Canada-China Relations Committee on May 6th, 2024

[Maya Wang]

I have to say that I don't think I have studied it in detail.

In general, the U.K. approach to China, like that of many other governments, has not been totally consistent or satisfactory, especially with regard to its special obligations to Hong Kong. It has made statements condemning, for example, the imposition of the security legislation—the second one, article 23—but it has not imposed consequences.

In talking about concrete steps, we are asking for targeted sanctions on Hong Kong Chinese officials who were responsible for this security legislation.

Hong Kong officials, unlike Chinese officials, do travel abroad and have families abroad. These kinds of sanctions would send the right message to the Chinese government that repression has a cost.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

I must have been mistaken. You were quoted as saying that “the U.K. [needed]...a more ambitious plan to reduce overall economic dependency”. That's what I got from your analysis of the U.K. foreign minister's speech last year.

We're talking about concrete actions. Perhaps you can be more detailed about what you meant or what you mean, or about what lessons we can take from the U.K., with particular focus on reducing that economic dependency.

[Maya Wang]

I'm sorry. We actually ask governments to do many things.

I think there is a difficulty among many governments when they are at the same time dependent on the Chinese government for their critical supply chains. That has led to many of them being essentially unable to take concrete and serious actions on human rights.

For us, these issues are connected, and a move towards de-risking either critical supply chains or de-risking more broadly, is importantly linked to the promotion of human rights.

There are going to be questions or difficulties with regard to ensuring that economic and trade relations continue, and they continue to be important for bilateral relations. However, I think we cannot promote human rights without also looking at the impact. Trade and economy must be built on a foundation of healthy human rights relations.

This is where, I think, that recommendation comes from. We cannot divorce these issues completely.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Are there specific elements that you can point to in terms of what could work in the U.K. and what we would emulate here?

[Maya Wang]

I think some of those recommendations are already taking place.

For example, I think the German government has looked at how their economy is dependent on the Chinese government, basically. The Chinese government controls access to the country. I think there have been some efforts that seek to address that. I would say that it is important to have some kind of review on how the Chinese government has been using these kinds of economic leverages to make sure governments do not speak on human rights issues, either in Canada or globally.

Going beyond that, many different kinds of implications would need to be carefully studied to balance the intention to promote human rights and protect peoples' livelihoods. I think that is needed in the first place to make sure your foreign policy is essentially decided by people in Canada and not by the Chinese government.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Ms. Wang.

We will now go to Ms. Yip for five minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Tethong, you highlighted the fact that China does not engage with other democracies. That makes it very challenging for nations like Canada to have a meaningful impact. How can the UN and other like-minded democracies work with China to engage in a dialogue? Is it even possible?

[Lhadon Tethong]

I mean, they do engage. I think the key is to set up terms of engagement on the question of human rights.

I think the bilateral human rights dialogues have now shown themselves to be mostly powerless and ineffective. One thing governments and nations can do is tell the Chinese that they're not going to engage in a private backroom discussion on human rights, that the human rights discussions need to be more robust, perhaps, and involve other governments.

I was actually thinking of this in terms of what Canada could do right now. One thing we've talked about a lot is that the PRC government wants you to address all our issues separately, as if they're separate and distinct, to keep us all in our various silos. Tibetans might be a religious freedom issue or a separatist issue for them. There's the question of terrorism and all this other nonsense for the Uyghurs. I feel that addressing all of our issues together in some way, creating some body or group to do that more, signals to them that you're in it for the long term. You want to talk about the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians and Hong Kongers. In recent times especially, they've tried to enforce a silence over our communities through transnational oppression and by the shutting of our regions or clamping down on our nations and territories.

In terms of addressing our issues together and seeing where the themes and commonalities and all of that are, it sounds like it's not that much, but it is a way to seek solutions and to discuss our issues together and look for solutions together. Certainly as movements, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hong Kongers and Chinese rights activists have been working together for some years now and finding a lot of common ground in a lot of our wording, with strength in our solidarity.

I think there's nothing the PRC government would like you to do less than get together and talk about our issues together and look for ways to address them as one so that they're not broken up and treated as an issue here and an issue there. These issues are core to the treatment of all our children, for example, in these residential boarding schools. They also exist in East Turkestan, or what China calls Xinjiang. They're also there for southern Mongolia, or what China calls Inner Mongolia.

Right there is one area that the Canadian government could look at as a whole. When you start to see that whole picture, then you see that it's not an accident. It's not an unintended consequence that all our children and our future generations are in these genocidal school systems. There's power there.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

When you first answered the question, you mentioned something about backroom or behind-the-scenes discussions. Do you feel that diplomatic efforts behind the scenes could make a similar impact with respect to trying to improve the dialogue?

