Carney Rolls Out the Red Carpet for Vietnam’s Communist Boss
Mark Carney is hosting Tô Lâm in Ottawa today for a full state visit military honours, Rideau Hall, Parliament Hill, the works.
Lâm is not just Vietnam’s president. He is General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the most powerful man in a one-party state. This is the first visit to Canada by a Vietnamese party chief since diplomatic relations began in 1973. The two sides have already upgraded the relationship from a 2017 “comprehensive partnership” to a “strategic partnership.” Carney is talking energy exports and direct flights. Lâm is talking universities, agriculture, and “frank exchanges.”
Trade is the official excuse. Vietnam is Canada’s largest partner in Southeast Asia, with more than $20 billion in two-way merchandise trade last year. Canada ships food, metals, and fertilizer; Vietnam ships electronics, clothing, furniture, and shoes. Ottawa wants more of that, plus LNG and a Canada–ASEAN deal. Lâm wants Canadian schools and investment while he chairs CPTPP and prepares to host APEC in 2027. On paper it looks like “middle powers” hedging against Washington and Beijing.
That is the sales pitch. Here is the problem.
Tô Lâm runs a communist dictatorship that jails people for speech. Human Rights Watch put the number of political prisoners at more than 160. In the first nine months of 2026 alone, Vietnamese courts sentenced at least 28 activists and police arrested at least 39 more for criticizing the government or belonging to the wrong religious or political group. Bloggers, journalists, land-rights campaigners, and labour advocates sit in prison under “propaganda” and “national security” laws. Vietnam promised Canada labour-rights reforms, including ILO Convention 87 on freedom of association. It missed the deadline and kept arresting people instead.
So Canada is giving a state visit the highest diplomatic honour to the man who oversees that system. Not a working lunch. Not a trade meeting in a hotel. A welcome ceremony with the Governor General, talks with the Prime Minister, and a public upgrade in status. That is not “engagement.” That is a photo that Hanoi will use at home to say the West has accepted the Party.
There is also the company Vietnam keeps. It stays on good terms with Russia and North Korea while talking “rules-based order” in Ottawa. Carney’s line is that middle powers must stick together against American and Chinese pressure. Fine. Diversifying trade is not a crime. Pretending a one-party police state is just another “partner” with a few paperwork issues is.
Canada can sell fertilizer and talk energy without pretending Tô Lâm is a democrat. A serious government would put political prisoners on the agenda in public, not bury them under communiqués about “sustainable development” and “people-to-people ties.” If rights only get a private whisper after the flags come down, the strategic partnership is one-way: Vietnam gets legitimacy and markets; Canada gets a handshake and a press release.
Carney wants Canada at every table. The question is whether every table is worth sitting at when the guest of honour locks up journalists and calls it stability!!??