Canada-China Relations Committee on Nov. 15th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

I call the meeting to order.

Good evening, one and all. Welcome to meeting number seven of the House of Commons Special Committee on the Canada–People’s Republic of China Relationship. Pursuant to the order of reference of May 16, 2022, the committee is meeting on its study of the Canada-People's Republic of China relations, with a focus on the Canada-Taiwan relations.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely by using the Zoom application.

At this point, we'll welcome some of our guests today.

Mr. Genuis, it's good to see you.

Ms. Sgro, it's good to have you here. I'm a little intimidated, because Judy was the first chair who handled a committee that I was on when I first got here in 2015. There you go.

Sameer, it's good to see you.

Taleeb Noormohamed is lurking there. Yes, there he is, at the bottom of the screen. It's good to have you on board.

Now I have a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike, and please mute it when you're not speaking.

For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of “floor”, “English” or “French”. Those in the room can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I would remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can, and we appreciate your patience and understanding in this regard.

Now, especially for the benefit of Mr. Bergeron, we want to make sure that everybody has had their tests. The audio was good when we checked it, but we've had examples in the recent past of things that checked out well at one part of the day, and then by the time we got to the committee, it wasn't so good. It's always going to be on an edge, but we'll see how we do.

With that, I'd like to welcome our witnesses for the first hour.

We have Dr. Tong Lam, associate professor at the University of Toronto, and Colin Robertson, senior advisor and fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. They are appearing as individuals.

Gentleman, welcome to the Canada-China committee.

Mr. Lam, you have five minutes for an opening statement.

[Dr. Tong Lam, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the special committee.

It's an honour for me to be here this evening.

What we call Taiwan today is a product of a long history. For centuries the island existed at the edge of successive dynastic empires until it was colonized by the Empire of Japan in the last decade of the 19th century.

After the end of World War II, when the Communists defeated the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, the Nationalist government retreated to Taiwan. In order to maintain its rule as an outsider, the Nationalists began a period of martial law for nearly four decades.

In the late 1980s, due to domestic and international pressures, Taiwan began a series of democratic reforms, and the first direct presidential election took place in 1996. Since then, Taiwan has experienced multiple changes of government and four democratic elections with a high level of public participation. This happens at every level of the government.

In other words, in spite of the four decades of martial law under the Nationalist government until 1987, the Nationalist government, which was once regarded as the foreign occupier, has remade itself and is now considered to be a legitimate Taiwanese political party by the public.

Taiwan's elections have been so lively that until recently presidential elections were a tourist attraction for many mainland Chinese, to the point that there had been a small industry of election tourism. Of course, Taiwan has been also a major destination for Chinese-speaking political activists in exile.

It is perhaps fair to say that the peace and economic prosperity in the past few decades have been grounded on the One China framework, or more precisely, the interpretation of the framework that has been generally agreed upon by the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, along with the international community, including Canada—even though the international community too has their own interpretations of the idea of One China.

In the past few decades, however, mainland China has become a rather different place. Among other things, it has become a new superpower that's integrated in the global economy. It's also important to point out that the Chinese government's foreign policy at least partially is driven by what they have come to call the “century of humiliation”, which refers to the period after the First Opium War, from the middle of the 19th century until the founding of the People's Republic of China under the Communist Party in 1949.

This was a period when the period's dynastic empires, and later the Chinese republic, were subjugated to, and invaded by, foreign powers. In this narrative, the separation of Taiwan from China is seen as a humiliation and a problem that needs to be corrected.

Whether we share this particular unspoken narrative or not, it is vital to recognize the powerful emotion behind China's current claims on Taiwan. Meanwhile, Taiwan too has become a very different place in the past few decades. Democratization has led many Taiwanese to reflect on their own past, including the experience of Japanese colonialism and the military rule under the Nationalists. For many Taiwanese, especially the younger generations, the accumulation of those experiences, however traumatic, has turned them into a different people.

Taiwan today has a vibrant civil society that cherishes progressive values. For instance, LGBTQ rights in Taiwan are often seen as the most progressive in Asia and, as in Canada, same-sex marriage has been legalized. Also, Taiwan embraces ethnic and linguistic diversity and has also began to address or pay attention to the welfare of the indigenous population with its own program of truth and reconciliation.

Similarly, the Taiwanese government and the public generally have a strong ecological awareness, since Taiwan's early democratic movement was linked to its elemental activism.

To make a long story short, the changing political and economic landscape on both sides of the Taiwan Strait in the past few decades has eroded the foundation of the fragile peace and security that we have all benefited from, as the two sides seem to be moving away from one another.

