MPs, Taiwanese envoy highlight opportunities to strengthen relations between Taiwan, Canada amid COVID-19 fallout, China tensions

At a time of escalating tensions between Canada and China in the midst of an ongoing U.S.-China trade war, a number of MPs and Taipei’s economic and cultural office representative in Canada say this is a “massive opportunity” for moves toward closer cooperation between this country and Taiwan—particularly in light of what’s required to rebuild our country’s battered economy in the months and years to come.

“Our mindset is very similar to yours,” said Winston Wen-yi Chen, representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Canada, in an interview with The Hill Times. “With Canada and Taiwan, because our structures are pretty complimentary, it makes it easy for us to work together and to show the strengths to the outside world in a challenging time.”

“You have such a huge abundance of innovation, ideas, and financial resources, and in Taiwan, we can transform that knowledge into manufacturing real things,” said Mr. Chen.

As parts of Canada head into the ‘second wave’ of the pandemic, once again slowing sectors of the economy already hard hit by the first, Mr. Chen emphasized the importance of looking ahead—and to prepare as much as possible to catch up on job losses incurred in the last several months.

“Now you’re talking about the second wave or maybe even the third wave, but you have to think one step ahead of the pandemic—how to revive the economy, recover business activity, which is something that’s probably even more important,” said Mr. Chen. “You have to do the preparation, how to re-organize critical sectors, including PPE manufacturing, the industrial supply chain, and to work with democratic reliable partners or countries.”

“I think that’s something that Canada as a whole can work together with Taiwan,” said Mr. Chen, who also highlighted Taiwan’s vibrant democracy and inclusive society that was the first to pass a law allowing for same-sex marriage in Asia.

Liberal MP John McKay (Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont.), who chairs the House Public Safety and National Security Committee, said he sees closer cooperation with Taiwan as a “a massive opportunity with little or no downside.”

“Given that the Chinese government alternates between disparaging Canada and disdaining Canada with their hectoring diplomacy and utter disrespect for the rule of law and any other convention or norm, I think we turn to the friends that we have,” said Mr. McKay. “Taiwan is one of the friends that we have. And in circumscribed circumstances, it’s been a very mature relationship over the years, and it’s got a lot of upside to it.”

Taiwan is a partner in science, medicine, fair trade, and foreign policy, said Conservative MP Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.).

“The focus of a Canadian government, either this one or the next one, should be to restore relations to Taiwan as the democracy that it is and the democratic partner that it’s been, even in these years that Canada has kneeled to the Chinese Communist Party,” said Mr. Kent.

The opportunity to strengthen relations with Taiwan has been there for a long time, according to the Conservative MP.

“But the COVID pandemic has made that option even more attractive and in some ways necessary,” said Mr. Kent. “The democracies of the world are going to have to stand together to counter Chinese coercive diplomacy and military expansionism,” said Mr. Kent. “Canada needs to stand with democracies like Taiwan.”

This country has had a very positive relationship with Taiwan for many years, said Liberal MP Judy Sgro (Humber River—Black Creek, Ont.), who chairs the Canada Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Group.

“I think we have learned a lot from Taiwan as Taiwan has learned a lot from Canada,” said the Liberal MP, who called Taiwan’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic “unbelievable.”

“For a small country to do what they do is quite remarkable, and so I think there’s a huge opportunity for us to become even better friends than we were before,” said Ms. Sgro. “And I hope that we’re able to utilize the parliamentary friendship group to help move that along.”

When the ‘One China’ policy was adopted in 1970 that recognized the People’s Republic of China as the sole representative of China, which suspended diplomatic relations between this country and Taiwan, Canada did not endorse it, but we “took note of it,” according to Sarah Goldfeder, a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group, and a former U.S. diplomat who served in Southeast Asia.

“That has changed. The understanding of that has changed in government over time, and part of that was this push to get closer to China for trade reasons. And so I think it was a pragmatic approach to the issues that really sacrificed some democratic ideals along the way.”

Since then, Taiwan has taken on considerable economic challenges and has made sense of them in a way that can be instructive for countries like Canada, according to Ms. Goldfeder, including a shift from being 100 per cent reliant on imports for food products, to a situation where the majority of their produce is produced in greenhouses that line the southern stretch of the country.

According to Josephine Chiu-Duke, a professor with the department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, “the Canadian government should look hard into relationships with other, similar democratic countries to see how they explore the potential opportunities between or among them.”

“This does not mean that we want to be hostile to China—even the government in Taiwan doesn’t want to do that—but no liberal democracy should give up their own values to cave into unreasonable external pressure,” said Prof. Chiu-Duke.

Prof. Chiu-Duke agreed that Taiwan can provide Canada with opportunities for cooperation in terms of medical services, the semiconductor industry, and the food industry.