls of young Muslims are inspired by the perverse dreams of becoming a somebody by killing others and joining movements that purport to restore respect for and fear of Muslims.

Unless something changes within Islam, these sentiments are likely to grow if nothing else for reasons of sheer numbers. The Pew Research Center suggests that Muslims’ share of the world’s population, which stands at about 1.6 billion (or 23 per cent) today, will reach 2.8 billion by 2050. During the next four decades, the world’s population will grow by about 35 per cent; the Muslim population by 73 per cent.

The vast majority will be peaceful inhabitants of our world, but some, if the past quarter-century offers any guide, will not, so that the struggle against jihadi terror will be with us for a long time.


When a senior member of the Laurentian Elites says that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was "unable to explain coherently why Canada’s six C-18 fighter jets should be withdrawn from the fray," then you know that the Liberal base is unsure of what's happening.

I continue to believe that one man's advice is paramount:

             
jeanchretien.jpeg


                    ... and Prime Minister Chrétien is telling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Canadians will forgive him for not bombing people sooner than they will forgive him for breaking a popular campaign promise.
 
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