Liberal Leader Mark Carney visits a moulding plant, as part of his Liberal Party election campaign tour, in Windsor, Ont., on March 26.Blair Gable/Reuters
Liberal Leader Mark Carney Wednesday rejected accusations from his Conservative rival that he’s beholden to Beijing and said he thinks Canada’s trade-diversification strategy should prioritize boosting commerce with “like-minded countries” in Europe instead of China.
The Canadian government is trying to shift trade away from the United States in the face of growing protectionist tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump and his challenges to Canadian sovereignty, where he argues that Canada should be annexed as the “51st state” because it allegedly can’t exist without the U.S.
Asked if Canada should boost trade with China as it tries to reduce trade with the U.S., Mr. Carney pointed to Europe instead.
“We want to diversify with like-minded partners. That’s why I went to Europe in my first days as Prime Minister,” the Liberal Leader said during a campaign stop in Windsor, Ont., referring to a visit to Paris and London where he talked about Canadian companies playing a greater role in Europe’s military buildup.
“There are partners in Asia with whom we can build deeper ties,” Mr. Carney said. “But the partners in Asia that share our values don’t include China.”
China’s ambassador to Canada, Wang Di, last week told The Globe and Mail that Beijing is open to resuming free-trade talks with Ottawa and even operating a joint research station in the Arctic. At the same time, though, news broke last week that China executed four Canadians after convicting them of drug-related charges.
Full transcript of The Globe and Mail’s exclusive interview with Chinese Ambassador Wang Di
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has accused Mr. Carney of being beholden to China, noting that while he was chair of Brookfield Asset Management, the company obtained a US$276-million loan from the Bank of China last year. He also raised questions about Mr. Carney’s trips to China last year, including a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Given that China has murdered our people, taken our people hostage, how is he ever going to stand up to foreign interference?” Mr. Poilievre asked earlier this week of Mr. Carney.
Mr. Carney dismissed Mr. Poilievre’s accusations, saying the Conservative Leader is ignorant. “Mr. Poilievre doesn’t understand the world. Mr. Poilievre is a lifelong politician. It’s all he’s ever done – his slogans, sound bites, slander,” the Liberal Leader said.
China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner, although trade is imbalanced. Canada imported $88.5-billion in goods from China in 2024 but sold only $29.9-billion to China, according to Statistics Canada.
The Liberal Leader said China is important to Canadian trade but needs to be approached with caution. “There’s certain activity that we could have with China. We obviously do have a large amount of trade with them, but we have to be very careful, very deliberate, and they need to meet Canadian standards.”
Canada and China are also in the middle of an escalating trade war. Canada imposed 100-per-cent tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles last September and 25-per-cent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from China. It was moving in lockstep with the U.S., which slapped similar levies on China in the name of protecting the North American auto industry from alleged overproduction and dumping of Chinese EVs around the world.
China recently retaliated by enacting tariffs on Canadian canola oil, peas, pork and seafood. More countertariffs from Beijing could be on the way.
“We have trade disputes with China right now caused by them in the agriculture sectors, one of the areas which we need to engage on,” Mr. Carney said.
Asked if he is beholden to China, as Mr. Poilievre alleges, and whether the Brookfield loan from the Bank of China was an unusually advantageous arrangement, Mr. Carney replied: “Absolutely not.”
He said it remains to be determined if there is room for greater engagement with China. “We’ve got to understand where China is, where China is going, whether or not there’s any room for partnership in that,” Mr. Carney said. “I’m beholden to absolutely no one except to the Canadian people.”
In 2017, Ottawa came close to starting talks with Beijing on a trade agreement. Preparatory negotiations ended in 2018 without a deal.
Relations between the two countries entered a deep freeze more than half a decade ago after Ottawa arrested Chinese tech executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request and Beijing retaliated by jailing two Canadians for nearly three years. Relations have since been battered by allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections and the latest escalating trade dispute between the countries.
Last year, the commissioner of a public inquiry into foreign interference, Marie-Josée Hogue, identified China as the foremost aggressor in regards to foreign interference in Canada. She said illegal police stations that China was operating in Canada were used to conduct transnational repression – where Beijing harassed people of Chinese ethnicity. China has denied any foreign meddling in Canada.
Mr. Wang, Beijing’s envoy to Canada, told The Globe last week Ottawa would have to remove restrictions placed on Chinese investment in recent years if it wants to boost trade.
He cited as examples a 2022 decision to order Chinese state-owned companies to divest their interests in three Canadian critical-minerals companies, Ottawa’s forced closing of the Canadian operations of Chinese social-media platform TikTok, and the federal government’s order to restrict the use of Chinese artificial-intelligence company DeepSeek’s chatbot on some of its mobile devices.
Mr. Wang, who took up his post last year, said his mission in Ottawa is to improve ties with Canada.
“For quite a long time, Canada was one of the Western countries that had the best relationship with China. But unfortunately, in the past few years, our relationship suffered setbacks,” he said. “Now, China is ready to move forward.”
With reports from Mark Rendell
Beijing's ambassador to Canada Wang Di says China is interested in stepping up trade with Ottawa as the U.S. continues to pursue a global trade war. Wang says Washington should not force Canada to choose between the U.S. and China, because that would further destabilize the global economy.
The Canadian Press