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Analysis

Producing a Panda–Polar Bear Partnership:
Promising Prospects for Canadian-Chinese Global Cooperation

John Kirton,
Director, G20 Research Group, November 24, 2021

Presentation prepared for the High Level Forum: China-Canada Relations after the 2021 Federal Election, co-hosted by the Shanghai Institute for International Studies and the Shanghai International Studies University, November 24, 2021. Draft of December 2, 2021.

Trudeau's Restraint during the Detentions

During their detention, Canada practised great restraint. Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party, with a minority government since 2019, refused to defer to the demands of the major opposition Conservative Party to ban Huawei from participating in Canada's new 5G telecommunications network, or to impose retaliatory trade measures on China. Canada refused to withdraw from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, where the United States was not a member. Canada reserved its position on China's initiative to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership that Canada had pioneered with Japan and that the US never joined.

Co-operation with China increased on COVID-19 and climate change. On COVID-19, Canada, China and their G20 colleagues made many commitments at the G20's emergency summit in March 2020, and its regular Riyadh Summit that November.

On climate change, the fifth annual Ministerial on Climate Action among China, Canada and the European Union took place in China on March 23, 2021. It was the first ministerial meeting in 2021 on international climate action. It emphasized raising global ambition and low carbon recoveries from the COVID-19 recession. It included ministers from other G20 members and other key parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The leaders of Canada, China and all G20 members then participated in the Leaders Summit on Climate, convened by US president Joe Biden in April. There, most promised to take new actions to keep the global temperature rise under 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. All G7 leaders just before or at the summit promised emissions reductions averaging 50% or more by 2030. China, Brazil and South Africa made meaningful new commitments too.

On political-security, Canada did not join Biden's Quadrilateral Summit of the US, Japan, India and Australia in the spring of 2021, or the new Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) partnership in the autumn. Throughout 2021, Canada's major initiative was to assemble allies to support Canada's specific concern with arbitrary detention, rather than Biden's general summit of democracies to oppose the world's authoritarian regimes. Here Canada successfully mobilized the US and other leading countries, to help secure the two Michaels' release.

The Post-Detention Phase

During the campaign for the Canadian federal election on September 20, 2021, the opposition Conservative Party, aware of China's plunging popularity among Canadians, highlighted a punitive, adversarial approach. Trudeau's Liberals stayed the course. Canadians gave Trudeau a few more seats, while the Conservatives gained none.

Trudeau's appointment of his new cabinet on October 26 suggested the potential for greater co-operation with China. The appointment of Steven Guilbeault, a life-long environmental activist, as Canada's new minister of the environment and climate change, indicated a much more ambitious approach to this fully global issue, which Canada needed China to help solve.

This was reinforced by Canadian public opinion, where climate change regained its first place in Canadians' top concerns. Trudeau also secured parliamentary co-operation from the Bloc Québécois and prospectively the New Democratic Party, whose views on climate change were more ambitious than the Conservative Party ones.

In the G20, in 2021, Canada and China were increasingly aligned. In their compliance with the priority commitments from the G20's Riyadh Summit, six months later G20 members had complied at 74%, with Canada well above at 83% and China well behind at 68%. Yet by the Rome Summit, G20 compliance had risen to a new peak of 86%, Canada's to 93% and China's to 85%.

Active co-operation also arose, as Canada and China helped make the unprecedented number of commitments at the 20 G20 ministerial meetings in 2021.

The G20 Rome Summit

At the Rome Summit itself, Canada and China agreed to all its 225 commitments.

On the economy and development, their leaders endorsed a revolutionary new international corporate tax regime, agreed to channel some of rich members' newly created Special Drawing Rights to poor countries, and produced a credible macroeconomic policy message, and more debt relief for the poorest states.

On COVID-19 and global health, G20 leaders made 35 commitments. Trudeau announced that Canada would donate at least 200 million doses to the COVAX facility by the end of 2022, including an immediate contribution of up to 10 million doses.

On climate change, G20 members made 21 commitments. Trudeau featured this issue, a long-standing Canadian priority, in his 2021 election campaign.

At Rome, G20 leaders agreed to end international coal financing within two months. This reinforced a Canadian initiative of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2008, the subsequent Canada-UK created Powering Past Coal Alliance, and the G7 Cornwall Summit's agreement on June 13 to end international financing for unabated coal.

G20 leaders agreed to achieve carbon neutrality "by or around mid-century." This was a long-standing Canadian goal, to which China finally agreed to join, by 2060.

On fossil fuel subsidies, the G20 agreed "we kwill increase our efforts to implement the commitment made in 2009 in Pittsburgh to phase out and rationalize, over the medium term, inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and commit to achieve this objective."

On a national carbon pricing regime, there was no agreement. Canada had adopted one a few years before. China had introduced the world's largest national emissions trading regime in July 2021. But the US had none and had no plans to get one soon.

The Critical Case of Forests

This path and potential for Canada-China partnership is evident in the critical case of forestry.

Protecting forests and planting tress has long been a key part of both Canada's and China's plans to control climate change.

Their policies were internationally embedded and expanded at Rome. For the first time, all G20 leaders agreed that "acknowledging the urgency of combating land degradation and creating new carbon sinks, we share the aspirational goal to collectively plant 1 trillion trees, focusing on the most degraded ecosystems in the planet."

Two days later, in Glasgow, on the sidelines of the UN's climate summit, 110 leaders of countries that contain 85% of the world's forests, pledged to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. They included Canada and China, along with Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, the United States and United Kingdom. The pledge was a major advance from the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which Canada had signed, but China had not.

Conclusion: UN's Kunming Conference on Biodiversity

This expanding Canada-China partnership can grow next year, when China hosts its landmark UN summit on biodiversity in Kunming from April 25 to May 8, 2022.

Canada played a key role in creating the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, at the UN summit in Rio in June 1992. Canada ratified the convention in December 1992. China followed a year later. The United States never did. Joe Biden has no plans to do so now.

Canada, which hosts the convention's secretariat, can play a critical role in making China's biodiversity summit a success. Canada's ranks as a natural superpower in the world (see Appendix A). It stands first in oceanic coastlines, the volume of fresh water, the number of lakes, boreal forests (with 30% of the global total), temperate rainforest (with over 25%), wetlands and polar bears (with a hegemonic 60%). It has 10% of the world's forests. It ranks second in carbon absorbing peatlands (with 25%).

The opportunity is to construct with China a set of ambitious initiatives that will attract the world's other biodiversity powers, to make China's Kunming Summit the success the world badly needs.

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Appendix A: Biodiversity Data ↩

Landmass

Source: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-largest-countries-in-the-world-the-biggest-nations-as-determined-by-total-land-area.html

Forest area

Source: https://www.fao.org/state-of-forests/en/

Peat area

Source: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/draftpeatlandco2report.pdf

Wetland area

Source: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Environment/Wetlands-of-intl-importance/Area

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