Canada-China Relations Committee on Dec. 8th, 2020

[Dominic Barton]

Actually we have quite extensively, Mr. Chair. Before the trip, I met with the group that went ahead of time, which included the Swiss and the Norwegian ambassadors, to get a sense of what they were able to look at, what they would do differently and so forth.

I hosted a couple of sessions with ambassadors who weren't able to go, to share what we learned and what they might want to ask for in the trip that hopefully they would get to go on.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you, Mr. Fragiskatos.

We will now continue with Mr. Bergeron.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Barton, thank you for joining us once again. Thank you for the work you are doing for Canada in the People's Republic of China.

One item in your presentation caught my attention: the visit to the hotel. I was very surprised to learn that there was a hotel, given the restrictions imposed on foreign travellers. I imagine that this hotel is mainly reserved for domestic travellers from the People's Republic of China, namely Han Chinese travelling to Tibet.

[Dominic Barton]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for that observation.

I was surprised by that, too, and it wasn't choreographed, if you will. I discovered it. She was helping when we were having dinner. It was actually before a performance that we were going to see called Princess Wencheng. Yes, I was very surprised by that.

They actually do have a lot of Han Chinese tourists, as you mentioned. Last year, they said there were 40 million Han Chinese tourists.

What I found interesting—and something someone else could do deeper work on—was that there are a lot of Chinese Buddhists. One number I heard—and please check with experts, not what I'm saying, but just a number I heard—was that there could be 300 million.

People are coming, I think, not just for the tourism, if you will, but because these sites are actually quite important to them. They're Han tourists and what she was saying was that it would be great to have more foreign tourists able to come to the session—it was a bit of an oddity to see someone like me or others there—and that more people should visit from Canada. I said, “No kidding. We would like to if we could get access; that would be great. You might want to raise that.”

I don't know if that answers your question.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Yes, very well, thank you very much.

I would like to talk about the linguistic and cultural issue. According to a number of international reports, the Chinese authorities are making considerable efforts to limit—if not eliminate—aspects of Tibetan culture.

During your visit, did you have the opportunity to speak with Tibetans in Tibetan?

Did the Chinese authorities provide Tibetan interpreters, or were discussions routinely conducted in Mandarin?

[Dominic Barton]

Mr. Chair, the whole area of language was a very important focus on the trip. What we did was ask, but again recognizing when you ask people those sorts of questions with party officials around, you may not get the most accurate response, so what we did was observe. We basically saw that all the signs were bilingual. Posters on the roads and on entrances were in Tibetan and Mandarin.

You make a very important point. Interestingly, all of the tours.... For example, the tour of the Tibetan medicine museum was led by the Tibetan principal, but he did it in Mandarin and then it was translated into English. It was much like when you had the visit in 2018 from the Tibet authority, and they spoke in Mandarin, not Tibetan. I think one of the members made an important intervention in Tibetan. Everything was in Mandarin and then translated, even though they were Tibetans.

At the school, there were classes that were taught in Tibetan. It was more the cultural part of it. We saw lots of Tibetan chess, the calligraphy, and signs in the school that were bilingual. Our sense from the group was that Mandarin was primarily the core measure.

I was able to talk to some of the family members who were there, people who we were able to meet, and they said, “Look, the importance of maintaining our language and culture is critical. We try to do that with the family to make sure we are doing that.”

One of the families we met—I want to be careful, and I won't go into the details, because I don't want to get them in trouble or anything—had actually moved from Canada back to Tibet, because they wanted their son to understand and learn the Tibetan culture. “With all respect to Canada,” she said, “which I love, it's up to me to drive it.” There was a lot of passion, I felt, by the people, but clearly, Mandarin is the core language.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Mr. Chair, my understanding is that two Tibetan regions are not part of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Are the travel restrictions just as strict for those two Tibetan areas outside the Tibet Autonomous Region?

If not, is there—

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Mr. Bergeron, your six minutes are up.

Mr. Ambassador, would you provide a very brief answer, one word, if possible?

[Dominic Barton]

Significant population outside, we do have access to those regions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Harris, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ambassador Barton. I was going to give you an opportunity to answer that question in my time, but perhaps we can get back to it after a few questions that I have.

First of all, I want to say that I'm delighted to hear, and I'm sure all Canadians are delighted to hear, that Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig are in good health, and have shown great resilience in their significant ordeal. Thank you for passing that information along to us.

