Juno News - Should we decouple from China？

Justin Trudeau has ruled out doing a prisoner exchange with China, trading Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou for the two Michael Kovrigs and Michael Spavor, and that is good news. But now is the time to confront an even bigger question, an existential question for Canada, really, which is: 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 0.75

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

Should we decouple from China？

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