FIRST READING: Even Democrats are weirded out by Canada’s enmeshment with China

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The 49,000 EVs were the signature outcome of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January visit to Beijing in which he struck a new “strategic partnership” with the country and praised China’s role within the “new world order.”

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“We’re heartened by the leadership of President Xi Jinping and the speed with which our relationship has progressed,” Carney told Chinese Premier Li Qiang in a meeting at the Great Hall of the People.

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In exchange for China dropping ruinous tariffs on Canadian canola exports, Canada greenlit the EVs and promised closer coordination with Chinese law enforcement. A joint statement issued by Beijing promised “cooperation in combating crimes between the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

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Last month, 74 members of Congress signed a letter petitioning the Trump White House to be much warier of Chinese EVs getting a foothold on Canadian soil.

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“Chinese automobiles could establish a foothold in Canada and seek to move into the United States market, and these trends create a clear and urgent risk that Chinese automakers are looking to use Canada and Mexico as a backdoor into the United States under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA),” it reads.

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The signatories included both Democrats and Republicans, including many who have vocally opposed Trump’s trade war against Canada. As recently as February, Congress voted 219 to 211 to pass a Democrat-championed motion to end “Trump’s tariffs on Canada.”

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But with regards to Canada’s embrace of Chinese EVs, the letter warns that “Chinese-owned or controlled vehicles, regardless of where they are assembled, must not be permitted to enter our market through USMCA or any other mechanism.”
Slotkin’s own opposition to Chinese EVs is two-fold.

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First, that they are filled with potential spy technology that could be used by Chinese state authorities. As she told CBC, the cars have a “data package that’s sending back 3D video and mapping and geolocation … that can be hacked back to Beijing.”
And second, that the cars are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government for the specific purpose of undercutting U.S.-made EVs and fostering dependence on Chinese-made cars.

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This was the point made by Slotkin at a recent appearance before the Detroit Chamber of Commerce. She singled out Chinese-made BYD EVs, calling them a reverse-engineered knockoff of Teslas.

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“The Chinese have an economic playbook … they usually steal intellectual property on something that they like … and then they deeply, deeply subsidize the price of that vehicle,” she said.

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Slotkin’s trip to a Toronto conference to warn of Chinese enmeshment just happened to coincide with a Republican doing the same thing at a conference in Ottawa.

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Mike Pompeo, who served as both CIA director and U.S. Secretary of State in Trump’s first term, was a keynote speaker at last week’s Canada Strong and Free Conference in Ottawa.

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Pompeo told the crowd that China is “hard at work inside the gates” and that both the U.S. and Canada have been “naïve” to the extent of Beijing’s infiltration, even calling it more of a threat to world security than a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

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“I’m much less worried about Taiwan than I am about Denver, Colorado, or Los Angeles, or Phoenix, or Ottawa, or Toronto,” he said.

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IN OTHER NEWS

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When Canadian public health authorities first embraced “harm reduction” measures such as clean needles and safe injection sites in the late 1990s, the pitch was that they would be part of a continuum of policies ultimately geared towards getting addicts clean.

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But in a telling recent statement to a House of Commons committee, Canada’s new chief public health officer could not say whether injecting hard drugs was even a bad thing. Asked by a Conservative MP whether consuming illegal fentanyl was “safe,” she responded “the toxic drug crisis is a complex situation, and it requires a complex response.”

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This image has nothing whatsoever to do with politics, but we’ve placed it in this politics newsletter largely because it’s a contender to be the one piece of Canadian news poised to sweep the globe this month more than any other. A motorcyclist in Surrey, B.C., hit a car turning left, causing his bike to be catapulted onto the light standard overhead. The rider is in hospital. Photo by Blair Hendrickson / Facebook

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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