Prime Minister Mark Carney plans to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping while the pair are at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum later this week in South Korea.
Carney said they will discuss "a broad range of issues, both in terms of the commercial relationship as well as the evolution of the global system."
The planned meeting comes on the heels of Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand's visit to Beijing where she met with her counterpart, Wang Yi.
"We're in the process of a resetting of expectations of where the relationship can go," Carney told reporters at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The meeting will mark a significant thaw in relations and the first time the leaders of the two countries have met formally since Justin Trudeau met with Xi during an official visit to China in 2017.
In December 2018, Canadian officials arrested Meng Wanzhou, who was the chief financial officer of telecommunications giant Huawei, at the request of U.S. authorities who were seeking her extradition to face charges there.
A few days later, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were arrested in China and held in what the Canadian government said was an arbitrary detention.
What followed was years of deteriorating relations between the two countries.
Trudeau and Xi spoke on the margins of the G20 in 2019 and again in 2022. During that encounter, Xi confronted Trudeau and accused him of leaking information about their discussions to the media, warning there could be consequences for the Canadian prime minister's lack of respect.
In September 2021, Meng reached a deal with U.S. prosecutors and returned to China from Vancouver. Kovrig and Spavor were released and returned to Canada hours later.
Carney's government has been working to rebuild the relationship with China since he took office. He met with the Chinese premier, Li Qiang, at the UN in September.
"Relationships rebuild over time when they have changed, when they have changed for the worse," Carney said Monday. "So we have a lot of areas on which we can build."
Premiers and business leaders in Canada have been urging Carney to meet with Xi in an effort to ease the current trade dispute.
Last October, Canada followed the Biden administration's lead and imposed a 100 per cent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles and batteries, as well as levies on solar panels, critical minerals and other related goods.
China responded with tariffs of its own on Canadian canola products, seafood and pork products.
Carney's parliamentary secretary, Kody Blois, travelled to China in early September with Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. Moe returned from the trip optimistic that China was willing to move forward.
He and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew have both urged Carney to end Canada's tariffs on Chinese EVs in order to end the trade dispute.
Carney did not answer directly whether he would drop those tariffs on Monday.
"I look forward to the discussions with President Xi, and they're about a much broader set of issues than trade, and I'll be in a better position to start answering questions like that as the relationship evolves and deepens," he said.
He added, "This is the difference between relationship and transaction. We're starting (a) relationship, building up the relationship."
Carney is in the middle of his first official visit to Asia, where he is pitching Canada as a reliable trading partner for countries in Southeast Asia as the United States upends global trading norms.
He's set to travel to Singapore on Tuesday before ending the trip at the APEC forum in South Korea.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
