Thank you, Mr. Oliphant. In fact, I was getting to the part of my speech where I was congratulating the government on the adoption of the declaration against arbitrary detention in state-to-state relations in February of last year, and I was going to add that in fact now is the time to maybe put some teeth into that declaration by talking with allies to agree on common responses, including sanctions, if China uses such tactics again.
I agree, as I said in my remarks, that we have to engage with China. That being said, I'm not sure that China will want to engage with us. Messages coming, for instance, from the Chinese ambassador to Canada, Cong Peiwu, are discouraging. He keeps saying that we have to learn from our mistakes, but, assuming they want to play games and that Ambassador May is able to make progress, we have to define areas in which it's in our interest and also in the interest of China to work with us.
I mentioned environment and climate change. Canada has had long-standing co-operation with China. We helped to create the Chinese ministry of the environment through the development assistance provided by CIDA. We helped to create the dairy industry. We helped in many areas, and we were financing the functioning of the China Council until a few years ago.
On health, I don't know the situation now, but we used to have very good collaborations between Canadian scientists and Canadian doctors and their Chinese counterparts. Unfortunately the arrest of Meng Wanzhou derailed such co-operation.
This being said, I was quite encouraged to hear Minister Freeland in her speech last week in Washington, because in my view she understands very clearly the challenges we face with China, which is a country that has become more and more aggressive and assertive on the international scene and one that does not listen very well to criticism. China has also started to decouple its economy from the rest of the world, which means Canada has to work a lot more closely with allies in all kinds of political and commercial subjects to try to develop common approaches and positions with regard to China.