Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Dec. 5th, 2006

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Sitting on this committee, I know there have been a lot of people who have asked questions about indicators of success and gauging success. I don't know if you're optimistic or what your feelings are towards it. For myself, in business or whatever, I like to have achievable goals. I like to say, after one month, this is something I can achieve; after five years, this is something I can achieve.

But with China—am I wrong?—expectations seem awfully low as to success. Yes, we can keep on talking. Yes, the wheels of change turn slowly. Perhaps with any type of progress, you have to be an optimist, with small steps. But as you look at the overall picture, I'm just sitting here now thinking about how I could ever be an optimist in that job, with expectations as low as mine for China. Maybe it would have to be on a case-by-case basis, where we'd say, you know what, Celil is a case; answers to what's gone on in Tibet would be another case; and until we have answers here, we aren't really going to gauge success.

You talk about your goal being to continually improve the effectiveness of our advocacy. We have reference made by the chair about Canada's involvement in the judicial system in China. I can tell you, I agree with what our chair says. In a one-party state the chances of an independent judiciary are minuscule.

Do you see indicators that there is progress?

Maybe I'm a sucker for punishment, but last weekend I sat and watched parts of the Liberal convention. Mr. Chrétien held this up as an area of Canada's great success, providing help to the judiciary in China. It sounds awfully good on the television. But I kind of wonder how we are doing.

How are we doing?

[Gordon Houlden]

I think you'll understand if I stay away from the directly political issues. As a civil servant, it wouldn't be appropriate.

You've put your finger on some very difficult questions, and I can't give you facile or easy answers. One of the problems is, of course, that we're not alone working on this. There are a host of other countries, some of which work in loose coordination with us, that are pushing on the door at the same time.

If, for example, we see minor policy improvement released this last weekend about a slightly more open system for journalists visiting in the run-up to the Olympics, is that an important change? Well, in some ways, yes, and in some ways, perhaps not that important. Who achieved that? Was it because freedom of information has come out in our discussions? Well, I certainly couldn't say that it was us in meeting X on day Y. Was it the criticism and pressure from the outside world and western countries broadly? Perhaps.

I understand your frustration. In a business model you want to have clearly quantifiable outcomes, and in a place as large as China and with the relatively short levers that we have, it's not easy to measure progress. One can construct benchmarks. We do track individual cases of dissidents who've been jailed. We note sometimes that conditions improve after we've made representations, but the Chinese don't do us the favour of coming to us afterwards and saying, well, because you've complained in this case, we've now decided we're going to treat Mr. or Ms. X or Y better. It doesn't happen. There is a lot of guesswork, unfortunately, and as we all are, I'm open to ways in which this can be improved.

Maybe this isn't the best model. We commissioned Dr. Burton to have a look at it, to make his own recommendations. We're looking carefully at what NGOs have said. Good ideas are always welcome as to what is doable.

I do believe that China has improved in some important and measurable ways, if you look at day-to-day life. Having said that, there are huge gaps, and as this honourable member mentioned as well, it's very uneven. There's a saying in Chinese that heaven is high and the emperor is far away. There are regions that are unrecognizable from others in terms of the daily life. I'm not suggesting there's any place that's completely free in China, but there is tremendous variance within China itself. It's 20% of the earth, and the application of justice or the law is very unequal. There are some areas, minority areas in particular, where the record is terrible--I think of Tibet and Xinjiang in particular--and other areas where it may be a bit better.

I don't mean to give a rambling response, but I understand your difficulty and I share the same in terms of how you quantify progress.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Would you want a second round?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

No, I think a lot of the questions I had have been asked.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Wayne, go ahead, just briefly.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

They lost the “iron rice bowl” in 1978 when they started to change the economic structure over there. The person I was speaking to last week assures me that after the horrific things that occurred in Tiananmen--and this person was in the square and is still connected with people there--there have been what this person called reasonably significant changes in human rights since those days. I want to stress that. We are all troubled by, as the member said, being sure of the balance or not, whether we are making headway.

My question really comes back around the dialogue, and whether you would see it reasonable to suspend it for this group to join with MPs, NGOs, and labour, civil society groups--the Berne group--and maybe come together with a strategy that we're all moving roughly in the same direction on those things that we're trying to accomplish in China. Would that make reasonable sense?

[Adèle Dion]

Certainly if we look at the like-minded western countries who have bilateral dialogues with the Chinese, we're all doing it for the same reasons. We have similar values and interests. We've all signed the international human rights legal framework, and we have very serious and very specific concerns. We do try to concert our messages.

If you take any group of countries, obviously there are important variations as to what a specific government will priorize. It's not always relevant, I suppose I could say, to try to come up with a short list of five messages that everyone is going to push. Depending on individual relationships with China, it's more useful for, say, Canada to take the lead on some specific issues where we might have more leverage, either because of our CIDA programming or because of our historic relationship with China.

As to overall coordination, yes, definitely--very important, very useful. Thinking back to 1996-97, when we were still involved in the resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights, we certainly coordinated with like-minded countries on having that resolution adopted. I think amongst all of us there was a pretty general agreement by 1997 that the chances of success, of getting the resolution adopted, were becoming increasingly slimmer. That was certainly one of the reasons why it was felt that we had to look at additional options for engaging China.

Amongst all of the countries involved in bilateral dialogues, I think we certainly have independently come to the conclusion that with China it's absolutely necessary to stay engaged. After all, they're a huge country. They're a member of the UN Security Council. They're very active in UN and regional fora such as APEC.

