The Humanist Cafe Discussion Forum
Free* And Open To All!
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 – 7:00-8:30 pmCook Street Activity Center 380 Cook St. (Cook St. Village), Victoria
Limited free parking and free street parking
(There are 12 free parking spaces behind the building directly across from The Center, which can be accessed from a driveway off of Oscar St. It is almost always empty in the evenings.)
Please use the side entrance (beside the construction site)
Purchase coffee/tea nearby at The Moka House – BYO mug!
Discussion Topic
: Canada and China – what should be our future relationship?
Presenter and moderator: Barrie Webster
We spoke of a ‘new world order’ a couple of Cafes ago. Today, I propose to steer us toward looking specifically at Canada’s potential relationship with China.
With the recent trade and political rift with the US (the largest economy in the world) on the rocks, should Canada be looking to the second largest economy instead? If so, why or why not, and how?
In his recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Omer Aziz,
[Aziz is an author, lawyer and a former foreign policy adviser in the Government of Canada. He was most recently a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.]
says that “we are on the cusp of a new world order and that Canada must act decisively to shape it”. And he is focusing in particular on China. [see pdf attached below – sorry, no URL: Globe & Mail articles are behind a paywall]
President Xi Jinping of China responded to Trump’s promise to undo globalization by defending it and saying in effect “that if the United States did not want to lead, China would happily take over.” Canada finds itself caught in the middle between these two spheres of influence.
Julian Karaguesian and Robin Shaban, also in the Globe and Mail (July 2025), [pdf reference below]
[Karaguesian is an economic and policy expert and former special adviser to the Department of Finance Canada and a visiting lecturer in the Department of Economics at McGill University. Shaban is a partner at 2R Strategy and a fellow of the Public Policy Forum.]
have come right out and said “Let’s free ourselves of the U.S. and forge closer ties with China”. [see pdf below] Karaguesian and Shaban’s opinion is that
“our long-standing subordination to the U.S. is also holding us back from partnering with China, one of the world’s most important economies. To achieve economic sovereignty, Canada must break free from the made-in-Washington narrative that China is an unreliable trading partner bent on world domination. Instead, Canada must forge its own relationship with China – a relationship anchored in Canadian, not U.S., interests.”
Aziz points out that today, China dominates in critical minerals. They are necessary for smart phones, and sophisticated medical technologies such as MRI; also for cars (particularly EVs), missiles, and semiconductors (computer chips), and artificial intelligence itself. Further, he says Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductors fuels China’s desire to reunify the island nation with the mainland, but that the most advanced chips depend on American and allied technology. So any military move by China against Taiwan could damage China itself.
Dan Wang and Arthur Kroeber in Foreign Affairs [see pdf reference below]
[Wang is a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the author of Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. Kroeber is the Founder of Gavekal Dragonomics and the author of China’s Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know.]Today, China leads the globe in EVs, clean electrical generation, drones, industrial automation and electronics. But the Chinese economy is currently mired in a slowdown that may prevent its overtaking the US in total output.
Nevertheless, China’s momentum continues: planners picked the right sectors to subsidize, and state backed infrastructure to enable a resilient technological economy. It enabled China to scale up newly developed technologies faster than any other country in a manner that was unlikely to be derailed by sluggish economic growth, or US sanctions.
Why did China succeed so well? Not only was there government financial support, it invested that support in deep infrastructure – transportation systems and human expertise – enabling innovation and efficient production.
What should Canada do in response? Aziz proposes that Canada work together with other middle powers recognizing their comparative advantages and invest diplomatic capital to ensure our economic partnerships are diversified and strong. For instance, the Arctic Council could become a meaningful Forum; the World Bank could help us with multilateral reforms. We should also be active at the gatherings in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (where the new order is being created).
With respect to China, “over time, all Western countries will have to choose a posture that allows for co-operation in certain domains, competition in others, and ultimately co-existence without conflict. The public must be invited to join in. It is not a question of defeating China; rather, one of re-industrializing Canada and rebuilding the democratic alliance.” The democratic world “can only meet this generational challenge by drawing upon the values that make our peoples great in the first place: resilience, ingenuity, and our inherent capacity for self-renewal and reinvention.”
Finally, Jameson Berkow and Emily Haws (the Globe & Mail October 19) have said the rather obvious
“Resetting relationship with China will be difficult” [see pdf below].
Questions:
1. What should we work towards to reset our relationship with China?
2. Is it possible to achieve the goals proposed by Aziz?
3. Can we protect our democracy in the process?
4. [Your question here]
See you there! Bring a buddy!
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