BEIJING, China — Just two hours after landing here from South Korea, federal agriculture minister Ralph Goodale told reporters Canada will continue to pursue friendly trade relations with China and not link trade to human rights reform.
“We believe even more in engagement rather than isolation,” he said. “Long practical experience tells us you don’t address the other issues by being isolationist.”
The more successful Canada is communicating with China, Goodale said, the greater the chance that diplomacy can work out solutions in other areas.
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Goodale acknowledged that governor general Ramon Hnatyshyn will talk about Canada’s human rights concerns in meetings during his official state visit here.
Goodale’s packed itinerary in China includes meetings with the vice-president of the state buying agency CEROILS (the China national cereals, oils and foodstuffs corporation), Chinese president Jiang Zemin, Chinese minister of agriculture Liu Jiang, and the ministry of internal trade (the government body responsible for buying from China’s farmers and redistributing the products to urban areas).
Goodale said in his talks he wants Canada to be the preferred supplier of wheat to China.
“We are certainly anxious to restore the level of grain trade,” Goodale said. “Both the demand and the opportunity are there to build on our very solid relationship.”
Two poor crops on the Prairies combined with two good crops in China mean Canada’s wheat exports have dropped, although the Canadian Wheat Board is maintaining its share of the Chinese import market for wheat.
But it doesn’t look like a long-term agreement on wheat is in the picture. Wheat board commissioner Gordon Machej said China has been quite content to buy wheat on a spot basis because of export subsidies offered by the United States and the European Union.
“China has not ventured into a long-term agreement for a number of years,” Machej said.
