US President Joe Biden, surrounded by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attend the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) at the Izumi Garden Gallery in Tokyo on May 23, 2022 Mr. JONATHAN ERNST / Reuters
Once again, the governments of the Indo-Pacific region have agreed to cooperate with each other to limit China’s influence. Canada was once again excluded from the agreement. Justin Trudeau’s liberal government is responsible. He needs to fix that.
During a visit to Japan this week, US President Joe Biden announced the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, or IPEF, a consortium of 13 developed and developing countries covering 40 percent of world GDP.
The goals of the agreement are poorly defined and limited by the reluctance of the US Congress to ratify new trade agreements. But Canada’s foreign policy has long been committed to participating in multilateral fora. IPEF is a new multilateral forum and Canada is not involved.
Asked why Canada is not part of the IPEF, Mr Trudeau said the United States was simply trying to make up for its withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Canada had negotiated with 10 other Asia-Pacific countries a few years earlier.
But nations like Japan, Australia and Malaysia are in both the TPP and the IPEF. And IPEF is not the only new group from which Canada is excluded.
The United States, India, Japan and Australia have formed Quad, a joint security partnership. And then there’s AUKUS, a security pact that includes the United States, Britain and Australia. Canada stayed out of both.
“There is a feeling from close partners that the current government is not focused on the Indo-Pacific region,” said Stephen Nagy, a professor in politics and international studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo and a fellow at the Canadian Institute of Global Affairs.
Trudeau’s government, he said, was seen by its partners as “too focused on progressive policies at home and abroad and in some cases unreliable”.
Japan, Australia and other countries have not yet forgiven Mr Trudeau for almost ruining the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement in 2017 with last-minute demands. Mr Trudeau’s visit to India in 2018 has severely damaged the Prime Minister’s reputation there.
Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie’s much-promised, yet-to-be-presented review of Indo-Pacific policy testifies to the government’s internal inconsistency in trade and security in the Indo-Pacific region.
“There’s no reason they took as much time as they had,” said Shuvaloi Majumdar, director of the foreign policy program at the MacDonald-Lorie Institute, a think tank. As the United States and other countries wait for Canada to say something consistent about its Indo-Pacific strategy, they simply froze us from the discussions.
“I think Washington is concerned about Canada’s direction and is waiting to see what its decisions are,” Mr Majumdar said.
Canada’s allies and partners face the same conundrum: gaining China’s influence while doing business with the world’s second-largest economy.
Other countries have developed strategies to limit and cooperate with China. Canada does not. This country announced a ban on the use of equipment by the Chinese company Huawei in 5G technology last week, years after our allies made the same decision.
And while the crisis in Ukraine is clearly the country’s most pressing security concern at the moment, unless Canada commits significant resources to Indo-Pacific security, nothing we say or do in the region will be taken seriously.
The Trudeau government has made significant progress toward a trade agreement with members of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), which Dan Churiac, a contributor to the CD Howe Institute, considers more significant than what he calls “wet noodles” agreements, such as e.g. IPEF.
“The negotiations for a free trade agreement between Canada and ASEAN and the parallel negotiations with Indonesia are much more important and would bring real benefits to Canada,” he said. “There is a lot of enthusiasm for this agreement in both governments and the business community.
And the foreign policy review, if and when it is released, could give Mr Trudeau a chance to restart with the Indo-Pacific countries.
“This means that Prime Minister Trudeau will visit the region and express Canada’s continued commitment to the region,” said Nagy.
A strong commitment to the Indo-Pacific trade and security strategy would signal to other countries that Canada is returning – this time, indeed.
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