The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.
OTTAWA—Playing the China card, a key to Stephen Harper’s economic strategy, has proven a lot trickier than the federal Conservatives expected when the Prime Minister signalled in Beijing that Canada was open for business.
Increased trade, investment and energy dealings with Asia, particularly China, underpin the natural resources-heavy cure-all for the economy that the Harper government embraced last winter after U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
In response, the Conservatives stepped up efforts to diversify trade and energy sales away from the U.S., touting as a national priority a proposed pipeline to carry oil sands-derived crude from Alberta to British Columbia for shipment to Asia. Regulatory approval was streamlined in hopes of fast-tracking energy sales to China, while the pipeline’s opponents were demonized as anti-Canadian.
And in February, Harper carried out a visit to Beijing characterized as a major breakthrough in Canada-China economic relations, with the Prime Minister initialling a long-sought investment protection agreement between the two countries.