Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks very much to the committee for allowing me to sit in here for a few minutes today, especially as you're studying Taiwan.
We recently came back with the parliamentary friendship group that visited in spite of the push-back. The committee stayed tough and stayed strong. Right up until we got there, I wasn't sure we were going, but we got there and nobody backed down in spite of emails and threats and the rest of it that was going to create World War III.
You know, your colleagues and mine all stayed tough and had an absolutely wonderful visit. We were so impressed on their national day with the speech the president delivered about standing up against any kind of military force, about how they were not going to rely solely on their friends and neighbours, about how they have invested billions of Taiwanese dollars into the defence system and created an all-out defence mobilization agency to protect them, and about how they were not going to stand back and let anybody push them around.
I think Ukraine has clearly created a big fear of the reality of the monster they have next door to them. I would really like to encourage the committee to visit Taiwan because I think it would be very beneficial to everyone.
We visited a lot of the businesses there. Northland Power is wind and solar. It has a huge investment there and is bidding on multi-million-dollar projects for wind and solar, and it will probably will be successful.
The University of Waterloo is signing an MOU with Taiwan right now on issues of semiconductors and various other things. Taiwan has offered to share its knowledge with academics from Canada when it comes to semiconductors and other things. It very much believes in sharing knowledge. That was very impressive.
One thing that was also really very helpful—and you heard this from Professor Robertson on the issue of your friends—is that when things are tough, that's when you need your friends to stand by you. There was a steady stream of parliamentary friendship groups going to Taiwan. We left, and another one arrived. Every week there was another country showing up in Taiwan in order to send the message clearly to China that Taiwan has a huge number of friends.
However, we have to be very careful diplomatically to continue to.... I don't think we need to tiptoe as much as we do, but I think we have to use diplomacy. It's what Professor Robertson was indicating. Taiwan got where it is because it is very diplomatic. It is quiet, and it continues to advance everything that's going to be necessary to protect itself. It's very strong economically. It has huge budget surpluses that we could only dream about, but it's investing them in areas of protection and infrastructure.
I'd like to ask Mr. Robertson or Mr. Lam about the issue of the CPTPP. That is something that Taiwan very much should be part of, wants to be part of and has a campaign to be part of. Do you think there would be much push-back? I think everybody is tiptoeing around because they're afraid to do anything, even on our visit, that is going to trigger anything. Do you think that if the CPTPP turned around and invited Taiwan to be part of it—even though China knows it doesn't deserve to be there in any way, shape or form—it would trigger a very negative reaction for Taiwan?