Xinhua, Ottawa :
Canada is prepared to kick off talks next month on a bilateral trade agreement with China, the newly-appointed Canadian Ambassador to China John McCallum said here Saturday.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, McCallum said that the Chinese officials are “enthusiastic on this free-trade issue, and so are we.”
However, McCallum admitted that reaching a pact would take time, but hoped that the negotiations would move a lot faster than the decade it took Australia to reach a free-trade deal with China, which came into force in December 2015.
“Free trade deals are very complicated, and we have to make sure that any such deal is beneficial to Canadians-and that’s a lot of work,” said the new ambassador, who was appointed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month when he was serving as the immigration minister.
He said that the process will benefit from a “very strong” China-Canada relationship, which dates back to the late 1930s when Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune sacrificed his life while assisting the Chinese against Japanese aggression.
Canada is prepared to kick off talks next month on a bilateral trade agreement with China, the newly-appointed Canadian Ambassador to China John McCallum said here Saturday.
In an exclusive interview with Xinhua, McCallum said that the Chinese officials are “enthusiastic on this free-trade issue, and so are we.”
However, McCallum admitted that reaching a pact would take time, but hoped that the negotiations would move a lot faster than the decade it took Australia to reach a free-trade deal with China, which came into force in December 2015.
“Free trade deals are very complicated, and we have to make sure that any such deal is beneficial to Canadians-and that’s a lot of work,” said the new ambassador, who was appointed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month when he was serving as the immigration minister.
He said that the process will benefit from a “very strong” China-Canada relationship, which dates back to the late 1930s when Canadian surgeon Norman Bethune sacrificed his life while assisting the Chinese against Japanese aggression.
