OTTAWA — As the Trudeau government fleshes out its Indo-Pacific strategy, Western Canada is seeking more certainty from the Liberals on expanding energy exports to Asia.
Stephen Nagy, a Canadian who works as a politics professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, said Western Canada's ties with China mean the region is at the whims of Ottawa's relations with Beijing."During the pandemic — during the highest point of tension between China and Canada — trade between Western Canada and China increased," he said.
"There really is, we feel, a major opportunity for western Canadian agriculture to position ourselves as the leading supplier of agri-food products in the region," Ross said for Winnipeg. "It's become a game a bit of a game of Whack-a-Mole, with increasingly less of a cohesive strategy on how to proactively address these systemic issues in a region like the Indo-Pacific."
Still, she said the lack of concrete plans gives provinces a chance to get on the same page and push Ottawa to emphasize certain topics — though she warned that contradictory demands from provinces would delay Ottawa scaling up its involvement in the region. She argued that a domestic clash over softwood lumber policies hampered Ottawa's response to disputes with the U.S.