Premiers to promote trade in China - without Harper

It will be a Team Canada mission to China without the captain as provincial and territorial leaders promote trade without the Prime Minister.


thestar.com
Sept. 2, 2014
By Robert Benzie

It will be a Team Canada mission to China without the captain.

Provincial and territorial leaders - including Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne - will travel to China next month to promote trade.

But Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has shunned the Team Canada trips former prime minister Jean Chretien made popular in the 1990s, will not be accompanying them.

“What the Chinese representatives have said to us...is that they’re very interested in the relationships with the sub-national jurisdictions,” Wynne said in an interview on Friday.

“They see huge opportunities in their companies having relationships with companies in provinces and territories and they’re fostering those,” the premier said of her first foreign trade mission since succeeding Dalton McGuinty in February 2013.

“For me, what this trip is about is doing more of that - is making those connections and making sure that we identify those businesses in Ontario and particularly businesses that might not know how to connect with businesses in China and might not know how to make a deal in China,” she said of the October mission.

“It’s so that we can export and we can attract investment,”

Wynne told CBC Radio’s The House with Evan Solomon on Saturday that “wouldn’t it be wonderful if the prime minister were interested in taking part, because the door is open...he is more than welcome.”

Harper, who is talking trade in the United Kingdom this week before attending the NATO summit in Wales, will be in China a month after the premiers - for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Beijing.

Prince Edward Island Premier Robert Ghiz, the chair of the Council of the Federation, said “we see a huge opportunity in Asia.”

“We believe that Canada is a trading nation. The...freer trade we can find throughout the world, the better it is for our economy,” said Ghiz, adding he’s “happy” to participate with his counterparts from across Canada.

“Yes, we are very much still number one trading partners with the United States, but we also believe it’s important that we diversify our trade.”

Luo Zhaohui, China’s ambassador to Canada, made a point of flying to Charlottetown with senior embassy staff last week to see the premiers.

The Chinese envoy told the Star at the Council of the Federation meeting there that he was looking forward to Wynne’s visit and to increasing his country’s ties to Ontario.