Trudeau touches down in South Korea for talks on economic security, China interference
... "We've been subjected to Chinese coercion very recently, and various, different kinds of Chinese interference," said Roland Paris, a professor of international affairs at the University of Ottawa and a former foreign policy adviser to Trudeau.
"And so for Canada, having friends, and having arrangements with our friends to operate together to resist coercion, is extremely important."
In the wake of the 2018 arrest of Huawei business executive Meng Wanzhou, at the behest of the U.S. Department of Justice, China retaliated with a series of import bans, notably on canola and pork, and seized two Canadian citizens, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. In trying to secure their release, Canada mounted a diplomatic effort to rally other countries to resist arbitrary detention.
Paris said leading countries to push back against economic bullying is in the same league, because they're "working together to try to deter China from taking actions that target specific countries, in effect saying, 'We will work together to try and resist these efforts.'"