OTTAWA - China must think Canada is some kind of North American doormat.

Last week, the country’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, thought he was entitled to berate a Canadian reporter for asking a perfectly reasonable question about its human rights record and about the arrest of a Canadian, Kevin Garratt, on trumped-up espionage charges. Wang, though, wagged his finger at the reporter, saying she was showing “arrogance” and “prejudice” against China for just asking the question.

And Wang did this in the headquarters of Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs with our Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion standing meek and mute beside him. It wasn’t until two days later that he told reporters he stayed silent because he thought the reporter, Amanda Connolly from iPolitics, was a “professional with a thick skin and she does not need me to go to her rescue.”

Connolly is, indeed, a professional with a thick skin, but Dion missed the point. It is not her feelings that were hurt by his supine silence. It is the feelings of millions of Canadians who were so disappointed that Dion failed to immediately remind Minister Wang that Canada stands for a free press, the rule of law, and the advancement and protection of human rights.

Oh, but we must not embarrass the Chinese lest they stop trading with us.

Baloney.

When Stephen Harper took office in 2006, he was, appropriately, talking tough to China, not engaging in any kowtowing and pursuing a foreign policy that was in Canada’s interest, not China’s, including lending moral support to the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama.

Exports to China when Harper took office made up 1.76% of all of Canada’s exports.

In 2009, Harper had a change of heart and thought he’d try to warm relations up with China. Harper went to Beijing where he was rudely dressed down in public by his Chinese hosts for his earlier attitude to China. Meanwhile, exports to China had grown through three “cold” years of Harper to 3.22% of all exports.

Three years after that, when Harper returned to promote oil and natural gas pipelines and sign a deal for two pandas from his new best friends in China, Canadian exports to China had risen to just 4.42% of all Canadian exports.

Today, after four years in which the Harper government and now the Trudeau government has hardly said a negative thing about China, just 4.15% of all our exports go to China.

International trade, of course, ebbs and flows according to factors other than how one diplomatic corps is feeling about another.

Meanwhile: Where is our self-respect as a country that we refuse to proclaim the values of human rights, freedom and the rule of law for fear we will not advance our interests in pandas and pipelines?

Dion, last week, only reinforced the perception that Canada will cave to China for the almighty dollar.

But it is clear there is no evidence that our business with China has any correlation with what we tell their diplomats in public or in private.

By all means, meet with the Dalai Lama! Condemn the Chinese government’s official persecution of religious and ethnic minorities! Loudly protest the case of Kevin Garratt!

China will huff and puff at our protests. But it will keep buying our potash, lumber, pork and other resources it needs.

So let’s put this silly idea to bed that we need to “engage”, i.e. shut up, about China’s human rights record in order to create new business. Exports rise and fall according to market forces not according to the tenor of our diplomatic niceties.

And that should free Canada up to regain its self-respect when it comes to the China file.

It’s time to tell China, loudly and publicly, that if it wishes to liberalize the trade relationship with Canada — a relationship which definitely benefits them more than us — China must show tangible improvements in its treatment of the press and its respect for human rights and the rule of law.