The Gatekeeper Becomes the Gateway: Canada's U-Turn on China Raises Hard Questions

.

He built the walls to keep China out. Now he's flying to Beijing to open the doors. The story of François-Philippe Champagne — and what his China visit reveals about Canada's uncomfortable new strategy.

.

A Remarkable Reversal

There is something almost cinematic about the role reversal now playing out in Ottawa.

François-Philippe Champagne, Canada's Finance Minister, arrived in Beijing on April 1, 2026, for a four-day trade delegation — meeting with senior Chinese finance and banking officials, courting investment, and advancing the "strategic partnership" Prime Minister Mark Carney launched during his own China visit in January.

What makes this moment historically striking is not the visit itself. It is who is making it.

As Canada's industry minister under Justin Trudeau, Champagne was among the most consequential architects of Canada's defensive posture against Beijing. He oversaw the ban on Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE from Canada's 5G wireless infrastructure. He tightened the Investment Act to prevent state-owned companies from quietly acquiring Canadian strategic assets. He hardened the rules designed to stop China from siphoning Canadian research and intellectual property. He imposed the 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles in October 2024 — saying at the time that Canada "would never be a back door to cheap Chinese vehicles which are overly subsidized and where they don't respect labour law and environmental laws."

Less than eighteen months later, that tariff has been slashed to 6.1 percent. And the man who built the wall is now in Beijing, talking about investment.

The Logic — and the Pressure Behind It

The pivot did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because of Donald Trump.

The Champagne visit is part of Prime Minister Carney's effort to improve trade relations with China, India, Europe, and other countries amid the continuing U.S. trade conflict. The Carney government has sought to diversify Canadian trade partners amid uncertainty about the Canada-U.S. trade relationship and Trump's ongoing tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum, lumber, and automobiles.

The arithmetic is stark. Over the past five years, China exported roughly $89 billion annually to Canada while Canada exported only $30 billion back — a trade imbalance that Ottawa now sees as an opportunity rather than a problem. Brian Tobin, vice-chair of BMO Financial Group and a former Newfoundland premier, argued that "the time to get back in business is now," noting that two-way merchandise trade between Canada and China now stands at $118.9 billion annually — making China Canada's second-largest single-country trading partner.

Carney has set an ambitious target: increasing Canadian exports to China by 50 percent within five years. Champagne's Beijing mission is the first major step toward that goal.

The official government statement framed the visit in expansive terms, describing China as "an industrial leader" with which Canada "stands to benefit from closer economic and trade ties," and calling Carney's January visit "a turning point in this important bilateral relationship."

The EV Deal: A 180-Degree Turn

The most symbolically loaded element of Canada's China rapprochement is the electric vehicle agreement reached during Carney's January visit — and it deserves scrutiny.

Under the deal, Canada agreed to slash its 100 percent tariff on up to 49,000 Chinese-made EVs annually down to 6.1 percent, in exchange for Beijing reducing or removing its retaliatory tariffs on Canadian canola and seafood products until the end of 2026.

When asked whether he would raise the issue of forced labour in Chinese EV supply chains during his Beijing trip, Champagne said: "The integrity of our supply chain is always something that we bring up in our discussions. We condemn forced labour in all its forms everywhere in the world." Prime Minister Carney, for his part, confirmed that forced labour would be part of the conversations Champagne would have in China.

Whether that amounts to meaningful pressure or diplomatic cover remains an open question.

The United States has maintained its own 100 percent tariff on Chinese EVs, with officials raising concerns about dumping, market distortion, and the surveillance capabilities built into Chinese-manufactured vehicles. Ontario Premier Doug Ford put the central contradiction bluntly after the deal was announced: "Guess what folks, 80 to 90 percent of those vehicles produced go south of the border, so I'm not too sure if Trump wants Chinese spy vehicles coming across the border, but I'm betting the answer is no."

The numbers are significant. There were just over 115,000 new battery electric vehicle registrations in Canada in 2025. Allowing 49,000 Chinese EVs into the Canadian market would represent roughly 42 percent of that total — an extraordinary market share for a single country of origin, and one that arrives with documented concerns about data collection, surveillance sensors, and mandatory cooperation with Chinese state intelligence.

Security Concerns That Haven't Gone Away

China expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston — who testified before a House of Commons committee in March — said plainly that "nothing has changed" since Champagne himself declared Chinese EVs an economic and security risk. She noted that Champagne, given his experience as industry minister, is "among the best placed in cabinet to understand the risks posed by China."

