Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has defended his “partnership” with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) environmental board. In August 2023, the federal Conservative Party demanded Guilbeault cut ties with the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED), which is chaired by Ding Xuexiang, the former chief of staff to President Xi Jinping. The environment minister should resign from his position and halt all Canadian funding to the communist party’s green initiatives, Conservatives said, per the Globe and Mail. Guilbeault himself is executive vice-chairperson of CCICED, according to its website. Canada has donated more than $16-million to the council since 2017, federal officials confirmed in August. Speaking at the United Nations Conference on Plastic Pollution in Ottawa Tuesday, Guilbeault was asked by Rebel News if it is a conflict of interest for a Canadian cabinet minister to serve on a government agency controlled by the CCP — and if that’s why the environment minister is “soft on China’s” environment policies. Gulbeault pointed out that the Canada-China Council is not a new organization, it has been around since 1971. “A succession of environment ministers…have sat on this organization,” said Guilbeault. “It is a partnership where we exchange information on environmental issues and we work together to develop public policies that are implemented in China to tackle a number of things that we are talking about here.”.The China environment council also promotes CCP’s Belt and Road campaign, an initiative where Beijing invests in infrastructure in smaller nations — but critics say the project causes massive debt for other countries and boosts China’s growing global power. Guilbeault’s press secretary Kaitlin Power said in a 2023 statement, “Minister Guilbeault’s participating at the China Council is an example of working with China where we have an opportunity to advance co-operation on the global threat of climate change.”Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong warned Canada’s involvement with the CCP on environment issues is “now using our good name to burnish its reputation on the environment.”“We need to engage with China. We need to indicate our point of view to them. But a Canadian minister of the Crown should not be sitting as executive vice-chairperson and giving it the prestige of Canada’s good name on environmental issues while at the same time China is massively increasing construction of coal-fired plants,” said Chong prior to Guilbeault’s visit to China to attend the council meeting last August.
