Slight Of Hand: China Pulls The Welcome Mat From Under Mark Carney

Report: BEIJING — Mark Carney arrived in China Thursday seeking closer ties, but President Xi Jinping did not appear, send a greeting, or publicly acknowledge the visit. The muted reception underscored an uncomfortable reality: Beijing sees Canada as useful, not important.

Like fellow Canadian Hank Snow, prime minister Mark Carney is a travelling man. He’s been everywhere, man. He’s flying away from Canada so much that they’re offering the House of Parliament as an Air BnB.

This trip is a familiar one for a Liberal PM. No, he’s not headed to Tofino to surf. He’s headed to China on a mission to pretend Canada is pulling away from Donald Trump’s America. It’s one of a series of humiliating jaunts since he became PM that have also taken him to anywhere Brookfield Investments can turn a buck. IOW Everywhere. 

But China is very on the nose for Liberals. Since Jean Chretien hoofed it to China in his final acts as PM— with son-in-law Andre Desmarais in tow— to escape the AdScam stain he bought on himself, China is like a second home for the Grits. They dreamed big dreams of being the first Western nation to plunder China’s economy. 

What they discovered was, instead, a Faustian bargain in which the Chinese grabbed Canadian technology from the visitors while Canadians accepted Chinese spying in Canada. Stories of being swindled by the Communist party were everywhere. But this didn’t stop Chretien and his successors from competing with the Hunter Bidens and other corrupt foreign bag men from doing the pretzel dance with the CCP. 

As Sam Cooper and others have shown the quid-pro-quo for Canada from the longed-for embrace of China was using this country as a friendly place to launder money. Heaps of money, much of it in real estate and drugs. Here we documented the mysterious assembly of land in tiny PEI.  One of Trump’s complaints against Canada in 2025 was this incestuous tangle of foreign interests just north of his border. Somehow, Canadians were surprised. 

The most noxious example of the see-no-evil approach during the Justin Trudeau years was the amazing story emerging from Canada's National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. At the height of Covid, two Chinese scientists smuggled deadly Ebola viruses to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and were allowed to escape Canada (they are now living in China under aliases and have been given special new positions.) Their partner in the research? Michel Chretien, Jean’s brother. 

The story touched upon the highest level of the Trudeau government, and yet the incident was buried in the interests of China/ Canada relationship. Suggestions of the Wuhan connection were stifled as bad-think during Covid when Trudeau shut down the country to protect the official line that no one was sure where the virus came from. Also to deflect from his government getting fleeced by China is a deals for PPE and respirators.

But this confluence of corruption is just a small slice of the story. A former CSIS Officer stated that the agency can prove that every federal government from Mr. Mulroney to Mr. Trudeau has been compromised by agents of the CCP. An allegation that has simply been ignored by the globalist cult running Ottawa.

The Chretien legacy has also resulted in a stealth inversion of Canadian politics and society— all performed with casual cynicism by the Liberals. The most recent example was Carney pinching a Conservative MP of Chinese origin to cross the floor to help him get to a majority in the House. Newly minted Liberal MP Michael Ma in now joining PM Carney on a friendship visit to Beijing.

For those who like details here is a chart assembled to help people follow the money in the China/ Canada relationship.   The current trip is a furtherance of these many connections and a jab in the eye (and elbow?) to Trump for taking a hard line on China.

The eye candy in the visit is Carney trading EV tariffs for China dropping tariffs on Canada’s canola, which the Trudeau government blundered into. Security expert Dennis Molinaro warns, “If Canada trades EV tariff relief for market access, it undercuts an allied security framework and reinforces the U.S. position that its tariffs are national-security driven. A weak fentanyl case becomes a strong China and supply-chain case because of Canada’s own actions.”

In case anyone was hoping for a bold step forward in Carney’s “new” relationship with China that was dashed by visiting Liberal MPs slinking out of a Taiwan visit so as not to draw attention from Carney’s epic moves. Former Canadian ambassador to China David Mulroney is unimpressed. “It tells Beijing everything it needs to know about how spineless and amateurish Canada's ruling party is. Our opening position couldn't be weaker. The visit has become a damage limitation exercise.”

But blissful Boomers remain besotted by the little banker traveling the world and shaking important hands as if it were Lester Pearson solving the Suez crisis. As Trump has repeatedly stated— to the horror of Canadian Elbows Up— their country is now an ineffectual duchy living on dreams of past glory. 

As just one example, the Fraser institute reports that In 2025, an estimated 105,529 Canadians, tired of lineups and delays that can last years, travelled abroad for medical care. More patients (10,320) travelled abroad last year for general surgeries than any other treatment. 

Trump aside, if Carney doesn’t have Canadians on health care he’s a dead Liberal walking. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700