That doesn't mean that war is inevitable. Most people in Taiwan, regardless of the politics, would like to see the continuation of the status quo, and Canada could help the picture of the status quo by strengthening its ties with Taiwan, particularly at the civil society level.

To sum up, whether it is colonialism, empire, typhoons or earthquakes, or the public health crisis, the Taiwanese people are always aware of their own precarity. So far they have not just survived it but have also prospered, and I hope there will be space for them to continue to do so in the future.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Dr. Lam.

We'll now go to Mr. Robertson for five minutes or less.

[Colin Robertson, Senior Advisor and Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual]

Chair, thank you.

I made my first visit to Taiwan in the spring of 1988, six months after being posted as consul to the British Crown colony of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was China's entrepôt to the world and our best entree into the rest of Asia. It was also home to an expatriate population of Canadians that, after the Tiananmen Square massacre when Hong Kongers flocked to Canada, is now the largest in Asia.

I was also accredited to China. Every four months, I would travel north by rail to Guangzhou to attend to our consular cases while reporting on the economic developments in China. I watched the transformation of Shenzhen from bucolic rice paddies and water buffalo to a booming frontier town of bamboo scaffolding and raucous growth. Today Shenzhen is China's Silicon Valley and home to its tech champion, Huawei.

I had already visited Beijing, stoked in the coal smoke with its hutungs and bicycles. My visit to Taipei reminded me very much of Beijing. The people were ethnically the same—Han Chinese—but they had backed the wrong side in the civil war. The Republic of China's Kuomintang party and the People's Republic of China's Chinese Communist Party ruled in much the same autocratic fashion.

For the west, the iconic Asian leader of the time was Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Lee argued that the Asian way, or at the least the Chinese way, was a benevolent but autocratic government that accorded no priority to human rights. It seemed a fair assessment.

Fast forward to 2019, when I returned to Taiwan. Months earlier, I had visited Shanghai and Beijing, now modern and bustling cities. Taipei had kept pace, but there was one fundamental difference. As we drove into the city, we passed Taipei's “White House”, the home of President Madam Tsai Ing-wen. There was a demonstration. I asked what it was about. It was in support of freedom of the press. An oligarch with ties to China wanted to buy a local newspaper, something the public opposed. For them, it was part of the long-running PRC disinformation and cyber-campaign designed to disrupt Taiwanese democracy.

Taiwan has become a vibrant and lively democracy with peaceful transitions between parties, a free press, independent judiciary and a competent and arguably the most uncorrupt civil service in Asia. In its annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties, Freedom House gives Taiwan a score of 94 out 100. Canada scores 98, and the U.S. gets 83. China gets 9.

I had dinner with their digital affairs minister, Audrey Tang. Tang is transgender. Taiwan was one of the first Asian nations to recognize LGBTQ rights.

Tang told me that applied technology, notably semiconductors, was the means by which Taiwan leapt into the ranks of developed nations. She said that China is relentless in its campaign to destabilize and intimidate the Taiwanese through disinformation, cyberwarfare and intrusions into its airspace, but the Taiwanese people will defend their democracy. They rely on the U.S. and wish that we in the west were less cowed by China.

I'll conclude with an observation and three recommendations.

My observation is that Taiwan belies the Chinese Communist Party belief that Chinese and Asian people prefer and do best under autocracy. In that sense, Taiwan undermines the foundational belief and thus the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. For Xi Jinping, Taiwan is the heretic state. Xi is determined to reunify Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary. Vladimir Putin feels the same about Ukraine.

As to recommendations, my first is that now that the CCP has snuffed out the liberties guaranteed by the UN-sanctioned agreements to grow representative government in Hong Kong, Taiwan is the best place in the Indo-Pacific to monitor the mainland. Taiwan's think tanks and intelligence about China are without peer. With China a hotbed for pandemics, but inclined to cover up, Taiwan's proximity gives us early warning.

Second, we should do more to support Taiwan through trade and investment and people-to-people ties. Let's market Canadian schools and universities and promote Canada as the destination for tourism and immigration.

This committee should officially visit Taiwan. We need to resume ministerial visits based on shared interests like trade, innovation, health and regional security. The last minister to visit was then industry minister John Manley in 1998. We should also support Taiwan's legitimate aspirations to join institutions like the CPTPP, the World Health Organization and the Montreal-based ICAO.

Third, China is actively challenging our rules-based order and, as we know, covertly attempting to disrupt democratic governments. I applaud the committee's discussion of Chinese disinformation and cyber-intrusions, including intellectual property theft and attacks on critical infrastructure, but what about allegations of money laundering, secret police, co-opting officials and campaign funding for parliamentary candidates?

