Overview
- Canadian and Chinese defence officials met in Ottawa on Sept. 4 for a defence coordination dialogue with fewer than ten Canadian participants at working levels.
- Beijing publicly announced the meeting and framed it as the resumption of military talks after eight years, while Canada confirmed the encounter only after questions from the media.
- The Department of National Defence described the talks as a functional, working‑level channel held under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s guardrails that exclude expanded defence cooperation.
- Conservative MPs and opposition figures demanded greater transparency and called for the dialogue to end, arguing Canada should not engage militarily with a country that jailed two Canadians in 2018.
- Defence experts and former military officials say the channel is primarily for crisis communication and accident avoidance and note Canada’s approach mirrors similar risk‑management lines other Western militaries maintain with Beijing.