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Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan shakes hands with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada during a summit in Ottawa in January 2022. (courtesy of the prime minister’s office of Japan)

The Japanese press reported that Canada has proposed setting up a new four-party cooperative framework with South Korea, the US and Japan to counter North Korea, China and Russia, all authoritarian states in the region. Some think this proposal could lead to a “new Quad” modeled on the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between the US, Japan, Australia and India, which was set up to curb China.

On Monday, Kyodo News quoted several diplomatic sources as saying that Canada had proposed setting up a cooperative framework with South Korea, the US and Japan in order to strengthen the democratic coalition in the trans-Pacific region and to counter the authoritarian states of China, Russia and North Korea during Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Canada in January.

According to the report, Kishida held a 75-minute meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while visiting Canada on Jan. 12. During the meeting, the two leaders agreed to maintain solidarity in the G7 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, keep cooperating on North Korea’s unprecedented series of missile tests and oppose China’s attempts to unilaterally change the status quo in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

On Nov. 27 of last year, Canada published an Indo-Pacific Strategy that defined China as an “increasingly disruptive global power.”

“In areas of profound disagreement, we will challenge China, including when it engages in coercive behaviour [. . .] ignores human rights obligations or undermines our national security interests and those of partners in the region,” Canada said in the document.

Canada’s relations with China had been relatively strong until December 2018, when they deteriorated sharply after Canadian police detained Meng Wanzhou, daughter of the founder of Huawei, at the request of the US on the charge of conducting illegal transactions with Iran.

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter

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