This year, Canadian Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault became the first cabinet minister to visit China in five years since the Meng Wanzhou affair.
He is also the only person to have met a member of the Indian government since Ottawa raised suspicions that New Delhi was involved in the killing of a Sikh leader in Canada.
Interview with a minister who manages to slip behind enemy lines.
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Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault.
Photo: The Canadian Press / Sean Kilpatrick
I spoke to my Indian counterpart at COP28, things are going really well with my Chinese counterpart…” says Steven Guilbeault candidly. However, the last two G20 meetings have highlighted the fractious relationships between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Indian and Chinese leaders.
It's easier for me because I don't have to talk to the Chinese or Indians about things that are divisive.
The starting point for Minister Guilbeault was the organization of COP15 on biodiversity in Montreal. When the United Nations asked Canada to host the China-led meeting due to the pandemic, Justin Trudeau wasn't keen on the idea.
The Prime Minister wasn't sure at first and finally said OK. “But it’s your head that’s at stake and you have to deliver,” Steven Guilbeault remembers.
In the months that followed, pressure increased as new diplomatic twists further soured relations between Beijing and Ottawa and subsequently slowed the organization of the summit.
When it was announced that Huawei could not participate in the 5G network, there was no more sound and no more images, says the minister. For a month, China did not respond to emails and planned meetings were canceled.
Contact was quietly resumed, although tensions between China and Canada have not subsided, quite the opposite. If the Prime Minister and the President [Xi] When I got into a bit of a shouting match at the G20 summit, I said to myself, 'Ouch!!!' They won't talk to me there for two months!” he says.
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Huang Runquio, China's Minister of Ecology and Environment, co-chaired the COP15 on biodiversity in Montreal.
Photo: The Canadian Press / Paul Chiasson
However, his fears were not confirmed and the dialogue was maintained. Just like when Canada forced Chinese companies with ties to the regime to give up their stakes in Canada's important minerals industry.
At some point they decided that we were a reliable partner when it came to climate, biodiversity and the environment, and it has been that way ever since.
Relations between the two environment ministers were never again affected by the diplomatic cooling between Beijing and Ottawa, so much so that Steven Guilbeault was invited to China by his counterpart last summer. According to him, a visit produced results that went beyond environmental problems.
Just go there and then you can reestablish contact. The ambassador allowed her to meet people from the Chinese government who she had not met since her arrival, he explains.
However, this visit in the name of the climate was met with a lot of criticism. That trip came at a time when political parties in Ottawa were trying to agree on the terms of a public commission of inquiry into Chinese interference. Conservatives did not hesitate to call him naive and accuse him of behaving like an amateur by playing Beijing's game.
For the minister, however, the experience was so drastic that it will be repeated in 2024. And this time Steven Guilbeault couldn't be the only minister making the trip.
Since it may be the second time I go there, maybe there is someone else in the group who can come because they feel more comfortable there, he said.
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Steven Guilbeault meets Indian Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav.
Photo: The Canadian Press / Graham Hughes
Could the same scenario happen with India?
Canada and India have an agreement to cooperate on environmental and climate issues, but cooperation has stalled since Justin Trudeau said he had reason to believe India may be involved in the killing of a British Columbia Sikh leader.
Still, Steven Guilbeault doesn't give up. He also met his Indian counterpart during COP28 in Dubai. Our goal is to try to keep it going. “I'm not sure I can say it will continue, but we said we would try,” he concludes.
Likewise, he continued to work with Egypt's environment minister after a visa dispute broke out between Ottawa and Cairo earlier this year.
The greatest irony is that it was the Chinese environment minister who brought them together during the COP on biodiversity in Montreal, asking them to act together as mediators. A role they took on again during COP28 in Dubai in the autumn.
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Egyptian Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad and Steven Guilbeault at the UN Climate Change Conference COP28.
Photo: Associated Press / Peter Dejong
The minister makes no secret of this; he wants to take advantage of being able to establish an environmental dialogue without having to address differences first. I think it's really this realization that we're all in this together and that we won't succeed if we don't row together that makes these discussions possible, he believes.
I think we would like to continue that. It allows us to have conversations with people with whom it is difficult.
He now hopes that his commitment to the environment will at least keep the lines of communication open… or even more.
“We're really trying to figure out how the contacts I'm building can be beneficial, not just to me and the environmental issue, but also to the country and our diplomacy,” he concludes.
In collaboration with Marie Chabot-Johnson