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Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images

Well, which is it, I hear some readers say: is the government to be condemned for failing to secure a free trade deal with China, or for seeking one in the first place? Neither, necessarily. It depends, rather, on the terms. China is neither such an international pariah nor so insignificant a market that Canada can or should refuse to trade with it altogether: nothing much would be accomplished by it, at any rate, for if we don’t others will.

Certainly we can trade with it. The notion, now being put about by the Conservatives of all people, that trade between our two countries should be restricted on account of the low wages paid to Chinese workers is protectionism of the rankest kind. So far as China’s comparative advantage lies in low-wage, labour-intensive production, it is to our interest as much as China’s to import those goods from them, and to focus scarce productive resources in areas of our own greatest relative efficiency.

But if we are to trade with such an odious and adversarial regime, we can and should do so at least cost to our principles. Whether or not we should seek to impose Canadian labour and environmental policies on China, we should be vigilant against any attempt by China to impose its policies on us: by demanding that Chinese takeovers of Canadian firms be exempt from national security reviews, for instance, or by insisting Chinese nationals on our soil be delivered up to the mercies of the Communist legal system.

It is a question, in other words, of properly identifying our objectives: moral, economic and otherwise. The chance of a free trade deal — with China, the U.S. or anyone — ought not to be jeopardized for the sake of showy appeals to the Liberal base. But neither should bedrock Canadian interests and values be sacrificed, as a previous prime minister once put it, on the altar of “the almighty dollar.”