Evidence of meeting #43 for Canada-China Relations in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was asia.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Professor Kuhonta, do you have any recommendations for us on how we can strengthen the Indo-Pacific strategy?
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University, As an Individual
Yes. I think the Indo-Pacific strategy is in the right direction in the sense of both the breadth and the depth at which it is articulated. What I would say to deepen some of the points of the strategy that can be useful, is that beyond the substantive elements of the strategy, the way in which it is actually implemented and executed, I think, really matters.
For example, the people-to-people investment part of the strategy is a very significant element. How deep that goes in terms of establishing the right institutions, the right kind of trust and the right kind of frameworks for building Canada's relations with Southeast Asia and ASEAN is extremely crucial.
For example, building on civil society partnerships, building on universities to build intellectual partnership engagements, building on think tanks and research institutes in the region.... These kinds of dynamics are very useful in creating the right infrastructure that in the long run can help to build the right kinds of networks. They can also indirectly build liberal values and liberal institutions without doing this in a top-down way. That would contrast, as discussed in the earlier panel, with, for example, the more forceful and robust way of the United States in terms of advancing liberal values.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
I appreciate that. It sounds like much of the answer, in a different way, though, is still focused on implementation.
Are there specific changes that you want to see in the Indo-Pacific strategy, maybe in relation to our relationship with respect to China? The floor is yours.
Professor, Department of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
I'm going to bring it back to fish, because all our fish comes from Asia. That's the bottom line. The top producers of farmed fish are Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, China—it's all coming from Asia. Our wild fish are nearly gone. They're all being caught on these distant-water fleets. Fish really matters if we want a sustainable seafood supply, but more than that, if we want just seafood. I think we have an opportunity to do something interesting here.
As I mentioned, when I heard about this Operation North Pacific Guard, it was the first monitoring operation I'd heard of where it was around illegal fishing, but then the Coast Guard and navy were running up to these Indonesian and Filipino migrant workers in really challenging conditions and wanting to really do something. There's a really innovative moment on this, I would argue.
Liberal
Bloc
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Montarville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you again to the witnesses for being with us at a late hour. I thank them for their insights.
Mr. Kuhonta, my question is about democracy in the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. In your chapter co‑written in 2020, “The Institutional Roots of Defective Democracy in the Philippines”, in Stateness and Democracy in East Asia, you explore the issue of democratization in the Philippines, the Southeast Asian country with the longest tradition of democratic elections. You say that these elections alone have not led to substantial improvements in the Philippines, which has a dismal economic record, both in terms of growth and fairness.
In a 2006 article in The Pacific Review, you noted that ASEAN is far from turning its back on illiberal policies in the name of democratic values. A recent publication by the Council on Foreign Relations describes the state of democracy in Southeast Asia as going from bad to worse.
In light of this, would you say that ASEAN is fertile ground for Chinese disinformation, which wants democracy to be a system that doesn't live up to its promises?
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University, As an Individual
Thank you very much for your question, Mr. Bergeron.
In the big picture, democracy in Southeast Asia, as well as in the organization of ASEAN, is not in a particularly robust position. That means that out of 11 countries in southeast Asia, only perhaps three to four can be considered as electoral democracies. A good three to four are very hard authoritarian regimes. Compared to, say, Latin America, which is another developing region, Southeast Asia, in terms of the state of democracy, is in a very mixed to weak or mediocre position.
Now, to your specific question of the strategy of Chinese disinformation and how it might land in the landscape of Southeast Asia given the problems of democracy in the region, it is true that democracy in Southeast Asia is relatively fragile, whether in terms of rule of law, electoral institutions or constitutional courts. In terms of the institutional structures, in many countries in Southeast Asia—even those like Indonesia, which is considered to be one of the more robust electoral democracies—across the board institutions are quite weak. That could mean that potential strategies of disinformation from outside the region or other possibilities to further undermine democracies or institutions, whether from China or any global actor, could find fertile ground. That is true.
