The short answer is that I don't know, and I would be misleading you if I was confident in the solidarity that we're getting.
I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. I would hope there's intense consultation among officials and, indeed, among ministers on this and that it's not just a bilateral thing. We need to be building regional and global solidarity among like-mindeds, and this is where particularly we can and should leapfrog geography. We should be looking to Europe, for instance, as core to those coalitions.
My sense of the last five or six years when Canada went through its terrible situation with the two Michaels, when Australia went through its economic coercion, when particular individual countries elsewhere have been targeted, is that we haven't, on balance, had enough solidarity. I think there's been broad talk of it. There's probably been interesting backroom conversations about how we can coordinate lobbying, coordinate sanctions and coordinate domestic policy settings or legislation, but it doesn't feel that there is enough of a grand coalition. I think that, frankly, all our countries are probably culpable in that regard.
This does go to the hostage diplomacy question, but it also goes to the economic coercion question. It's a very difficult question for someone like me to answer, someone who is an advocate of a pretty firm national security and democratic rights response to China's coercion. It is a question that was put to me and people like me by voices in the China lobby in Australia during our experience of economic coercion, which is to say, “Sure. Australian coal is now being shut out of Chinese ports, but don't worry. Others, including Canada, are picking up the market.”
In other words, your hope in solidarity is forlorn. That's not me criticizing Canadian economic or commercial policy, but it's certainly to say that we have to do better if we're going to demonstrate that democracies really do stick together.