Trudeau’s Enviro Minister, Who Already Works With CCP-Backed Advisory Org, Heads To China To Talk Climate

Trudeau’s Enviro Minister, Who Already Works With CCP-Backed Advisory Org, Heads To China To Talk Climate

Nick Pope on August 18, 2023

• Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault is set to meet with the China Council for International Cooperation of Environment and Development (CCICED), an advisory organization which he and several Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials serve as executive committee members, to discuss climate change starting on Aug. 26, according to numerous reports.
• While the organization appears to be a benevolent advisory organization, it has promoted the CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and some of its “advisors and council members have backgrounds in influence operations,” according to a 2022 report by The Jamestown Foundation, a nonpartisan foreign policy analysis organization.
• “Maybe some [political opponents] will try and attack me” for going to China, Guilbeault said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer. “I am clearly a lightning rod for some of them, but I think Canadians in general will understand how important it is. We can’t solve climate change, you can’t solve the international biodiversity issue, without working with countries like China.”

Steven Guilbeault, the Canadian environment minister who serves on the executive committee of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-backed advisory organization focusing on climate, is set to visit China and discuss climate change at a meeting of the advisory organization, according to multiple reports.

Guilbeault is the executive vice chair of the China Council for International Cooperation of Environment and Development (CCICED), established in 1992 with the approval of the CCP to serve as “a high-level, non-profit international advisory body consisting of leading figures and senior experts from both China and abroad in the field of environment and development,” according to its website. Guilbeault will go to China on an official visit from Aug. 26-31, where he will discuss cooperation on climate policy at a meeting of the CCICED, according to The Canadian Press.

The CCICED’s top official is Ding Xuexiang, a member of the CCP’s politburo and secretary of the working committee of the “Central Party and State Institutions” who was once considered “Xi Jinping’s second in command and most trusted aide,” according to a press release by the Canadian Conservative Party and the CCIED website. Numerous other CCICED “advisors and council members have backgrounds in influence operations,” according to a 2022 report by Filip Jirouš of The Jamestown Foundation, a nonpartisan foreign policy analysis organization.

Canada PM Justin Trudeau stops short of definitively saying that China is committing a genocide against the Uyghurs, saying that the term is “extremely loaded.”
pic.twitter.com/d3PncN4CA2

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 17, 2021

Other CCP officials on the executive committee include Yingmin Zhao, who has served as vice minister of China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment since 2016, and Xie Zhenhua, the recently reappointed special representative on Climate Change and deputy director of the Committee of Population, Resources and Environment, according to CCICED’s website. The CCICED executive committee also features Huang Runqiu, who is a minister for the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, according to CCICED’s website.

“Maybe some [political opponents] will try and attack me” for going to China, Guilbeault said in an interview with Canada’s National Observer. “I am clearly a lightning rod for some of them, but I think Canadians in general will understand how important it is. We can’t solve climate change, you can’t solve the international biodiversity issue, without working with countries like China.”

Guilbeault was a climate activist in the years before he became involved with government, in which capacity he worked for a grassroots Canadian activism group and Greenpeace, according to The Guardian. He drew widespread attention in 2001, when he and another activist climbed Toronto’s CN Tower and unfurled a banner which read, “Canada and Bush Climate Killers.”

Canadian Conservative Party officials called on Guilbeault to resign from his post at the CCICED on Thursday, asserting ahead of his planned China visit that the organization “serves the interests of Beijing – not Canada,” according to the press release issued by the Canadian Conservative Party. The officials also called upon Guilbeault to “firmly and vocally denounce Beijing’s interference in Canada’s democracy” if he insists on taking the trip as planned.

Canada has pledged $16 million in taxpayer dollars to the CCICED in order to secure Guilbeault’s position, according to the Canadian Ministry of International Development . Because it is the leading international funding partner of the organization, Canada consults with the CCICED to appoint one member to the organization’s executive committee, an arrangement set forth in the CCICED charter.

CCICED says that it is “inspired and driven by a vision of building towards a more beautiful China and a green and bountiful world,” according to its charter. However, the organization works to serve the CCP’s interests above all else, according to the Canadian Conservative Party, and it has actively promoted the party’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), according to its website.

Shrouded in a facade of idealistic altruism, the BRI appears to actually be a long-term scheme to snare developing countries in debt traps designed to advance China’s geopolitical and economic leverage on the world stage, according to Foreign Policy. While the CCP publicly touts its green energy ambitions, the party plans to fast track approval of new coal mines and construction of already-approved mines, according to Reuters.

“I came into politics so I could continue to be an activist,” Guilbeault told The Guardian. “My commitment to that hasn’t changed at all.”

Guilbeault’s visit to China will be the first by a sitting Canadian minister since 2019, according to The Canadian Press, which had initially reported that it was the first since 2018 before correcting its story to reflect that the visit is to be the first of its kind since 2019.

China was by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2022, according to USA Today. The country also dominates green technology supply chains, according to Canary Media, and it is alleged that Chinese firms gain a competitive advantage in the global green technology market by taking advantage of Uyghur Muslim slave labor.

CCICED, the Canadian Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau all did not respond to requests for comment.