Tag : Canadian

Ottawa: Reiterating Canada's support for Taiwan, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that Ottawa's longstanding position was to ensure Taipei's voice was heard in multilateral forums. Trudeau was speaking at the House of Commons on Wednesday. He had been asked by Conservative Member of Parliament and Shadow Foreign Minister Michael Chong whether Ottawa supported Taiwan's participation in the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA), and the 41st assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Responding to Chong, Trudeau said that Canada's longstanding position was to support "Taiwan's inclusion in multilateral forums, and multilateral bodies to make sure that their perspective is heard", Focus Taiwan reported. Earlier Canadian parliamentarian Michael Cooper stated that Taiwan is not a part of China in the House of Commons in a clear discomfort to China. Cooper raised Taiwan mislabelling issue by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, reported Taiwan News. "Taiwan is not a province of China, Taiwan is Taiwan!" he said. Canada follows a "One China Policy," which acknowledges that there is only one Chinese government, does not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign state and does not maintain official government-to-government relations with Taipei. This is different from Beijing's "One China Principle" which insists Taiwan is a part of China and will be reunified with the mainland one day under the Chinese Communist Party. The dispute over independence between mainland China and Taiwan stems back to the Chinese Civil War, when in 1949 the armies of Mao Zedong forced then-leader Chiang Kai-shek and the remnants his government known as the Kuomintang to retreat to Taiwan, where they declared it the Republic of China (ROC). Th ...