Chinese companies are legally required under Chinese national security law to assist state intelligence collection upon request. EVs are rolling data centers — equipped with cameras, GPS systems, microphones, and sensors that generate detailed information about their owners, passengers, and surroundings. Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has said Chinese EVs entering Canada will comply with Canadian privacy laws. Critics note that Chinese law may have other ideas.

The controversy was sharpened further when Liberal MP Michael Ma — who crossed the floor from the Conservatives in December and accompanied Carney to China in January — appeared to cast doubt on the existence of forced labour in China's EV supply chain during a March 26 parliamentary committee hearing. The exchange drew immediate condemnation from opposition MPs, human rights advocates, and China watchers. Ma later apologized, saying his questioning had "inadvertently came across as dismissive of the serious issue of forced labour." When pressed by a reporter afterward on whether he personally believes forced labour exists in China, Ma declined to answer.

The Secret MOU — And the Questions Ottawa Won't Answer

There is one more element of Canada's China engagement that has received insufficient scrutiny: a memorandum of understanding on law enforcement cooperation signed during Carney's January visit, the terms of which Ottawa has refused to make public.

Conservatives have repeatedly called for the document to be released. The government has declined. In a country where Beijing's transnational repression of Chinese-Canadian dissidents — including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghur community members, and Hong Kong democracy advocates — has been documented by Canadian intelligence services, a secret law enforcement cooperation agreement with the Chinese government raises legitimate and serious questions.

What information will Canada share with Beijing? What obligations does the agreement create? Will it be used to facilitate pressure on Chinese-Canadians who have been critical of the CCP? Ottawa's silence on these questions is conspicuous.

Eyes Wide Open — or Eyes Half Closed?

Champagne himself has said Canada is engaging China with "eyes wide open." The phrase is meant to convey calculated pragmatism — a trade partnership pursued without illusions about Beijing's nature.

Canada is not alone in this recalibration. At least five national leaders — including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer — visited Xi Jinping in January 2026 alone. Countries that had shunned China during its trade dispute with the United States are now sending their leaders to Beijing and signing business deals. British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced plans to invest $15 billion in China through 2030. The logic is consistent: with Trump's America an unreliable partner, Western governments are hedging their bets by deepening engagement with Beijing.

Tobin, who is advising on the Canadian engagement, argued that Beijing now understands its former approach of acquiring Canadian resource and technology companies will no longer be tolerated — and that Chinese capital will instead flow into investment structures without full ownership. "We don't need to sell ourselves to make ourselves available in the Chinese marketplace," he said.

That is a reassuring framing. But it sits uneasily alongside a parallel reality: a government that imposed a 100 percent EV tariff for "good reasons," then cut it to 6.1 percent eighteen months later. A finance minister who built the walls and is now the one opening the gates. A secret law enforcement MOU that nobody outside cabinet has read. And a parliamentary majority that cannot say, when asked directly, whether forced labour exists in China.

Eyes wide open requires seeing all of that — not just the canola deal and the investment projections.

The question Canadians are entitled to ask is whether their government is doing genuine strategic diversification — or whether, in the rush to find an alternative to a difficult relationship with Washington, it is trading one dependency for another, at a price it has not yet fully calculated.

.

Sources:

1. CBC News – "Finance Minister Heads to China as Canada Aims to Forge Closer Ties" (March 30, 2026): https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/champagne-china-visit-9.7146982
2. The Globe and Mail – "Finance Minister to Visit China on Trade-Diversification Mission" (March 31, 2026): https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-finance-minister-heads-to-china-on-trade-diversification-mission/
3. Government of Canada / Mirage News – "Minister Champagne Heads to China for Strategic Ties" (March 31, 2026): https://www.miragenews.com/minister-champagne-heads-to-china-for-strategic-1647192/
4. CNBC – "Starmer, Carney, Orsi Visit Beijing, China to Strike Deals" (January 30, 2026): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/30/china-beijing-trade-tariffs-trump-starmer-carney.html
5. The Canadian Vanguard – "Canada Finance Minister Heads to China to Advance Strategic Trade Diversification Agenda" (March 31, 2026): https://www.thecanadianvanguard.com/canada-finance-minister-heads-to-china-to-advance-strategic-trade-diversification-agenda/
6. Chatham House – "Canada-China Relations: Diversification With Eyes Open": https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2026-02/canada-china-relations-diversification
7. Council on Foreign Relations – "Canada's China Pivot: Strategic Hedge or Strategic Risk?": https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/canadas-china-pivot
8. Statistics Canada – New Motor Vehicle Registrations 2025: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/2018013/crt-tbl/tbl001-eng.htm

.