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redesign of embassy in Beijing
September 25, 2020

Ottawa soliciting proposals for redesign of embassy in Beijing

Even amid frosty relations with China, Ottawa is looking to make a big “medium- to long-term investment” in its Beijing embassy to relieve “growth pressure” on the mission, according to a request for proposals posted by the federal government.

Ottawa is looking for a company in China to help put together a “forward-looking, ambitious, integrated and coherent” master plan to renovate its four-acre compound – partly to address the property’s evident security flaws.

In fact, a former ambassador to China said any new master plan for the embassy has to take into account “the security challenges that China poses.”

The request for proposals was posted to a government contracting site Tuesday and is seeking architects, engineers and urban planners to help design renovations and expansions that would maximize the use of the embassy grounds. A master plan, worth about $100,000, is expected to be delivered within a year of the contract being awarded.

“As one of the [Government of Canada’s] priority relationships, it is anticipated that the Beijing Mission will continue to see program growth in the short to medium term,” the documents say.

It’s a bullish vision for an embassy that has become emblematic of Canada’s fits-and-starts relationship with China. The embassy has grown, taken on new staff and added new programs, even as successive governments have grappled with Beijing’s abhorrent human-rights record.

New buildings were erected as part of initiatives to attract trade, investors and skilled immigrants, but they have become “overcrowded” over the past two decades, the solicitation documents say. A master plan for the embassy was drawn up in 2011 but never implemented.

The new expansion plans come as Ottawa appears paralyzed in its approach to President Xi Jinping’s government. A free-trade agreement and an extradition treaty have notionally been put on ice after a diplomatic row over the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the behest of Washington. Since then, Ottawa has been trying, without success, to free Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were apparently detained in retaliation.

Keep reading in The Globe and Mail