Taiwan has been included on a list of countries unwanted at Canada Day events, the Canadian Press news agency reported on Sunday.
The Canadian Trade Office in Taipei was not able to verify the information, which the Canadian Press obtained under the Canadian Access to Information Act, which provides access to information under the Ottawa’s control.
According to the report, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development circulates a persona non grata list in June each year, warning its embassies, consulates and other overseas missions to bar them from local events marking Canada Day, which is on July 1.
North Korea, Fiji, Belarus, Iran, Syria, Guinea-Bissau and Madagascar were the prominent countries on last year’s list, largely because of Canada’s disapproval of unelected or “badly behaved” governments, Canadian Press said.
Taiwan is also on the list this year, though only because Canada does not recognize the nation as a state rather than from any disapproval of its government, the news agency said.
The Canadian Press said that the department has refused to release its list this year, but it added that there were unlikely to be any changes from last year, with the possible inclusion of Russia for the first time.
An accompanying memorandum from Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Morris Rosenberg says the invitation restrictions apply for events being held in Canada as well, the report said.
The Canadian Press said that it asked the department to comment on the list and a spokesperson replied: “It is not our practice to provide lists of country representatives invited or not invited to functions held at our missions abroad.”
“I’m afraid that’s all I have at this point,” Ian Trites, a department spokesperson said in an e-mail, according to the Canadian Press.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to a Taipei Times request for a response by issuing a three-point statement at 10:20pm.
The ministry said that one, it was the Canadian Press that had stated in its report that Canada’s foreign affairs department did not provide a list for this year; two, it was the Canadian Press that termed the list a persona non grata list; and three — as the Canadian Press had said — Taiwan was on the list last year not because the Canadian government was critical of Taiwan or was displeased with it, but because Ottawa does not recognize Taiwan as a state.
“The ministry found the comments about Taiwan in the report deeply regrettable,” ministry spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) told the Taipei Times.
Kao said the relationship between Taiwan and Canada has been growing steadily closer, evidenced by the signing of the working holiday agreement in April 2010, the inclusion of Taiwan in Canada’s visa waiver program in November that year and the signing of an agreement expanding the number of bilateral direct flights in November last year.
Earlier in the evening, former minister of foreign affairs Cheng Chien-jen (程建人) told the Taipei Times that he has never heard of the list and “it is hard for me to believe that it exists unless I see it with my own eyes.”
“If Canada has such a list, it should revise it. I do not see any reason to put Taiwan on the list because it is a democratic country and the relationship between Taiwan and Canada has [always] been cordial,” Cheng said.
This story has been updated since it was first published.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS