Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank our witnesses for their courageous advocacy and important testimony.
Ms. Lhamo spoke about the serious problem of the conflation of anti-CCP sentiment with anti-Asian racism and the way in which the government of China seeks to co-opt progressive discourse to cover for its own deeply racist and colonial policies.
Last week in question period, in response to legitimate questions raised about national security issues, we saw this kind of conflation between anti-CCP statements and anti-Asian racism advanced by the Prime Minister himself. We know that this false conflation is itself a serious threat to Asian Canadians. The idea that Asian Canadians are somehow an extension of the CCP is a deeply racist idea, and it also feeds into the Government of China's narrative, which seeks to threaten Asian Canadians to do its bidding.
I'd like to hear from both of the witnesses as to what their response was to the Prime Minister's comments last week, and what we can do, as politicians, to clearly establish the difference between criticizing the CCP and anti-Asian racism.