I think it's critical for Prime Minister Trudeau to impose meaningful penalties on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who have committed rights violations. We have already seen this be very effective in the United States. China's prickly response can tell you how effective it was. That response would be all the stronger if Canada deployed the Canadian version of the Magnitsky Law.
I think it's also critical to conduct a careful review of imports and exports. Anything coming from mainland China or Hong Kong made with slave labour should be prohibited. In the U.S. we have something that is currently pending called the Uyghur forced labor prevention act that creates a rebuttable presumption, meaning that, if a product is coming from Xinjiang, we assume that it's made with slave labour and companies have to prove otherwise. That sort of model would be an excellent one.
We also think it's critical to mitigate, prepare for and respond to the risks facing Canadians not only in Hong Kong, but also Canadians who live in Canada and are working on human rights issues, so that if we start to see politically motivated arrests in Hong Kong, we are ready to evacuate people quickly and insist that they have consular access and be protected from torture.
I think it's also very important, now that information is cut off, that you continue to seek information from actual Hong Kongers. There are some great diaspora groups. I commend you all for bringing so many excellent diaspora folks to the committee already, but I have been asked by Hong Kongers to convey to you excellent work by the Canadian Friends of Hong Kong. I'm told they have a deep understanding of CCP infiltration in Canada.
Lastly, I think it's critical for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to go ahead and conduct that review of whether CGTN/CCTN have violated operations—and transparency requirements for Chinese media would be good as well.