Canadian MPs Plan Visit to Taiwan

Holcomb with Taiwan President Tsai in Taipei

The Governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb has touched down in Taiwan for trade talks and there are fears as to what China will do to retaliate.

In the meantime a group of Canadian Members of Parliament are looking to travel to Taiwan as early as October ostensibly for a Canada-Taiwan "friendship group", and that the Taiwanese government is footing the bill.

The eight MPs are members of both this friendship group and a committee on international trade, so there may be trade talks involved.

Trudeau warns MPs to think of consequences

However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is concerned about the upcoming trip after seeing what happened following US Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit with China surrounding the island as it conducted live military drills in the water, with some missiles landing in Japanese waters.

"Canada has a long-standing position around China and Taiwan that we will ensure to respect. China's belligerence around this and their position is, of course, as it has been for a while, troubling," he said.

"We will ensure that the parliamentarians making the decision to travel or not will be done with all the reflections of the consequences and the impacts of it."

In other words he wants these MPs to think twice about going to Taiwan.

New Democrat MP and international trade committee member Brian Masse said earlier that Canadians "must support other democracies that have fought for their rights and freedoms."

Randy Hoback, Conservative MP and committee vice-chair, said MPs in the Canada-Taiwan parliamentary "friendship group" used to go to Taiwan about twice a year before Covid-19 restricted travel. He has visited Taiwan before.

Hoback says "friendship group" going to Taiwan

However, Hoback said he will consult Global Affairs Canada before going on the trip now. "There's no intent on my part to antagonise China," he said.

Understandable, but at the same time the United States has already paved the way, so why not keep a stream of visitors coming to Taiwan to show support and get a trade deal on the side? 

Foreign companies are pulling out of China and looking for alternatives, so Taiwan is a possibility, and its products particularly in the agricultural sector are considered high quality. 

Size-wise Taiwan is a dot compared to China, but as Pelosi says, it is one of the few democratic places in Asia and deserves to be supported as much as possible.

Trudeau needs to look at the bigger picture. The more other countries support Taiwan, that's an effective way to keep China in check, otherwise the bullying will continue.