The larger problem for Southeast Asia and ASEAN is democracy, in terms of ensuring the franchise is respected, in terms of ensuring that democracies actually maintain freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, etc.—those liberal rights. Even more deeply than that for these democracies, it's to strengthen institutions and to strengthen institutional structures of law and bureaucracy. That institutional infrastructure is central, in the long run, to establishing more robust and more long-term democracies, for both internal reasons and external reasons.
Thank you.
Bloc
Stéphane Bergeron Bloc Montarville, QC
One of the observations made about Canada's Indo‑Pacific strategy is that Canada seems to be turning its back on a long tradition of promoting democracy and protecting human rights. In fact, there's a passage in the strategy that even goes so far as to say that we must engage in dialogue with countries with which we may have disagreements in terms of political systems.
Do you think this was part of the strategy designed in response to the observation made by people at Global Affairs Canada that Southeast Asia, and the Asia‑Pacific in general, is not, throughout, fertile ground for democracy and ideas of protecting and respecting human rights?
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University, As an Individual
I don't know the motivations of specific passages in the Indo-Pacific strategy.
What I can say in terms of dealing with ASEAN states that are across a broad spectrum of regime types—that is democracy, hybrid regime and authoritarian regime—is that one strategy for dealing with this kind of landscape that is so diverse is to be relatively open and pragmatic when dealing with different types of government. It may be in the interest of actors outside of ASEAN and Southeast Asia, such as Canada or others, to keep an open mind about other governments that are not full democracies. Singapore, for example, is not by any means a liberal democracy, but it is a country where the institutions work very well, development has really performed, and the government, for the most part, has significant legitimacy.
Simply defining in or out countries that are or are not democracies may not serve Canada's interests in the best way. At the same time, I think it is important to be aware that liberal democratic rights are still extremely important in many countries in Southeast Asia deep down at the local level for civil society groups, villagers or urban citizens. It is important to be aware of those movements for greater political rights in countries where there is significant repression.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you very much. Thank you for this interesting discussion.
Mr. Kuhonta, I would like to follow up where Mr. Bergeron just left off.
It is a balance, isn't it, to support the building of democracy in countries that are perhaps not democracies, and how we do that with, as you said, a pragmatic approach?
You also spoke about people-to-people investment. You spoke about the importance of engaging CSOs and investing with universities. I know that we have a real fantastic ambassador with ASEAN, Ambassador Singmin, whom I've heard really wonderful things about.
What other pieces do you see? How does Canada do that? What recommendations do you have for us on how we can make sure that we are building those relationships and balancing the need to support and encourage democratic reform or democracy within the region with our trade relationships? I've often thought that Canada has a bit of a challenge and that we've gone too far towards prioritizing trade relationships at the expense of human rights and at the expense of democratic principles.
I'd love your continued thoughts on that, please.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, McGill University, As an Individual
Thank you very much.
It's a complex issue. Also, putting Canada in contrast to the United States is very useful in the way that the United States tends to promote liberal democratic rights in a very excessively muscular way that tends to turn off Southeast Asians—people outside the North American hemisphere. I think it's important to be aware of that as a contrast and where Canada can differentiate itself in tone—and tone really matters—and in approach and process. These things really matter if one knows the way that Southeast Asia works and the way that these bureaucrats, diplomats and normal citizens think. That's one thing I want to say at the outset.
More specifically, I think the promotion of liberal values, broadly speaking, liberal institutions, liberal norms and, in the deepest sense, human rights, is extremely important, and I think there's a strong demand within Southeast Asia for that. It can come in direct ways, as in the funding of civil society organizations that are at the forefront of liberal rights, but it can come also in very indirect ways.
I'll give a very clear example from McGill University's history, which is that CIDA, when CIDA was in existence, funded for decades the Indonesia project, which funded lecturers from Islamic Indonesian institutes in Indonesia to come to McGill and earn M.A.s and Ph.D.s—graduate degrees. The point of that was to train the lecturers from top departments at McGill, but in the process to indirectly also suffuse these lecturers with liberal education and liberal values.
These lecturers returned to Indonesia. In fact, they dominate the Indonesian Islamic institutes across Indonesia. I've travelled, through the Canadian embassy, and have given lectures in Java and in Banda Aceh to their deans and faculty members there. They have advanced in indirect ways, curricular ways, things that they learned at McGill.
