Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Before I get into questions for our excellent witnesses, I have a couple of quick housekeeping thing. I want to give other committee members notice of the following motion:
That this Committee prepare a report on the situation in Hong Kong, to be tabled following the completion of hearings looking specifically at the situation in Hong Kong.
That's a notice of motion. I'm not moving it at this time. I also want to suggest to you, Mr. Chair, that in light of that notice of motion, and a motion that we previously adjourned debate on, that we consider scheduling 20 to 30 minutes to discuss these motions after the witnesses at the end of Monday's meeting. I'll put that out there for your consideration and the consideration of other members.
Now I'll go to my questions for the witnesses.
Thank you for your excellent testimony. It's important that we hear that Magnitsky sanctions are a recurring theme not only in these hearings on Hong Kong but really across the board. I really appreciated Mr. Rogers' clear statement that the Chinese regime does not respond to statements or rhetoric, but to pressure.
I want to also single out Mr. Kwan's comments on Nuctech. I think they're so important that we should take a look at what happened here from the government on this Nuctech issue. Given what we're finding out now, it looks like this is either historic stupidity, explicit corruption or maybe someone here getting caught in some kind of honey trap. It's just so bizarre that it's hard to explain any other way, and I think we really need to get to the bottom of that.
Thank you, Mr. Kwan, for your comments on that.
I want to drill further now into the immigration and lifeboat questions with Ms. Go and Mr. Rogers.
In the opposition, we've been calling on the government to have and to articulate a plan for helping Canadians who want to leave Hong Kong to be able to do so. I'm quite concerned that the Government of China could take action against Canadians living in Hong Kong. Canadians are well aware of the case of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. One of our witnesses at the last meeting referred to the possibility of “thousands of Michaels” being used against Canada—really the escalation of hostage diplomacy on a massive scale—if efforts are made by the Chinese government to prevent Canadian citizens, citizens of other countries, and human rights defenders who might want to claim asylum from being able to leave Hong Kong. I think we've already seen efforts by the Chinese government to make it more difficult for British nationals to leave in response to the schemes put forward by the British government.
Maybe, Mr. Rogers, I'll ask you first. What efforts are we seeing by the Chinese government to prevent foreign nationals from leaving, and what should Canada do to plan for that scenario and be prepared to ensure the security of our citizens?