[Lhadon Tethong]

I think the discussions on human rights or on our issues just need to happen in more public ways now, because most of the discussion has been in private.

Of course, there are always measures and there's strength at certain moments in negotiating behind the scenes. I don't know. I feel as though at this point, dealing with Xi Jinping and looking at how far he has gone and taken China off a cliff, we're in desperate times, and we need more intense measures and more public measures.

I see a shift, and it's great, but I don't feel as though it's enough. There's still this idea that we'll be dealing with Xi Jinping and the Communist Party forever, and I think that's a flawed approach. I think our governments need to think about the future of China as being Chinese people and rights defenders and whoever comes next.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Ms. Tethong.

We'll now got to Mr. Bergeron for two and a half minutes.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to ask the witnesses to temporarily disregard everything I said about the acts of violence being perpetrated against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Kazakhs, Turkmen and Falun Gong practitioners in the People's Republic of China, or PRC.

I'm also going to ask the witnesses to disregard what I said about Canada's Indo-Pacific Strategy in relation to forced labour and compliance with human rights. The government has indicated that it plans to restore and normalize, to use its words, relations with the PRC.

To that end, Canada sent a parliamentary mission to the PRC, as well as the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and the deputy minister of foreign affairs. They were tasked specifically with normalizing relations with the PRC.

Do you think that is consistent with what we talked about during the first round?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Who would you like to have answer, Mr. Bergeron?

I'll choose. We'll go with Ms. Wang.

[Maya Wang]

Even if the situation with human rights abuses ebbs and flows—sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets really worse—given the Chinese government's political system, a Leninist system of top-down, centralized control, I'm not sure, fundamentally, whether any country can have a "normalized" relationship, a stabilized relationship with China without essentially falling into the Chinese government's trap of language. Essentially having a normalized or stabilized relationship with China is often code for playing by the Chinese government's rules.

We don't want to see that, because international human rights laws are international norms, which the Chinese government has actually also signed on to. The Chinese government is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These are the rights that the Chinese government and the Chinese people are promised in their constitution.

We hope that you remember where the guiding principles that encompass those relationships are in your relationship with China.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Ms. Wang.

That's your time, Mr. Bergeron.

Ms. McPherson, you have two and a half minutes.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much.

We've heard from other human rights folks who have come and talked to this committee and to other committees. I used to sit on the international human rights subcommittee and on the foreign affairs committee. We've heard from many advocates, many experts, about how Canada needs to have a comprehensive human rights strategy.

I'd like to start with you, Mr. Mehdi, because I didn't get to you in the last round.

Can you talk to me about the importance of this and whether you think this is something that Canada needs to undertake?

[Feroz Mehdi]

Thank you very much.

I do, absolutely.

One of the roles of this human rights committee could be to hold all the governments accountable, at least in the international fora.

One important international forum, as I mentioned in my presentation, is on addressing the misuse of the anti-terror laws and the Financial Action Task Force, the institution that is at this moment doing the mutual evaluation review. I think Canada should show all these reports—which I have referenced in my presentation—from Amnesty International and from the Global Non-Profit Organization Coalition on the FATF.

I think these are the very important issues that India will have to answer for in the international forum.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Ms. Wang.

[Maya Wang]

I think you need a strategy. I think you need people to staff it. You need funding for it. Otherwise, they're just empty words, so I'd like to see that kind of comprehensiveness from Canada.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Yes, and frankly, I think we've seen that with our sanctions regime, which I'll ask you about in the next round, if I get a chance. Without enforcement, without funding and without staff for it, it becomes a PR process instead of a meaningful strategy.

Go ahead, Ms. Tethong.

[Lhadon Tethong]

Yes, I think it's key for continuity from government to government but also just in terms of infusing every discussion. When I think of all the different ways that governments engage with China on national security issues—military security, regional issues, trade and economics—human rights need to be throughout that engagement. The only way you do that well is if you have a clear, cohesive idea of how and when to raise these issues and link them.

Really, I agree with Maya that you can't do it without a good, well-staffed department to follow through on it.

I think the more human rights get chopped up and put, say, country by country or place by place, the more it just doesn't have teeth, and I think leaders like Xi Jinping know that.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Well, and as you pointed out—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

We're out of time, Ms. McPherson.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

I'm really pushing the limit today. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

I know. That was a nice try.

It's now Mr. Chong's turn for five minutes.