Taiwanese delegation stops in city

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This article was published 05/08/2023 (807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon hosted a rare type of visitor earlier this week: a trade delegation from a foreign country.

This week, Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council has been touring Manitoba with dignitaries from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Ottawa — the de facto Taiwanese embassy in Canada.

One of the tour’s first stops was in Brandon on Wednesday. Local officials, including Mayor Jeff Fawcett, met with the Taiwanese visitors, including Ambassador Harry Tseng, at city hall before having dinner at Joe Beeverz.

According to Dakota Ojibway Tribal Council director of operations Maeengan Linklater, the connection between his group and the Taiwanese government started during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said this is the second time an Indigenous group has hosted a foreign ambassador after Peguis First Nation invited the South African ambassador to their community in 1987.

Taiwan had a diplomatic program where it donated personal protective equipment to other countries. Linklater said DOTC sent a letter asking for support and when Taiwan donated half a million pieces of protective equipment through the Red Cross, 10,000 pieces were allocated to go to the council.

In December last year, DOTC had a chance to thank the Taiwanese government for the donation.

“I said, ‘well, let’s think about maybe seeing what we could do about exploring trade and economic development opportunities together,’” Linklater said. “Because of the fact that Manitoba has lots to offer and especially with respect to First Nations and other Indigenous nations.”

After that, an advance team from the Ottawa office was dispatched to Manitoba to have a set of initial meetings discussing things like the supply chain and critical minerals in April before a larger team headed out this week.

The delegation visiting Manitoba included three representatives from the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan from before the island was colonized by other groups.

Following the visit to Brandon, the delegation was set to visit several other locations in Manitoba including 150th anniversary celebrations for the signing of Treaty 1 in Lower Fort Garry and hosting an economic roundtable on Thursday and signing a memorandum of understanding on Friday.

The trip was set to be capped off on Friday by the delegation participating in the grand entry of the Long Plain First Nation powwow as well as visits to the Indian Residential School Museum and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Tseng said Fawcett had visited his office in May to encourage Taiwan’s relationship with DOTC.

He said his government is interested in establishing relationships with Indigenous peoples across Canada eventually but are getting the process started in Manitoba.

One area Tseng sees potential for collaboration is in health care.

“You have a vast territory, even only in Manitoba,” Tseng said. “You have people living in remote areas where it will be inconvenient for them to get medical treatment.”

He said Taiwan has been engaging in a charitable effort in various Indo-Pacific countries like Palau, where online medical assistants in Taiwan help people in the other countries get prescriptions and book medical treatments remotely.

“Remote medical treatment is something that we can pursue in the future, but there are many other things we can do,” Tseng said. “You have a great potential in terms of solar energy. You have abundant water resources and you have critical minerals. These are all very important to us, so I think the opportunity in the future is looking really good.”

Fawcett said Thursday that while the delegation’s visit was primarily handled by DOTC, he was excited for the chance to help establish a relationship. Also present at the local visit were members of the Brandon Urban Aboriginal Peoples’ Council.

“They left me with some information on vertical gardens that they do,” Fawcett said. “Land space in Taiwan versus land space in places like Canada are very different. They’ve very advanced in (artificial intelligence) in Taiwan. In Ottawa and here we talked a little bit about how they use AI in medicine.”

On top of that, Fawcett said there will be an effort to see how groups in Taiwan could collaborate with Assiniboine Community College and Brandon University on things like semiconductors, communications and AI.

“There was a really interesting, good discussion,” he said. “It was a lot to be learned on both sides and a lot of good things, I think, can come from that.”

Officially, Taiwan is referred to as the Republic of China in comparison to the People’s Republic of China on the mainland.

When the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan and established a government there after their defeat by communist forces.

The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Ottawa is the de facto embassy of Taiwan in Canada because Canada has official diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.

The larger and more populous communist party-ruled country does not engage in diplomatic relations with countries that have official diplomatic relationships with Taiwan, which has led to diplomatic offices being opened under other titles as an workaround to establish unofficial relations.

Linklater said DOTC supports bilateral agreements between Canada and Taiwan as well as Taiwan being included in international bodies like UNESCO, the International Civil Aviation Organization and Interpol.

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