Harper visit to Malaysia dwarfed by presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Prime Minister Stephen Harper was almost invisible to most Malaysians Saturday as his visit to this increasingly prosperous southeast Asia nation continued to be dwarfed by a parallel visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak created a media frenzy here by announcing this weekend that their goal was to expand trade between their countries to a whopping $160 billion a year by 2017 from about $100 billion this year.

Canada does about $3 billion a year in two-way trade with Malaysia, a figure that has been stagnant for several years despite a strong push by the Harper government to make doing business in Asia a top priority.

As it was impossible to compete head-to-head with China’s economic juggernaut or its newly appointed leader, Xi – who left Malaysia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit late Saturday – Harper chose to keep a low profile.

Harper is to finally meet with Razak on Sunday when an aviation agreement between Canada and Malaysia is to be formally signed. After that, Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird will fly to Bali for the annual meeting of the 21 Pacific Rim nations.

Harper met Saturday with Malaysian officials at a navy air base to discuss ways to strengthen Canada’s role in helping Malaysia deal with human smuggling and other maritime security issues. He later participated in a round table with Canadian and Malaysian businessmen and marvelled at the architectural wonder that is Kuala Lumpur’s spectacular Blue Mosque.

Canada launched a capacity-building program to assist Malaysia and Thailand to stop people smuggling on the High Seas after 492 Tamils landed illegally in British Columbia in 2010. They had  crossed the Pacific Ocean from Thailand aboard the MV Sun Sea cargo ship.

“It is a large issue in which we have played a small, but significant role,” said Ward Elcock, a former director of CSIS who is heavily involved in such security issues.

Canada faces a much smaller problem with illegal arrivals by seas than does Australia, which detained about 20,000 would-be immigrants arriving by sea last year, Elcock said. Nevertheless, Canada’s collaborative efforts with southeast Asia nations had contributed to preventing between four and six vessels from reaching Canadian waters with their human cargo, he said.

“Mostly what we do is training,” Elcock said. Among the examples he cited were vessel boarding techniques, ways to detect false passports and advice on how to conduct interviews with sea travellers who lied about their intentions.

“Canada has given us a lot of assistance in operating amphibious aircraft,” said Vice-Admiral Ahmad Puzi, who is the head of operations for the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency. It has just begun to use two new, Canadian-built Bombardier 415MP amphibious aircraft to conduct surveillance.

“The most important thing is intelligence-sharing with Canada. They give us information to track ships coming from Ceylon (Sri Lanka). It is very economical and gets fast results. It doesn’t matter how far away Canada is. They have added to our day-to-day effectiveness.”

The chief executive officer of CAE Inc., which is the world’s leading builder of flight simulators, praised Harper for coming to the far side of the world to support Canadian business.

“It matters that our products are appreciated by our own government,” said Marc Parent, who overseas the Saint-Laurent, Que.-based aerospace giant.

CAE had done about $100 million in business in Malaysia over the past five years, Parent said. It trains pilots for Malaysia’s Air Asia and had sold 10 flight simulators to the airline and four to the Malaysian armed forces.

With growing opportunities in the Philippines and Brunei, among other countries in southeast Asia, Parent predicted that CAE’s business in the region would grow about 20 per cent annually.

Bombardier Inc. of Montreal is another Canadian company hoping to expand its business in Asia and in Malaysia in particular. Of particular interest to Bombardier are Malaysia’s plans to build a multibillion-dollar, 330-kilometre high-speed rail line from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. Three Chinese companies are vying for a share of the contract, according to Malaysia’s Star newspaper. One of them, China Railway Group, is said to be discussing the creation of a consortium with Bombardier and Malaysia’s Global Rail to bid on the project.

Harper did not make himself available for questions from the media Saturday.