Jean Charest Says He Will Be ‘Firm’ on All Dealings With China if He Becomes PM

Conservative Party leadership candidate Jean Charest speaks with reporters during an event in Toronto on April 20, 2022. (Andrew Chen/The Epoch Times)

TORONTO—Conservative Party leadership candidate Jean Charest says he will be “firm” on all dealings with China if he becomes prime minister, standing up for the Canadian values of human rights and freedoms. But he also questions how Ottawa can voice concern about Beijing’s transgressions without some Chinese-Canadians feeling they are being targeted.

The former Quebec premier made the remarks during an event talking with Chinese-language media in Toronto on April 20. He told reporters that his approach to China would take into account “the fact that China has become a superpower” or at least an “emerging superpower.”

“It means that Canada needs to define its core interest relative to how we are going to deal with China. Now our core interest includes defending the values in which we believe, and that includes being very clear on the fact that we believe in a certain number of things, and whether in all our relationship with China, it should be understood that these are the values that we stand by,” Charest said, without elaborating what the values are.

Cherest had previously worked as a member of the McCarthy Tétrault law firm that was hired in January 2020 to provide strategic advice to Chinese telecom giant Huawei following Canada’s arrest of the company’s senior executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. extradition request.

Soon after Meng’s arrest in December 2018, the Chinese regime detained two Canadians—Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor—and held them in jail for over 1,000 days in what was widely viewed as Beijing’s use of “hostage diplomacy” in retaliation of Meng’s arrest in Canada.

Charest also counselled the Beijing-linked company in its bid for Ottawa’s approval to sell equipment for the construction of the Canada’s 5G networks. Canada’s closest allies have banned Huawei from their 5G networks due to security concerns. The Liberal government is yet to make a decision on the issue, while the Conservative Party has remained opposed to Huawei’s presence in 5G networks.

During his tenure as Quebec premier, Charest pushed to strengthen the province’s ties to China to lessen dependence on the United States. He also criticized the Conservative government of Stephen Harper in 2014 for not pursuing trade ties with China more aggressively.

When asked at the April 20 event how he would defend Canadians from any future attempts at hostage diplomacy by Beijing, Charest said Canada should not shy away from defending its values.

“I would expect that Canada would always be on the side of human rights, be on the side of those who believe that freedom and freedom of expression, freedom of practicing your own religion, is key to the basic human rights of any given country in the world,” he said. “The most simple way of expressing it, I should say, is to make sure that we’re very firm in all our dealings with China on those key issues.”

He added: “We need to be very clear about the values that we espouse and the values that we defend. We cannot be shy, we cannot be reticent about expressing them and defending them, and we need to be very firm in that regard.”

However, Charest also questioned the government’s ability to help members of society differentiate average Canadians of Chinese origin from the Chinese communist regime.

“Can the government of Canada take an approach that allows us to state what our values are to the Chinese [government], and say ‘we don’t agree with you, we don’t agree with certain treatments of [your people],’ and continue to allow Chinese-Canadians to feel that they’re not being targeted?” he said.

The Chinese Communist Party’s use of propaganda and misinformation to characterize any criticism of it as an affront against the Chinese nation is well documented.

“Authoritarian regimes frequently label foreign criticism of their policies as ‘racist’ as a way to delegitimize them and polarize debate,” Marcus Kolga, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a foreign disinformation expert, wrote in MacLean’s.  He added that while Canadians and the government must be careful to avoid generalization that could stigmatize Canadians of Chinese heritage, “we must also be alert to regime propagandists who seek to dismiss and silence legitimate criticism of their actions when they smear critics with false accusations of ‘racism.’”

Defending Taiwan

With Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine, the issue of China’s possible invasion of Taiwan has been a topic of discussion among the Chinese-speaking community.

Charest told reporters that if he became prime minister, he would stand with Canada’s allies in support of Taiwan.

“If something were to happen in Taiwan, Canada would definitely be part of all the efforts made to secure the autonomy of Taiwan,” he said.

“We would work with NORAD, North American Aerospace Defense Command, and NATO.”