Canada has joined an international alliance designed to help the self-governed island of Taiwan work with like-minded partners on everything from law enforcement to cybersecurity despite China’s efforts to diplomatically isolate and menace the Asian democracy.
The federal government signed on to the U.S.-launched Global Cooperation and Training Framework (GCTF) as full partner in August, joining the United States, Australia, Japan and Taiwan. Earlier this fall, the group – including Canada – announced plans to co-operate on tackling money laundering, foreign interference and drug crimes, among other matters, in the year ahead.
Taiwan is excluded from many international organizations because of pressure from the People’s Republic of China, which claims the island of 24 million people as a breakaway province. Consequently, Taiwan is shut out of Interpol, the World Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, among others.
Canada’s decision to partner with the Global Cooperation and Training Framework is the latest example of strengthening ties between Taipei and Ottawa. Canada recently posted a cyber-attaché at its unofficial embassy in Taiwan to work more closely with the island in combatting computer hacking and disinformation, a significant amount of which originates in China.
In January, Ottawa quietly dispatched officials to Taipei to study disinformation operations at work in Taiwan’s presidential election campaign. This vote returned the China-skeptical Democratic Progressive Party to the president’s office for an unprecedented third term. Canadian officials wrote up a report for both Ottawa and Taipei on their findings.
Vina Nadjibulla, vice-president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, said Ottawa’s partnership with the GCTF is the latest example of the deepening of its relationship with Taiwan in recent years. “I’m very happy to see Canada part of that coalition,” she said. Working to bolster Taiwan’s capabilities is “essentially trying to safeguard democracy and security in Taiwan.”
Taiwan is grappling with increasing efforts by China to discourage international engagement with the Asian territory. In 2000, Taiwan had diplomatic relations with 29 member states of the United Nations, as well as the Vatican. Today, the number is down to 11, plus the Holy See.
The Communist Party of China considers Taiwan a breakaway province despite the fact it has never ruled the island, where defeated Nationalist forces retreated after losing the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago. Beijing seeks to annex the island by what it calls peaceful reunification, but it says it will not rule out using force if Taiwan pursues independence. China has staged military exercises near Taiwan more than 10 times since 2018.
Canada and Taiwan do not have official diplomatic relations, but the territory has been building robust informal relations with the West in order to protect itself. The U.S. has repeatedly said China is aiming to have the capacity to capture and annex Taiwan by 2027.
Ottawa has traditionally been very cautious about anything that might resemble co-operation on security matters with Taipei. Its official position is that it neither endorses nor challenges Beijing’s claim that the island is an “inalienable part” of China. There is no defence attaché for instance, at Canada’s de facto embassy in Taipei.
Roland Paris, a former foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and director of the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, said the Global Cooperation and Training Framework is an “important way of helping Taiwan participate in the international system, despite its diplomatic isolation.”
Taiwan was mentioned eight times in Canada’s 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy, which also called China “increasingly disruptive” and talked about beefing up economic and people-to-people ties with Taiwan “while supporting its resilience.”
The five partners in the GCTF work with a broader coalition of countries to share best practices between Taiwan and the wider world on disaster relief, countering disinformation, health care and reducing carbon emissions.