As the honourable was saying earlier, it's extremely frustrating because progress is so slow. But really, if we want to make a difference, if we want to see China become open to human rights, norms, and standards, what option is there except to engage in some way?

On the question of benchmarks, yes, they are absolutely critical. Clearly what we're all aiming for here is an improved strength in dialogue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Thank you very much to all of our witnesses for your public service and for your appearance before us today, adding to our deliberations. We very much appreciate it. If there are any further questions from the committee, I'm sure we could submit them to you in writing. Thank you, again.

As a closing point insofar as DFAIT has invited input on the policy review, obviously we hope the report of the subcommittee will be considered in that context as well. Thank you.

To my colleagues here, while we dismiss the witnesses, we have to discuss a little future business. I don't think we necessarily need to go in camera on this.

To be quick, we have Mrs. Rebiya Kadeer, who is the founder and president of the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation, appearing before us next week. I think we've scheduled an hour. Insofar as we had the Dalai Lama's representatives here for a special session, we've decided to give the same opportunity to the principal international spokesperson of the Uyghur people.

We had originally conceived having a second hour next week, adding a half hour to our usual meetings, to give an opportunity for representatives of the business community to appear before us to talk about the trade and economic dimensions of human rights. Last week there was some suggestion that we could perhaps add one or two academics as well. But we've had some difficulty scheduling some of these business groups and leaders because, for some reason, their schedules don't seem to mesh with our own schedule.

The only person I think we have confirmed is Professor Mendes, who's not from the business community, but it would be from an academic perspective. It was Mario's suggestion.

I want to question the utility of having a second hour if we can't get the business groups in front of us, as originally conceived.

For the committee's consideration and to get your direction, we keep punting this Cuba report down the field. I'd like to suggest for consideration that we take the second hour to go through the draft review prepared by our analyst in the hope that we could actually prepare the report before we adjourn for Christmas. It's one option.

Mr. Cotler has also given me verbal notice of a motion. He hasn't presented it formally yet, but it comes from his original discussion on the question of incitement to genocide by the Iranian regime. I thought we could alternately spend part of the second hour next week reviewing his motion.

Those are our options. We could go ahead with the semi-panel in the second half of next week, or we could leave it to a regular meeting with Mrs. Kadeer, or we could get into the Cuba report and/or Mr. Cotler's motion.

Mario.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Very briefly, Mr. Chair, given that we're not really sure what the schedule will be next week, I'm flexible.

If it's the will of the committee to have it all, I don't have a problem with that. But it might be worth it to have a one-hour meeting and wait until the new year so that we can at least be certain we'll be dealing with it all.

I don't know what the schedule is going to be next week. If it's possible, I'd rather have it for one hour. If others have other ideas, I don't mind, and it's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Wayne.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I agree with that. I don't have a problem if we have to bump a couple of things over to the new year. I have an inkling we'll have some difficulty with the meeting anyway.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

There is a rumour, as there always is at this time of year.

Wayne, you're a new MP, aren't you?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Every Christmas there's always a rumour that the House will break early. Sometimes it's true, and sometimes it's not. I don't know.

But if we break early, I'm going to be in Ottawa next week anyway to meet Mrs. Kadeer. If anybody can be here, I'd invite you to do the same. There's no pressure, but if we're not sitting next Tuesday, I hope you could try to do that.

Is it the will of the committee that we hear from Ms. Kadeer and try to schedule the other witnesses in the new year?

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Yes, I think so. We want to stay fairly focused on China.

Chair, I know there have been a number of requests from other groups to appear. Maybe it could be a single meeting group.

This morning I had the chance to meet with the Canadian Ethiopian council. They're very concerned. It's a major recipient country of CIDA dollars, over $100 million, with basically a communist style of government. They're hoping to have a meeting some time. They sent a letter. I don't know the status of that or whether or not it's been dealt with at a steering committee.

How many other groups are there? Would we want to venture into that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

The problem is that we can't accommodate them unless we increase the frequency of these meetings. As I said at the beginning, I'm willing to do that, but it's up to the committee to try to find the time, if they're willing to do so. Otherwise, we can't accommodate all these worthwhile groups.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

What I'm saying is this. In a case where we have an hour, is there a group like this that's centred here in Ottawa that we could use as fill?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I have to leave, but I hope we can agree to one hour.

I think the reality is that eventually we'll be finished with China and also with the issue of Cuba, because we won't take a whole year to do those, and then there are other issues we can deal with. Maybe at that time it would be more appropriate, because to ask groups to come in when we don't know their schedule or whether we'll be able to be here for more than an hour...it's going to be difficult to show respect for all those people who have issues. Maybe we should wait until the new year.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Caroline, do you want to make any comments?

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

If possible, we need to meet with the groups and conclude our study on China. You were talking about a verbal notice of motion. I don't have a copy of that.

Perhaps there are also subjects that should be discussed. We had asked for the Burton report. Is there anything new in that regard? Furthermore, we need to know if there will be an answer to the letter that the coalition sent to Mr. Harper. Should the subcommittee not write to the Prime Minister about this?

In my opinion, subcommittee members should set aside some time to do a bit of work together.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Do you want to set aside a second hour next week?

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

If we want to hear from witnesses and do some work in the subcommittee, we won't have any choice but to set aside two hours.

I don't understand: is this a problem?

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Okay. Ted.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

What about Cuba? Could we wrap it up in one hour? Should we try to get a finish on it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

I think we probably could. Marcus has done good work.