01/20/2026
This is a new government with a new Prime Minister, a new foreign policy and a new geopolitical environment,” Anand told reporters. “In this moment of economic stress for our country, it is necessary for us to diversify our trading partners and to grow non-U.S. trade by at least 50 percent over the next ten years.”
“We will be examining for cooperation, for collaboration, to heighten our people-to-people ties and ensure there are opportunities,” said Anand. Cabinet was anxious to promote “broader people-to-people ties between our two countries,” she said. “We will be exploring several opportunities for collaboration between the broader population in addition to examining the trade and economic relationship overall.”
Anand’s remarks came almost five years to the day that the Commons on February 22, 2021 passed by a unanimous 266-0 vote a motion censuring China for genocide against its Uyghur Muslim minority. A Commons subcommittee on foreign affairs in 2020 documented crimes including forced labour, organ harvesting, forced abortions and mass detentions in concentration camps in China’s remote Xinjiang province.
MPs on February 1, 2023 again passed by a unanimous 322-0 vote a motion stating Uyghurs “face the serious risk of mass arbitrary detention, mass arbitrary separation of children from parents, forced sterilization, forced labour, torture and other atrocities.” The 2023 motion asked that Canada accept 10,000 Uyghur refugees.
“Lies Of The Century”
Cong Peiwu, then-Chinese Ambassador to Canada, dismissed the parliamentary protests. Atrocities were “lies spread by a very few certain people due to anti-China intentions,” said Cong.
“For those MPs voting in the House of Commons, most of them I’m afraid have never been to Xinjiang or not even to China in the past years,” Ambassador Cong told reporters. “How can they judge the situation on the ground? They simply, some of them, are doing things with political intentions and trying to make political gains.”
“They are trying to do these things, to smear China,” said Cong. “The so-called genocide, those kinds of claims, I’d like to point out once again are just lies of the century.”
“For China, we are firmly opposed to any activity involving this kind of interference in our domestic affairs and undermining our sovereignty and security, and we will take resolute measures to counter that, to safeguard our national interests,” said Ambassador Cong.