Was there any explanation given by the Chinese government as to why they refused to allow even virtual visits? I had a discussion with the Canadian ambassador back in April and talked about consular visits. Of course, the COVID situation was the explanation. At that time, other countries were being given consular visits through virtual means to their citizens, and Canada was being denied. No real answer was given to me at that time as to why that couldn't be permitted.

Was there ever any reason given to you why the Chinese government would refuse to do that? Did you ask the officials to explain why they would not provide consular access through virtual means prior to when they did?

[Dominic Barton]

Mr. Chair, there are a couple of things I'd say about that. One is that we are obviously very frustrated by not being able to get access, even virtually. As far as we know from the science, the virus doesn't go through televisions. How does that work? We pushed them on that.

Second, I just want to clarify one thing. No one was getting access to these national security cases. It wasn't just a Canada thing; everyone was having this problem. That's why we led a joint démarche in May on behalf of other countries, including the United States and Britain, that couldn't get access. This was related to national security cases.

I think our understanding of why it was the case is that the Chinese are completely paranoid about the virus. I was able to see a death penalty case in May. Again, it was not a national security case, so I could see the person virtually. I was actually able to interview the prison warden afterwards, and he asked me for questions. I asked, “What are your KPIs?” He said, “Zero, zero.” That's zero cases and zero risk of a case. I asked, “What happens if that doesn't happen?” He said, “I'll be fired.”

There was, I think, a craziness in terms of that restriction, but that was what was going on. We tried to demonstrate how in Canada we still allowed people to get access if they had people in detention, but it was very frustrating. I'm glad we eventually got there, and it's actually opened it up for others on the national security case side to be able to do it.

I hope we'll eventually be able to get to the physical interactions, because again, it's a strange thing. We fly to these places—or drive to them in the case of Beijing—and I know that the Michaels are literally on the other side of the wall. It's like this. It's sort of a TV screen in terms of how that works.

Does that answer...?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Yes, it does. Thank you. I think it provides some perspective on it that I didn't have.

Can you speak to us about the follow-up to Mr. Bergeron's question about areas outside of the Tibet Autonomous Region that contain Tibetan people, ethnic Tibetans who see themselves very much as Tibetans? Is any recognition given by the Chinese government, officially or otherwise, as to their status as Tibetans as well?

[Dominic Barton]

Mr. Chair, there is a significant population of Tibetans outside the Tibet Autonomous Region. There are nine autonomous prefectures, as they call them, where there are Tibetan people. Those are really in the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan. These are big provinces. Qinghai and Sichuan are places where there are a lot of Tibetans.

Again, there's a recognition of them, that they have these prefectures. They recognize that there's that group. A lot of people are outside the Tibet Autonomous Region, and we can get access to that. We regularly travel to those regions and will continue to do that.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Travel, yes, but my question was whether the Chinese government recognizes them as Tibetans or as part of the Tibetan people.

[Dominic Barton]

My understanding is that they do recognize them as Tibetans because they are in these Tibetan autonomous prefectures.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Do they regard them as Tibetan prefectures?

[Dominic Barton]

Yes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Very good. Thank you.

In August this committee had a visit from Dr. Lobsang Sangay, Sikyong-President, Central Tibetan Administration. He spoke about the efforts of his organization to advance what he called the “middle-way approach”, a reconciliation policy with China seeking genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people within the framework of the Chinese constitution, which I believe is the formula.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

Mr. Harris, I'm sorry, but you're over your time.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I will have to pursue that in my next round, sir.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Geoff Regan]

I appreciate that. I trust Ambassador Barton will keep that preamble to your question in mind for when you pose the question.

Now we'll go to the second round.

Mr. Williamson, you have five minutes.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ambassador, for joining us, again.

Perhaps I could start by getting your thoughts on today's Washington Post story. I'll just read their news blurb so we all get it: Huawei tested face-scanning cameras that could send police a "Uighur alert" to detect a member of the oppressed minority group.

This was in an internal report that vanished after the reporters asked about it.

What do you make of this story?

[Dominic Barton]

Mr. Chair, one of the concerns we do have is the cameras that are everywhere to look at people and where they are. By the way, I didn't see any more cameras in Lhasa than I see in Beijing, but they're everywhere. I think that's something that we do want to be concerned about because it's a way of doing surveillance. That's why I said, again, that while no one was following me when I walked around, I didn't think that there weren't people watching me from a camera point of view, and I was sort of being careful about that, so it's a concern.

I'm not familiar with that particular Huawei technology or case on that side.