When Stephen Harper was born, Canada was an Atlantic nation. Today, it is increasingly a Pacific nation. The Prime Minister is starting to figure this out.
Mr. Harper is in Singapore this weekend, attending the annual summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), the association of Pacific rim countries. From there, he proceeds to India for three days. In early December, he returns to Asia, with visits to China and South Korea. These are his first visits to any of these lands, and it's high time.
While successive Liberal and Conservative governments have let Canada's market share in Asian trade stagnate or erode, other countries have been profiting from the surging economic growth of China and India - at our expense. While our politicians obsessed over minority government high jinks and other parochial concerns, the axis of the world began shifting from West to East. In Ottawa, this is finally starting to sink in.
"The world moved on," observes Rana Sarker, head of the Canada-India Business Council, "while we were otherwise occupied."
Canada's neglect of its Asian interests is perverse, since most of the 250,000 people who immigrate here every year are from Asia, giving this country a potential edge. Mr. Harper's upcoming excursions are his strongest commitment yet to repair that neglect.
"We want to make sure that the Chinese economic engine, as it pulls the global economy along, has Canada in one of the front cars," says Yuen Pau Woo, president and chief executive officer of the Asia Pacific Foundation.
But that's an ambitious goal, for a country in the caboose.
In 1997, 1.4 per cent of everything imported into China came from Canada. The number steadily declined, bottoming out at 0.97 per cent in 2006, before modestly improving to 1.1 per cent in 2008.
Canada now imports more than $40-billion worth of goods from China - four times as much as it exports to it. Charles Burton, a Brock University professor whose report earlier this year on the Canada-China relationship caused a stir in government circles, calls the figures "appalling."
"We are losing in China because we are not allocating the sort of resources and long-range planning that's necessary," he laments.
In part, Prof. Burton points out, neglect of overseas markets is a consequence of minority government, where domestic considerations trump foreign-policy concerns. But playing down the Chinese relationship, in particular, was a conscious Conservative government policy. Mr. Harper calculated that he could score political points by criticizing China's human-rights record while simultaneously encouraging expanded trade ties.
"I don't think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values, our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights," Mr. Harper told reporters in 2006. "They don't want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar."
"This was noticed," says Colin Robertson, a former diplomat and an authority on Canadian foreign policy.
The Chinese government warned Canada against "pointing fingers." The exchange marked a nadir in Sino-Canadian relations, after years of efforts by Liberal prime ministers Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin to improve Canadian access to Chinese markets, though with results that were, at best, ambiguous.
As for Canada's relations with India, the other emerging power in Asia, "we neglected each other for several years," says Shashishekhar Gavai, India's High Commissioner to Canada. "One could perhaps describe it as benign neglect."
But "that situation has changed quite rapidly," Mr. Gavai says.
What caused the change was a growing realization that trade cannot be separated from politics. "The cord between economic and political issues wasn't so easily severed," Mr. Woo says. Not only was it costing Canada in lost trade overseas, he observes, but "bashing China turned out to be at best neutral and at worst a vote-loser."
China is our largest single source of immigrants, followed by India. Unlike many previous immigrants, who were fleeing oppressive regimes, new Canadians from China and India retain close ties with their former homelands and do not appreciate frosty or neglectful relations between Ottawa and the old country.
For the Conservatives, who believe that the economic and social conservatism of many new immigrants makes them potential converts in critical suburban swing ridings, improving relations with China and India has become a domestic political concern.
Beyond that, the shocks of the global recession have brought home to everyone, including the country's leadership, the growing economic power of China and India.
"You're talking about the reconfiguration of the economic map of the world," says Mr. Sarkar of the Canada-India Business Council.
As Europe and North America drag themselves out of a deep recession, the Middle Kingdom's economy is on track to expand by 8.5 per cent this year, while India's is expected to grow by around 6 per cent.
During both bubbles and busts, the emerging economies - especially China and India - are outperforming the West. In 2003, the New York Stock Exchange accounted for 36 per cent of global market capitalization. Much of that has evaporated - the NYSE now constitutes 26 per cent. Meanwhile, the Shanghai exchange's share has soared to 7 per cent from 1. As analyst Manas Chakravarty has pointed out, the New York exchange's market capitalization at the end of 2003 was 41 times that of Shanghai's. Today, it is nine times greater.
Suddenly, Canada's near total dependence on the struggling U.S. economy begins to look dangerously unhedged.
"Our software needs to be updated," Mr. Sarkar says. "We're running Global 2.0 and the world has gone on to Version 4."
So in a belated software upgrade, the Harper government is refocusing its efforts on India and China. From 2006 through the end of 2008, there were nine ministerial visits to China, not counting the delegation to the Beijing Olympics, and six to India. This year, in contrast, there have already been seven to China and five to India, not counting the Prime Minister's trips.
David Mulroney, a senior Foreign Affairs Department official and an old China hand, is Canada's new ambassador to Beijing. He speaks Mandarin; Prof. Burton has criticized the inability of embassy officials in Beijing to speak to the Chinese in their own language.
During the India trip, Mr. Harper may sign an agreement allowing Canadian firms to sell civilian nuclear technology to India. India used Canadian technology to help develop its nuclear weapons program, which angered Canada. But all is forgiven.
The two countries will also take the first steps toward negotiating a free-trade agreement. Canada-India trade is disappointingly tepid. But the Canadian government has opened three trade offices in India this year alone.
As for the Chinese visit, the most important impact might be felt here at home among Chinese Canadians, as the PM demonstrates his commitment to improving relations with China by going there and talking to its leadership. These visits will also serve as important overtures as Canada prepares to host the G8 and G20 summits next year.
Of course, a visit by a minister or a prime minister rarely transforms the relationship between two nations. Canada's laggard performance in courting the East will not be easily reversed.
"I don't think we're going to see a lot of changes," Prof. Burton predicts. There will still be tensions between the Chinese and the Tories over human rights. Canadian businesses will continue to prefer the familiar American market to exotic Asian ones, where rules are complex and corruption is a concern.
Meanwhile, the rest of the West is on the move. After a long debate, Australia has decided that it is an Asian nation, and is pushing hard to expand economic ties with the continent. Only one-fifth as many Indian students study in Canadian universities as study in Australian schools, according to David Malone, president of the International Development Research Centre.
The United States' direct investment in India last year was $16.1-billion (U.S). Canada invested $800-million (Canadian). China is now Europe's second-largest trading partner (after the U.S.) and its fastest-growing export market. If China is a global economic locomotive, Canada risks being left at the station.
But whether we plan for it or not, Canada is becoming ever more Asian.
"This country was built by entrepreneurs," Mr. Robertson observes. "Now, we're bringing in the Asian entrepreneurs." The Asian diaspora will eventually filter to the top of Canadian economic, political and cultural elites. Then, perhaps, the focus truly will shift.
Mr. Woo hopes that Mr. Harper will do what he wishes everyone would do while in Asia: "spend some time on the streets, … smelling the air, walking down the alleyways, getting a sense of pulse and the energy of these cities."
If he did, if all of us did, Mr. Woo believes that we might discover "the rising Asian consciousness," the growing realization among Chinese and Indians and Indonesians and Vietnamese and billions more of the emerging centrality of Asian influence, of a new spirit of Asian co-operation "that will change the global balance of forces."
Canada will embrace this truth. It's simply a question of when.
John Ibbitson is The Globe and Mail's parliamentary bureau chief.
John Ibbitson