China vote puts Trudeau Liberals offside of growing Canadian consensus

It is rare to see something on which the Conservatives, NDP, Bloc, and Greens can agree.

That’s why it was a very positive development to see all Conservatives, all Bloc MPs, nearly all NDP MPs, and all Green MPs vote in favour of a motion put forth by Michael Chong calling for the Liberal government to make a decision on Huawei within 30 days and develop a plan to protect Canadians from China’s intimidation efforts.

Further, five Liberals broke ranks with their party and supported the motion, showing tremendous political courage. It was a rare inspiring moment in Canadian politics:

What we are seeing is that there truly are core Canadian values, particularly a shared belief in freedom, liberty, and defending our citizens from intimidation. We may not always agree on how to best share or represent those values, but those values are there.

And China’s ruthless communist state is clarifying those values here in Canada, as it is often the case that we can best understand what we are for, by realizing what we are against.

The fact that the Conservatives, Greens, NDP, Bloc, and some Liberals all agreed shows that there is in also a growing Canadian consensus on China.

For some time, polls have been showing a clear majority of Canadians wanting our country to distance ourselves from China, restrict China’s involvement in Canada, ban Huawei, and seek out trading relationships with fellow democracies, rather than China.

As is often the case, a clear consensus among the public takes some time to filter down to our political parties, but it appears that is now happening.

And this puts the Liberals and Justin Trudeau—who (aside from the five)—voted against the motion, clearly offside with this Canadian consensus.

There has been a clear tipping point, in which the old arguments of “not upsetting China,” and “seeking access to China’s market” simply don’t impact public opinion as they used to. People have had enough, and are seeing that our values and our self-respect as a country takes precedence over getting closer to China.

The longer Justin Trudeau and the Liberals continue to slow-walk action on China, and the longer they ignore public opinion, the louder and louder the clamor will grow for a new government, willing to stand up for the interests of our country, willing to stand up to China both at home, and abroad with our allies.