That approach, which can be subsumed under people-to-people investment as one example, is a very concrete way in which Canada historically has invested effectively in Indonesian institutes linked to a university in Canada. The dividends, in terms of promoting certain values of liberalism, etc., broadly construed, have actually been significant.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you. I'm going to come back to you, if I could.
You spoke about the forced labour. I really appreciated as well that you noted that as much as this is a problem, it is also a problem that we have in Canada. We know that the recent report from United Nations experts has said that our foreign workers program is at a very high risk of modern slavery within the foreign workers program. I appreciated that.
I'd like to know about some of the concrete steps that we need to take to deal with this. We did have a bill come forward, Bill S-211. I think it was wholly insufficient to meet the need that we have. We don't have the ability within our ports to check whether products are being imported. We have not been able to seize any imported goods. We haven't done a good job of managing that.
How do we start? Whom do we emulate? Who's doing a better job on this that we can learn from?
Professor, Department of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Thanks.
Our forced labour policy doesn't have any accountability. We could reform it to have some accountability. I think there have been good organizations in Canada looking at how we could do due diligence. We could look to the EU, Germany and Norway. They're doing great jobs, as is France with its vigilance law. There's some very good modelling we can learn from about what's working—and mistakes as well. That's due diligence. Without due diligence, we won't monitor any of our supply chains. That's very problematic right now. Canada is behind the eight ball on that.
You also asked about border patrol. I don't understand why we haven't been able to seize anything. I know we have a policy, but it hasn't worked. However, I do know that, in the U.S., something like 7,000 products have been seized in the last couple of years. There's a real stark difference. I think we could learn why there are teeth in that policy and why we don't have any.
You asked about a third point.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
I rifled off questions at you, but now I don't even remember them. There you have it.
I think it's just an indication that there are things we can learn about forced labour from other countries, like the United States.
Professor, Department of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Yes, the United States and Europe....
I keep thinking about the Indo-Pacific strategy and its labour recruitment. What could we do to support countries like Indonesia or the Philippines in ensuring people aren't paying to get a job, whether it's on a fishing boat or in Canada? A lot of that labour is coming in as live-in caregiver or seafood.... I think we've been tying folks to employers. That's a big problem in our own system.
NDP
Heather McPherson NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Yes. It's in construction as well. There are multiple different areas where that's happened, absolutely.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
Thank you, Ms. McPherson.
I've had some notice that people have some scheduling conflicts. This is about the time I had planned to wrap things up. However, if anybody has a burning question they honestly want to ask....
I see you, Mr. Kurek. We'll have a question from you, and perhaps a question from Mr. Oliphant, if he's inclined. Then Mr. Bergeron and Ms. McPherson. That will wrap things up.
Mr. Kurek.
Conservative
Damien Kurek Conservative Battle River—Crowfoot, AB
Thanks very much.
I'll ask Mr. Farmer, Mr. Kuhonta and Dr. Marschke very generally about agriculture and energy. I'll keep it really short.
Could you comment on Canada's role? Are there significant strengths in ag, agribusiness and agri-manufacturing, as well as energy, rare earth minerals and the whole spectrum of what is possible there? I'll keep the politics out of it at this juncture.
I'm wondering if all of you could briefly answer on some of the opportunities that exist in the larger conversation related to the Indo-Pacific strategy. I'll try to keep it down, Mr. Chair, to 30 seconds per panellist. That would be great.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken Hardie
As always, if the panellists are very compelled to give us a more fulsome answer, they can always submit something in writing, which is very useful.
We'll start with Dr. Marschke.
Professor, Department of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
Farmed fish is obviously a huge part of ag. I think we can do a lot more on linking, whether it be with Vietnam, Indonesia or the Philippines. There are also opportunities in places like Cambodia, which is trying to develop its aquaculture sector. I think that's an area.
On critical minerals, I don't know if the committee has considered sand. Canada imports the second-largest amount of sand globally, and southeast Asia is where there is a lot of sand. That's another area.
Liberal