We must stay engaged with the People's Republic of China for reasons of geopolitics, climate change, pandemics and nuclear proliferation, as well as trade and our people-to-people ties, but we must re-examine our policy on Chinese state-owned enterprises. We need to add teeth—sanctions—to the declaration on arbitrary detention to deter further Chinese hostage taking.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Mr. Robertson.

We'll go to our first round of questioning.

For six minutes, we have Mr. Chong.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses, Dr. Lam and Mr. Robertson, for coming to appear in front of us today.

I'd like to ask some questions of Mr. Robertson.

You have experience in Washington. You have experience in the Canada-U.S. relationship. Many people believe that Beijing will invade Taiwan in the next three to four years. If that happens, what will Washington's response be and how will that impact Canada?

In other words, will Washington's response be kinetic or non-kinetic? Will it be in military or non-military blockades, or sanctions? What do you think Washington will do if Beijing invades Taiwan?

[Colin Robertson]

Sir, I think that there's certainly a great concern that it will happen. I think what you're going to see—and it's already started—is the effort to turn Taiwan into a porcupine, as they say, which is to provide it with enough capacity that it would be very expensive for the Chinese to invade.

I think there is a rethinking within Taiwan about some of the weaponry they need in order to ensure that porcupine capacity. Much of that capacity, of course, will come from the United States, but the Taiwanese have already begun things like construction of their new submarines, for example, and anti-ballistic-missile defence.

I think that will be what they will do, in the belief that the best deterrence.... In NATO, we feel the best deterrence to Russian aggression is strong defensive capacity that will force the Russians, in the case of NATO, to think twice before going into a NATO country. The same would apply to Taiwan.

If the worst should happen, there is considerable division, sir, as you probably know, within American thinking-group circles about how the United States will respond and its capacity to respond. Much, of course, would depend on what the Chinese did and whether they were taking out some of the American bases in Guam and Okinawa, for example. You can be sure the United States will have some form of response—kinetic, but I think cyber is increasingly going to enter into the equation.

You hope it doesn't get there, but I think the best approach now is to help Taiwan create sufficient deterrent power so that Chinese generals think twice and advise Xi Jinping that this is going to be extremely difficult and costly.

I think the American signals—and I'm quite confident that President Biden said this to Xi Jinping yesterday—are that if they were to proceed, there would be a response from the United States that would do great harm to China.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

What should Canada be doing to prepare for any eventualities?

[Colin Robertson]

Our first concern always, sir, is our citizens. We have a good team in Taiwan. A number of Canadians are there. There are those with links to Canada as a consequence of student ties and immigration. The first thing is to make plans for the worst case, which I think is something we should be doing.

At the same time, we should also be helping as best we can to make a contribution, if we are in a position to do so, to deter China from wanting to go into Taiwan. Of course, that means more frequent visits by our frigates, probably with Australia and the United States. My great fear is that the Chinese will decide to do something, just as they did with the two Michaels, to make an example of an ally of the United States.

With freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait, we've been sending our frigates through on a regular basis, sometimes with the United States and sometimes with our allied partners. I think that's important, so that the Chinese get the impression—and the impression we want to leave, which is correct—that it is not just the United States they're dealing with. It's other countries, like Canada, that have an interest in continuing the current situation in Taiwan.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

In addition to sending a frigate through the Taiwan Strait in concert with allies, in addition to ministerial visits, and in addition to tightening trade and investment ties, what other things should Canada be doing to deter Beijing's aggression against the island?

[Colin Robertson]

I think we're going to see an Indo-Pacific strategy in, I hope, the coming weeks; it's been promised for some time. I hope there is a component in there that includes a significant reinvestment in our deterrent capacity, particularly as it relates to our military. I do think that's what counts. It's what the Australians are doing. It's what some of our allies are doing. I think it's what we should be doing.

At the same time, of course, we're good on the diplomatic side, making those representations through our representation in Beijing and in the dealings that Minister Joly had yesterday, for example, with her Chinese counterparts.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Just very quickly, what can Canada and Canadian businesses be doing to harden themselves against a potential invasion by Beijing of Taiwan, in the event that this happens? What are the economic measures we should be putting in place to ensure that we're not completely sideswiped by a potential invasion?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Please give a brief answer, if you could, Mr. Robertson.

[Colin Robertson]

Sure. I'll be very brief.

It all comes down to cyber. I think just as our banks are hardening themselves, and our governments have appreciated intrusions, so should broader businesses as well that do any kind of business there—our farm agri-food industry, for example, and our energy industry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you.

Mr. Oliphant, you have six minutes or less.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank both Professor Lam and Mr. Robertson.

It's good to see you again, Mr. Robertson.

