The conventional way to describe Canada’s China policy is to call it cautious, hedged, somewhere between engagement and confrontation. But the evidence does not support that description. From 2008 to early 2024, across two Conservative and three Liberal governments, Canada’s grand strategy converged on a single posture: bandwagoning with the United States.

I examined that posture systematically in my research, which reviewed a dataset of 380 parliamentary statements on China from the House of Commons and its relevant committees, 91 ministerial declarations, the major defence strategy documents from Canada First Defence Strategy (2011) through Our North, Strong and Free (2024), the Indo-Pacific Strategy, military procurement records from the Military Balance Plus dataset, and Canadian participation in joint exercises. Across five indicators (threat perception, diplomatic signals, military acquisitions, deployments, and exercises) the patterns line up with bandwagoning, not hedging, not balancing.

That distinction matters because bandwagoning is not just close alignment. It is a strategic choice that prioritizes status as a reliable ally over independent capability, accepts the dominant partner’s threat assessments as one’s own, and treats power as a means to secure partnership rather than as an end in itself. Hedging would mean maintaining genuine policy options, including operational ties with both Washington and Beijing. Balancing would mean building Canadian capability targeted at China. Canada has done neither.

How Threat Perception Shifted

Between 2008 and 2015, the Harper Conservatives treated China primarily as a market. Statements on security concerns were rare and largely confined to industrial espionage and foreign influence. China was not yet framed as a military threat. The Trudeau Liberals came into office in 2015 attempting a similar engagement track, with state visits in both directions and exploratory free trade talks. 

The shift came hard between 2017 and 2023. Parliamentary statements characterizing China as a threat rose roughly 350 percent across party lines. Between 2020 and 2023 alone, the increase was 165 percent.

What drove the change? The first trigger was........

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