Ottawa: War is no longer confined to battlefields. It is waged through supply chains, trade corridors, energy dependencies, and the quiet alignment of nations that claim values they are no longer prepared to defend. Like Achilles, the archetype of the great warrior whose strength defined the battlefield, yet whose vulnerability determined his fate; modern states project power while exposing their weakest points. Today, those vulnerabilities are not found in armour, but in dependence: on adversarial economies, compromised supply chains, and the erosion of moral clarity.
From Ukraine to the Indo-Pacific, the world is dividing along familiar lines. Democracies on one side, authoritarian regimes on the other. Yet in this moment of global fracture, Canada continues to speak in contradictions.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has chosen a curious line of defence when pressed on forced and child labour: that such abuses exist “throughout the world.” It is a statement that sounds balanced, even reasonable until one understands what it is designed to do.
It dilutes. It deflects. It equalizes the unequal and this is part of the Liberal governments communications strategy on selling China to Canadians. The state broadcaster has been granted access to China and now presents glowing accounts of the brilliance of Chinese engineering, automation and its green initiatives. (Still the biggest emitters of Green House Gases, 2025.)
When everything is a problem, nothing is a priority.
This moral relativism has become the intellectual cover for an increasingly visible reality: Canada’s “all-in” strategy with the People’s Republic of China. A strategy that, notably, did not include any meaningful public confrontation on human rights during Carney’s recent visit with Xi Jinping according to a readout from the Privy Council Office but rebuked by the Prime Minister’s Office.
Not a word of consequence on Uyghur forced labour. Not a signal that trade would beconditioned on human or labour rights values. Silence, in diplomacy, is never neutral. And yet, at the same time, Canada continues to approach India a democratic partner with hesitation, some friction, and with strategic ambiguity.
This is where the contradiction becomes untenable.
At a reception earlier last week, I found myself in conversation with Canada’s Minister of Energy, Tim Hodgson, alongside Prime Minister Carney and Liberal MP Michael Ma. Tim is a thirty-year friend of the Prime Minister who spoke highly of him at this record setting fundraiser in Markham, Ontario in Ma’s riding.
Prior to the PM taking the podium, I had a chance to talk with Minister Hodgson. “Tim, I am confused about the India vs China trade deals or opportunity,” I said plainly. “The India trade MOUs are more comprehensive and see a much wider swath—including nuclear energy, technology, AI and critical infrastructure.
“Well let me be frank, China engagement comes with red lines: technology transfer restrictions, limits on ownership, and tight controls on critical minerals.”
I said, “why call the China engagement a ‘Strategic Partnership’ if this is this case? If so you should signal this to Canadians, India and the United States because China is not a panacea and their record on forced labour, technology transfer and undermining democracies are clearly not in our interests and yet your government seem to be all in on China.”
Hodgson said, “Perhaps we can do better on this front.”
It is a simple observation, but one that cuts to the core of Canada’s current incoherence.
India offers openness, scale, and alignment with democratic systems—even if imperfect. China offers constraint, opacity, and strategic leverage embedded in every agreement. Yet Ottawa behaves as though the inverse were true.
Nowhere is this contradiction starker than in the government’s handling of the forced labourquestion in Xinjiang or cars made in the city of Shenzhen using aluminum with forced labour.
During a recent parliamentary Industry committee hearing, Liberal MP Michael Ma aggressively challenged China expert Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, dismissing evidence of Uyghur forced labour as “hearsay.” The exchange was not merely clumsy; it was extremely revealing about the governments communications operation to somehow normalize forced labour.
It was reported on by the CBC as they pressed MP Ma on whether he believed there was forced labour in China prompted a sharp rebuke from Rushan Abbas, Founder and Executive Directorof Campaign for Uyghurs, who has been twice nominated for the Noble Peace Prize She is also author of Unbroken, One Uyghurs Fight for Freedom.
Abbas stated, “Mr Ma’s tactic of dismissal has been amplified by pro-CCP trolls questioning China’s ongoing Uyghur genocide. By that logic, every dictatorship could erase its crimes simply by hiding them well enough. Calling Uyghur genocide and forced labor anything else is ignorance at best and a defense of the CCP at worst. I am a firsthand witness to this genocide. My sister, Dr Gulshan Abbas, has been imprisoned for almost eight years in retaliation for my advocacy as an American citizen.?”
Ma said to me on record: “This was all a mistake as McCuaig Johnston confused Shenzhen with Xinjiang, but I apologized for my comments.” Case closed! Not and yet this is not abstract policy debate about forced labour and genocide in Xinjiang.
When pressed by the media on Tuesday, PM Carney could not say if there was forced labour in Xinjiang, pity. Collectively along with the Liberal party they all seem to deny it ever happened in China because “it happens all over the world and perhaps China too”.
And Canada’s enforcement record tells its own story. Prior to and after implementing its forced-labour import ban in 2024, Canada has blocked just two shipments suspected of containing forced labour. The United States, under its Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, has stopped thousands valued well over half a Billion US dollars.
Canada was pressed in 2024 by the Congressional Executive Commission on China with a letter to former Industry and Trade Minister, Mary Ng. Now Washington is considering tariffs of up to 25% on Canadian exports for failing to meet enforcement standards For the (CUSMA) trade agreement review, it has huge implications. Canada is not leading; it is lagging and along with Mexico are weak links in a trade agreement it claims to support based on international human rights and labour standards.
Meanwhile, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne returned from China on Saturday with a telling summary: no progress on lifting pork tariffs, but a “better understanding.”
Understanding is not leverage. It is not strategy and it is certainly not a substitute for outcomesthat don’t meet our obligations to humanity.
Diplomacy requires nuance, engagement, patience, and the management of competing interests. But nuance without boundaries becomes accommodation. And accommodation, when dealing with a regime that systemically uses forced labour and has used Canada as a launching pad for Hybrid warfare is not diplomacy but rather complicity.
This brings us back to India as an emerging geopolitical powerhouse thar represents a significant opportunity for Canada to diversify its trade from America while setting parameters on China under the current regime.
Minister Hodgson was clear in tone, if not in full public articulation: the relationship with India is wide open. These are aligned with Canada’s long-term strategic interests as well as India’s and our trade and technology sharing will create prosperity for both nations. And yet the political posture toward India remains cautious while Canada leans into a trading partner that imposes red lines on every dimension of engagement and uses economic coercion at will.
War, trade, and values are no longer separable. They are intertwined realities shaping the next global order. And while we don’t know the outcome of the Iran war, American foreign policy aims to stabilize the Middle East by ridding the world of a terrorist regime striving to be a nuclear power and backed by the very regime we are strategically partnering with. We all hope this is the outcome given the economic disruption we are collectively facing.
Canada cannot condemn genocide in one breath, dismiss its evidence in another, fail to enforce its own laws, and deepen economic dependence on the very system it claims to oppose.
That is not balance. It is not pragmatism. It is hypocrisy.
And in a world increasingly defined by hard choices, hypocrisy is no longer a sustainable policy,and it might well become Canada’s Achilles heel.
* Dean Baxendale is Columnist, Author and CEO of Optimum Publishing International.
