Juno News - Should we decouple from China？

00:00:00.000 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ruled out doing a prisoner exchange with China,

00:00:09.880 trading Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou for the two Michaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

00:00:14.800 It's not happening. It's not on. And that is good news. We cannot give in to their bullying.

00:00:21.260 There's a bigger question, meanwhile, the Huawei question, whether or not we should be banning

00:00:25.640 them from playing a role in building the infrastructure underlying our 5G grid. Yes,

00:00:31.280 they should be banned. So far, though, Justin Trudeau dragging his feet on that question,

00:00:36.500 not making a decision. Canadians need to press him to reject Huawei. We see that the time is ripe.

00:00:43.300 New polls show that only 14% of Canadians have a favorable view of China. Wow. 14. What a low

00:00:50.200 number. So now is the time to confront that even bigger question, an existential question for Canada,

00:00:57.300 really, which is, should we decouple from China? Should we put as much distance between ourselves

00:01:04.020 and the rising global superpower led by the Chinese Communist Party's authoritarian leadership as we

00:01:10.500 can? Yes, we should. So what would a decoupling mean? What would it look like? I'll give you just

00:01:16.280 one example on the economic front. And this pertains to the question of state-owned enterprises,

00:01:22.460 Chinese companies that are owned by the Chinese government and answer to the Chinese government

00:01:26.840 and do their bidding. And those state-owned enterprises buying companies and assets around

00:01:31.980 the world. They buy firms in Canada and they keep trying to buy firms in Canada. For instance,

00:01:37.700 they're buying a gold mining company right now, a Canadian company in the Arctic Circle. Now we know

00:01:43.380 that China wants a greater foothold in the Arctic Circle for strategic reasons. We must reject this

00:01:49.560 purchase. But instead of rejecting them item by item, here's an idea. Put a blanket ban on the

00:01:55.740 Chinese government being able to buy Canadian firms. This is actually something that's being

00:02:00.820 considered by the House of Commons Industry Committee right now. Not a lot of Canadians know about this

00:02:06.260 reality. I think they would be shocked and outraged to learn that during this current era, during the

00:02:11.760 pandemic, when we know that China misled us and covered it up and really led to the large part of

00:02:17.180 the spread of it all, that they are still allowed to go around and buy companies, their own government

00:02:22.280 in Canada? It's not on, people would say. So that's a big part of the decoupling, the SOEs. There are many

00:02:29.420 other action items on it and we have to put them all on the table and all into consideration as we talk

00:02:35.460 about keeping our distance from the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.

Juno News - June 27, 2020