Canadian finance minister François-Philippe Champagne is in China on a four-day visit that wraps Saturday, following up on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s landmark January trip to the country. Ottawa said Champagne would meet with government and business leaders to “build strategic partnerships and attract new investments as part of Canada’s broader diversification imperative.”
Champagne is working on a January commitment to “reinvigorate” a high-level Canada-China Economic and Financial Strategic Dialogue, in addition to establishing a “financial working group” and trying to attract Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI).
APF Canada’s Investment Monitor shows that Canadian FDI in China totalled $177 million in 2024. As our team noted, in 2010, “China and Hong Kong together accounted for an average of 23 per cent of Canada’s FDI in the Indo-Pacific,” while in 2024, that share fell to around 12 per cent.
Chinese FDI into Canada, in contrast, surged from C$301 million in 2023 to C$3.7 billion in 2024.
Canada–China relations, broadly, are back under the microscope. Last week, during a parliamentary committee meeting, Liberal MP Michael Ma asked an expert witness if she had personally witnessed forced labour in China, or if her perspective was informed by “hearsay.” Ma later apologized, saying he “asked questions that inadvertently came across as dismissive of the serious issue of forced labour.” Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said Ma's committee questions were "incredibly damaging for Canada's reputation."
In advance of Carney’s January trip to China, the Government of Canada updated its webpage on Canada–China relations, deleting references to China’s “human rights abuses, such as forced labour.”
Responding to a journalist’s question on Monday, Champagne said that “the integrity of our supply chain is always something that we bring up in our discussions.”
Bill Morneau was the last Canadian finance minister to visit China, in 2018.
