Senator Yuen Pau Woo

Organized by the ASEAN Committee in Ottawa, York Centre for Asian Research, and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada

Telfer School of Management, University of Ottawa

Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

I would like to thank the York Centre for Asian Research, the ASEAN Committee in Ottawa, and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada for inviting me to make closing remarks at today’s event.

I regret that I was unable to attend the first part of the seminar and hope that my comments are not repetitive.

I did, however, have the pleasure of listening to the remarks of High Commissioner Shazalina, Ambassador Mushin and Ambassador Chan-Gonzaga and would like to thank them for their presentations. Let me say, parenthetically, that the ASEAN Committee in Ottawa, consisting of ASEAN HOMs, is one of the most dynamic sub-groupings of diplomats in this town, and I want to give a shout out to the current chair of the group, Ambassador Pham Vinh Quang of Vietnam, who I understand gave opening remarks earlier today.

I was in Kuala Lumpur last month at the ASEAN Interparliamentary Assembly and had the chance to meet with parliamentarians from the 10 ASEAN countries, as well as delegations from official observer parliaments. I want to leave you with four reflections from my time in Malaysia.

The first is that Canada’s increased visibility in Southeast Asia is, well, visible to the people I spoke with. You will already have discussed the reasons why our visibility has gone up, so I don’t need to repeat them. We can say with confidence that Canada has embarked on its most ambitious effort to engage with Southeast Asia in many decades, and that our efforts are starting to resonate. However, we should be under no illusion about how challenging it is to achieve mind share in Southeast Asia, both at the elite level as well as with the public, given the current popularity of the region and its many suitors. To give you an example, Canada is just one of 26 recognized observer parliaments in the ASEAN Interparliamentary Assembly.

My second point is that the areas which resonate the most with our Southeast Asian friends are those that relate to economics and business, and people to people ties. That is why this seminar, with its focus on “intensifying Canada-ASEAN economic relations” is so important. ASEAN countries are mostly interested in deepening trade and investment with Canada; they are much less interested in the security and defence agenda. That is why concluding the Canada-ASEAN FTA is so important. If Canadian maritime and other security initiatives are not accompanied by discernible enhancements in economic ties, ASEAN will quickly lose interest in Canada.

And, I should add, Canada will also lose interest in ASEAN. Much as I hope it is not the case, I think that is the default assumption in the region. I am old enough to remember another golden period in Canada-Southeast Asia relations, when there was, in the 1990s, a Canada-ASEAN Centre and an IDRC office in Singapore, an Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada representative in Jakarta, and dedicated funding for Canada-ASEAN development cooperation. This enthusiasm for ASEAN had petered out by the end of the decade, in part because it was happening at the same time as the longest peacetime economic expansion of the United States, which sucked most of the oxygen out of our business and policy community.

Which brings me to point #3. You may be thinking that the conditions leading to Canada’s diminished interest in ASEAN during the previous golden age are exactly the opposite from the conditions today. You would not be wrong in saying that the prospects for deepening Canada-US trade and investment have never been so dismal and that it is precisely these conditions that are spurring the country to emphasize the importance of “diversification”, for which ASEAN is a priority region.

However, I think it would be wrong to discount the possibility that Ottawa will land on a modus vivendi with the US that, while not ideal for the Canadian economy, ends up tying us closer to the Americans than the opposite. After all, even as we talk about a “rupture” with the US, we are aligning with the Americans on auto tariffs and offering to do even more if it means saving some of our key industries. The same people who are talking about the importance of trade diversification are also calling for deeper integration or a “grand bargain” with the United States that will link economic, security, and military issues on a continental (or at least Canada-US) basis. If we can impose 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs to please the Americans, you can be sure that we will — under a “grand bargain” scenario — do the same to imports from any other country that the Americans feel threatened by.

In that sense, the most important determinant for the future of Canada-ASEAN relations is not what we say or do with ASEAN; it is what we do with Washington DC. We should all be aware that our current Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) is widely seen across the region as a lightweight version of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy, especially when it comes to how we frame China in that strategy. That was a liability for Canada when our IPS came out three years ago; it is even more so today. When diplomats from Asian countries tell me how puzzled they are to see Canada publicly labeling China as a “disruptive power” in our IPS, I can guess what else they must be thinking.

My final point is that as the previous three points I have made become more obvious, we will be forced to face up to the stark reality before us, and that will in turn give us the opportunity to make choices that allow for greater strategic autonomy in our foreign policy, not just in the Indo-Pacific, but around the world. That is why events such as this one are so important. I don’t think our foreign policy establishment is quite ready to admit to it, but a discussion on Canada-ASEAN relations is not just about whether Southeast Asia will occupy a bigger share of our two-way trade and investment; it is fundamentally about whether we are ready to rethink Canada’s place in the world. Your efforts today have nudged us in that direction.

Thank you.