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“The little potato got mashed,” said Gerry Ritz.

I’m speaking to the man that was Canada’s agriculture minister for almost a decade about China’s latest moves against Canada’s top exports to the second largest economy in the world.

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Ritz knows all about how difficult China can be, how they mix trade and politics like few other countries and how they don’t always play fair. In our past conversations, Ritz has been willing to cut Trudeau and his Liberal government some slack on dealings with China, not now.

Now says Ritz, the man the Chinese nicknamed, “little potato” is getting run over by China.

“Trudeau is going to have to do one of his famous flights and get over there,” Ritz said.

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So far there hasn’t been a top level delegation to travel to China, we haven’t even appointed an ambassador to replace John McCallum after he was fired.

China is hitting Canada hard economically and the Trudeau government is nothing more than asking for the beatings to stop.

Although they aren’t even being very forceful with that request.

After spending the last few months punishing Canada’s canola producers, China is now building a list of other companies that they could punish.

That from Canada’s former ambassador to China, Guy Saint-Jacques.