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And that’s the vision the poll pushily peddles on respondents as they’re asked to rank their agreement on leading questions about China’s human rights abuses: whether “China is now too big and too powerful to be pressured into adopting Western standards of human rights” or “Canadians and Americans are in no moral position to tell other countries how to treat their own citizens.”

The Liberals understand those abiding suspicions well enough to stop Bombardier from dealing with China

Yet, despite the nudging, respondents remained largely unmoved, maintaining the U.S. would remain a more “responsible” and “respectful” global leader than China over the next decade. Not that many more people thought a Chinese deal would bring “prosperity” (54 per cent) to Canada than those who thought it would be “detrimental” (45 per cent). Meanwhile 83 per cent said Chinese leaders should indeed be pressured to better respect human rights and, when asked the best way to do that, the largest number by far said “provisions and practices built into trade agreements.”

China boosters, including Trudeau’s Liberals, have been trying to get Canadians to see China as an upright, peaceful citizen of the world community — a future friend and ally whose trade value is not worth sacrificing for our own ethnocentric views on trifling matters like basic human rights. But the re-education isn’t sticking. Free and trade are words that sound good together, but when Canadians picture China’s un-free, trade-corrupting state leviathans sniffing around Canadian assets — like the state-run company trying to buy Aecon Group Inc. that helped build fake islands in the South China Sea to advance China’s territorial ambitions — don’t expect 70 or even 55 per cent support.

The Liberals understand those abiding suspicions well enough to stop Bombardier dealing with China. And if they want a sense of what can happen if they push through a trade deal anyway, without widespread support, they can ask Trump Nation.