A Canadian official said he was “very confident” of finalizing the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) with Taiwan by the end of this year, during a meeting hosted by the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade on Tuesday.
Ed Jager, senior trade commissioner of the Canadian Trade Office in Taipei, said that both trade discussions between Taipei and Ottawa, and Taiwan’s position in Canada’s broader Indo-Pacific strategy were proceeding smoothly.
Regarding the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), Jager said that he hoped Taiwan could become a member, adding that it had met the high standards set by the international community for the trade pact.
Photo: CNA
Jager said that Canada and Taiwan had cooperated perfectly in the past, citing Taipei 101’s 660-tonne tuned mass damper, designed by the Canadian firm Motioneering and fabricated in Taiwan, as an example.
Meanwhile, British Columbia Minister of State for Trade Jagrup Brar, who also attended Tuesday’s meeting, said he hoped to deepen the relationship between his province and Taiwan, adding that British Columbia had opened a trade and investment office in Taipei this year, because exports from British Columbia account for nearly half of Canada’s outbound shipments to Taiwan.
Bilateral Taiwan-British Columbia trade exchanges center around technology, clean energy, agriculture, fisheries and coal.
Importers and Exporters Association of Taipei secretary-general Peter Huang (黃文榮) said that Taiwan is an investment destination, and the association planned to send a group of nine industry representatives to visit Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto in the coming days.
Aisha Yang, head of vitamin seller Herbaland, and Michael Tan, deputy chief financial officer of motorcycle company Damon Motors, said that Taiwan’s innovative and efficient business environment shared identical values with Canada, making it a fitting place for Canadian firms.
Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver Director-General Angel Liu (劉立欣) said while people might be concerned that tensions in the Taiwan Strait could affect businesses, Taiwan is a democracy with the same shared values as other democratic nations.
“For people who want to run a long-term business, this is exactly what they need,” Liu said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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