Following Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s announcement that Canada would halt payments to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) pending a review, experts are wondering why the Canadian government didn’t pull out of the China-led project sooner.
According to Munk Senior Fellow of Economics at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and former Chief Economic Analyst with Statistics Canada, Philip Cross, the bank has always been a tool to advance the Communist Chinese Party’s (CCP) political and economic goals.
“Do I think that Canada’s withdrawal is going to have much of an impact? No, I don’t think I don’t think Canada got many contracts. I’d never heard of Canada benefiting. Canada was always a minor part of this. We should have been aware of that right from the start,” Cross told True North.
“Frankly, right off the bat you wonder why was Canada supporting an attempt by the Chinese to wrestle some control or leadership of the global economy from the Americans?”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first signed onto the bank in 2018 and has had Freeland sit as a Governor on the Board of Directors. According to a statement released by Freeland on Wednesday, the decision to launch a review was prompted by the resignation of former AIIB Global Communications Chief Bob Pickard, who accused the bank of being dominated by the CCP.
According to Pickard, the bank has been completely taken over by CCP officials and some Board of Directors have been used as “useful idiots” by the Chinese government.
“There hasn’t been reciprocity or openness. And they haven’t followed the rules of that either. I mean, China has used these international institutions strictly to pursue their own interest and not to obey rules right from the get go. Wake up, guys. My only question is, why did it take you this long to figure it out?,” Cross told True North.
According to Cross, Canadians can expect that the review of the China-led bank will be internal and likely not make it into public committees. A halt of activity would mean that Canada stops it’s $40 million annual payments to the bank.
“So I think this is very much a review that, you know, it’ll be, you know, internal to the government, the Department of Finance, Global Affairs, obviously, would be involved, maybe Industry Canada, I think there’ll be meetings at these types of officials,” said Cross.
“How could you be surprised by this? How could you be this naive, but anyways, I guess better late than never learning these lessons. But we should have known with the treatment of the two Michaels that these people weren’t obeying the rules of the international order.”
Following Pickard’s resignation, the AIIB announced an ad-hoc group to launch an “internal management review” into the claims. The bank has also claimed that it welcomes the Canadian government’s review into what it calls “baseless allegations.”
“We welcome this review and will be cooperating fully. Transparency is essential to the trust of our 106 Members, our multilateral peers, our development partners, our community of civil society organizations, and the citizens we serve,” said AIIB Vice President and Corporate Secretary Ludger Schuknecht.