I want to follow up a little bit on Mr. Chong's questioning. I have two areas that I'd like to talk about. One has to do with security in the traditional sense of the word. I come at it a little differently from Mr. Chong in that it's less on the side of assuming that there will be an invasion and more on the side of how to protect the status quo. When I speak to people from Taiwan, they are generally concerned about maintaining the status quo, which allows them to have a free democracy, a vibrant business community and a cultural community that we have come to love.

As opposed to deterrence in the military sense, are there diplomatic engagements and defensive engagements as well that you could see protecting the status quo in the kind of gentle standoff that continues at this time?

I'll go to Mr. Robertson first.

[Colin Robertson]

Thank you, sir.

Yes, I'm a former diplomat, so I put the first emphasis on diplomacy, but as I was saying to Mr. Chong, you need hard power to back up the soft power approach that is traditionally our approach. That means engagement. I strongly believe that we should engage on issues that we can work on with the People's Republic of China. On climate, health concerns, nuclear proliferation and a number of areas, we can and should be working together. We have significant trade, which benefits Canadians.

I think the more engagement we have, the better, while at the same time passing the message that we aren't going to upset the current status quo with regard to the status of Taiwan, because of course the great fear of Xi Jinping is that we're going to recognize Taiwanese independence. I don't see that happening. I don't see the Americans doing that, even though there are some American members of Congress who would like to see that. I think the Taiwanese people, as you correctly point out, sir, are certainly not inclined to do that. They would like to keep the current status quo.

We would do so at the same time, in collaboration with our other allies. I think through working with Australia, working with like-minded Korea and Japan, and with partners in the CPTPP, again, it's engagement. There has to be, from my experience, another side within China. Yes, it's a one-party state, but certainly from my long experience with China, there are factions within China. Right now there is one faction that's in the ascendancy, as we saw at the National People's Congress, but you can be sure that behind the scenes, sir, there are others who would not necessarily agree with the current fairly aggressive approach.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

My approach on this would be to defuse and de-escalate while defending. We need to do all of that at the same time.

I want to talk a little bit about the cybersecurity aspect as well as the traditional security aspect and election interference. Before the 2020 presidential election, there were overt and aggressive signs that China was wanting to or willing to or actually engaging in interference in the Taiwan election. It didn't work. The president was re-elected and the status quo remained.

Are there some tools or techniques that Taiwan has developed to counter misinformation and election interference—the kinds of activities we're worried about in Canada as well—that we can learn from?

I'll go to Professor Lam first, and then Mr. Robertson.

[Dr. Tong Lam]

Thank you for that question.

I think earlier Mr. Robertson actually mentioned Minister Audrey Tang, the digital minister. I think one of the things they set up was a rapid response centre to any form of misinformation or disinformation. In other words, anything that comes out would be very quickly verified. I think that's something extremely useful and important for any liberal democracy. As we have seen in the past few years, one source of the confusion is that the general public does not necessarily know when you have a large amount of information, including a lot of disinformation and misinformation, that often becomes confusing to the point that people have difficulty aligning themselves with the policy of the government precisely because they somehow question those.

I think Taiwan definitely has systems in place. There's a lot that Canada could learn from those, for example.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Mr. Robertson, could we ask you to turn your camera off?

We are still having some bandwidth issues, and perhaps if you turn your camera off, the audio will be improved.

[Colin Robertson]

Okay.

Is that better?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Yes, it is. It sounds better. Thank you.

Go ahead.

[Colin Robertson]

Okay. Sure.

Yes, I agree with Professor Lam. I also sit on the defence advisory board, which reports to the deputy minister of National Defence and the chief of the defence staff. I recently participated in a project—this is not secret—looking at disinformation.

Just to answer the question, I learned an awful lot. There are two places from which I think we can learn a lot. The first is Taiwan. They encounter cyber-intrusions daily. Again, Minister Tang likes Canada and visits Canada. There is a lot we can learn from them.

The other group would be the Baltic nations—Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. I think they are the furthest ahead because, in the case of the Baltics, they are the subject of cyber-attacks from Russia. Of course, China, has been practising on Taiwan for some time.

To Mr. Oliphant's question, yes, there is an awful lot we can learn from this. I believe our intelligence agencies are in touch. If the parliamentary committee would visit, they would learn an awful lot from this. I think it would help inform parliamentarians, who, I believe, should be well informed on this aspect. You are ultimately the guarantor of our democracy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you.

We now to Mr. Bergeron for six minutes or less.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the witnesses for being with us here this evening and helping us with this part of our mission or mandate: the consideration of relations with Taiwan.

Indeed, in a speech Ms. Mélanie Joly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave recently at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, she warned that Canadian companies that do business with the People's Republic of China do so at their own risk. She also said that Canada would seek to deepen its economic ties with Taiwan.

Mr. Lam, what do you think a statement such as this means for Canadian businesses?