The Kamloops Chamber wants levels of government to pay more attention to an infrastructure project worth hundreds of billions of dollars that China is planning.

The BC Chamber will be asking levels of government to create a working group to monitor the Belt and Road Initiative, and its opportunities or impacts.

The Kamloops Chamber brought that motion forward at the recent BC Chamber annual general meeting, and president Joshua Knaak explains why.

“We’re asking government to do analysis on it, on how Canadian businesses can be encouraged to reap the benefits of it, but also to look at where this could create some challenges or some strains. It’s just something that we feel government needs to have a focus on, to ensure that we don’t suddenly wake up one morning and the world has changed and we weren’t necessarily aware of it,” Knaak says.

“The idea is, it’s about China getting control of ports so that they can control a lot of the transportation and a lot of shipping… It’s not saying that it’s a good thing or a bad thing, I mean connectivity is a very good thing. But it’s just something that needs to be made aware of.”

China proposed the Belt and Road Intiative in 2013, but Canada has not asserted what its role will be. The project proposes intercontinental trade routes that would connect more than 65 countries and about three-quarters of the world’s known energy reserves.