Canadian minister urged to quit Chinese government advisory body chaired by senior member of Politburo

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The federal Conservatives are calling on Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to resign his position on an advisory group to the Chinese government – a body chaired by a former chief of staff to President Xi Jinping – and to end Canadian funding to this organization that instructs Beijing on green development.

The China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development also promotes Beijing’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative, a foreign-investment campaign that has been accused of ensnaring smaller nations in debt and then taking control of their infrastructure for China’s own strategic purposes.

Mr. Guilbeault is headed to China in late August on a diplomatic mission to participate in the annual general meeting of this council. He currently serves as an executive vice-chairperson, according to its website. “Minister Guilbeault’s participating at the China Council is an example of working with China where we have an opportunity to advance co-operation on the global threat of climate change,” his press secretary Kaitlin Power said.

He will be the first Canadian minister to visit the Asian country since 2019.

Canada-China relations, already badly damaged by the seizure and lengthy imprisonment of two Canadian citizens in China following Canada’s 2018 arrest of a Huawei executive in British Columbia, have continued to ebb after The Globe and Mail reported about efforts by the Chinese government to interfere in Canadian politics, both at the federal and municipal level. Canada in May expelled Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei for political interference.

The Conservatives say Canada’s approach here is wrong.

“Not only has China wrongfully detained our citizens and meddled in our democracy but it’s now using our good name to burnish its reputation on the environment,” Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said Thursday.

“We need to engage with China. We need to indicate our point of view to them,” he said. “But a Canadian minister of the Crown should not be sitting as executive vice-chairperson and giving it the prestige of Canada’s good name on environmental issues while at the same time China is massively increasing construction of coal-fired plants.”

Canada has donated or pledged more than $16-million to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development since 2017, according to information provided by the federal government Thursday.

Mr. Guilbeault is one of several foreigners who serve as vice-chairpersons on the body. The council’s partners include non-governmental organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, as well as foreign partners such as the Canadian government, the European Union and the governments of Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, among others.

Oliver Anderson, director of communications for Mr. Guilbeault, noted that the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper also donated money to the council – including $7.8-million between 2007 and 2012 – and that former Conservative environment minister Peter Kent participated in its activities.

He said Canada’s funding does not go to the Chinese government but instead to fund the activities of the council.

“The statement from the Conservative Party is both highly misleading and ripe with hypocrisy. This is an independent international forum, similar to forums established by the U.S. and the European Union,” Mr. Anderson said. “Stephen Harper’s Conservative government contributed roughly the same amount to this forum and former minister Peter Kent was an executive vice-chairperson on multiple occasions.”

Mr. Chong, the Conservative foreign affairs critic, said the former Harper government participated in the affairs of the council, and funded it, because at that time it believed China was working to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

He noted, however, that emissions-heavy coal-fired power is on the rise in China today. China approved more than 50 gigawatts of new coal power in the first half of 2023, research by environment group Greenpeace recently showed. And in 2023, China greenlit the construction of another 106 gigawatts of coal-fired power capacity – four times higher than a year earlier and the highest since 2015.

The chair of the environmental advisory council is Ding Xuexiang, considered one of the most powerful men in China. Mr. Ding is the sixth-highest-ranked leader in the Politburo Standing Committee, the top governing body led by Mr. Xi. Mr. Ding was Mr. Xi’s chief of staff before he was promoted to China’s vice-premier.

Mr. Chong said Mr. Ding, as a senior member of the Politburo, also bears responsibility for decisions that led to the unwarranted jailing of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, as well as China’s foreign interference in Canadian politics.

Mr. Guilbeault’s office said the Conservatives are mischaracterizing the council and Canada’s involvement.

“On the one hand, the Conservative Party says it’s major polluters like China we should talk to about climate change, but when they see a partisan opportunity to attack a long-established forum where Canada can actually do just that, they cry foul,” Mr. Anderson said. “As wildfires and heat waves have shown, climate change and environmental issues know no borders. How can we tackle these existential world problems if we are not prepared to engage?”

He added: “Canada will continue to challenge China where we ought to, while advancing co-operation on the global threat of climate change.”

The council devotes considerable attention to China’s controversial Belt and Road Initiative that funds infrastructure development in dozens of other countries. Its website includes a link to Mr. Xi’s speech in 2022 entitled: “Hold High the Great Banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and Strive in Unity to Build a Modern Socialist Country in All Respects” which says the BRI “has been welcomed by the international community both as a public good and a cooperation platform.”

In a briefing note to then-foreign affairs minster François-Philippe Champagne in 2019, Ottawa’s department of Global Affairs painted a different picture of the BRI. It warned that China through this foreign investment campaign seeks to “leverage economic prowess to gain regional influence and export its model of [authoritarian] governance around the world.”

David Mulroney, a veteran of Canada’s diplomatic corps who served as ambassador to China between 2009 and 2012, said Canada’s participation in the China advisory council is a legacy project by the former Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). He said its backers inside Global Affairs have over the years “jealously defended” the project “on the basis of the access it supposedly affords us and because of the leverage they claim it provides us over China’s environment policy.”

He argues it has no merit. “Access without influence is meaningless.”

With a report from Reuters