Despite repeated calls from the Biden administration, the Canadian government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has yet to formulate a public foreign policy strategy to deal with China. Canada has the world’s ninth-largest economy, a population of nearly forty million, a major Pacific Ocean coastline, and fully benefits from the U.S. missile defense architecture, to which it makes no contribution. Yet it is a disappointingly meek U.S. ally. Ottawa has been pursuing a virtually neutralist strategy of avoiding committing to any U.S. effort to harness the coalition of democracies to confront the Chinese threat to Taiwan. Washington needs to be aware that any Canadian foreign policy on China will be heavily influenced by domestic electoral politics.
