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

[Dr. Tong Lam]

Without being a trade expert, I think it seems increasingly common sense that trade and commerce have been weaponized. Of course, that's not just by China. It's quite common. However, China's being an economic superpower means that when they choose to weaponize trade, it is quite a powerful weapon. I think that's something any Canadian business that wants to invest in China might want to consider. I would not have advised them to do business, but I think the implications of those choices are pretty obvious.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

My next question is for both witnesses.

Don't you think that bringing Taiwan into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and signing a foreign investment promotion and protection agreement could be ways of making Ms. Joly's affirmation come true, i.e., that Canadian companies who do business with the People's Republic of China do so at their own risk and that we need to deepen our economic ties with Taiwan?

If ever we had to decide between having the People's Republic of China and Taiwan as a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, if we had to choose who gets to be a member first, or we had to exclude one or the other, how should we deal with the People's Republic of China and Taiwan in the context of the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Mr. Lam, go ahead.

[Dr. Tong Lam]

Thank you for the question.

In the kind of situation in which a specific industry could make choices, I think the choice is pretty obvious. This is one area we could think about. To be realistic, at this moment in time there are lots of areas where Taiwan simply cannot replace China. I think those are the challenging questions.

Again, if there are choices in a particular industry or a particular area, one of the things I think a lot of people have pointed out is that Canada should also definitely think about the critical supply chains, the resilience of the critical supply chains. Taiwan could obviously be a partner for that, but once again, only if they could provide that kind of industry in a particular area.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Lam.

Mr. Robertson, what do you think?

[Colin Robertson]

Thank you.

Under the current circumstances, China would not pass the test of joining the CPTPP when it comes to state-owned enterprises and transparency. It won't be a question; we won't have to choose. Taiwan, in my belief, and from what I've seen, would qualify. We wouldn't be put in that position of having to choose between one or the other, because you have to reach a certain standard. I think the Chinese recognize that as well, but the Taiwanese, under the current circumstances, would reach....

Again, to the extent possible, we want to avoid antagonizing China, but in this case they simply would not qualify without making radical changes, which I do not believe they are prepared to make.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you so much.

Actually, I have another question for you, Mr. Robertson.

In your July 2022 review of the book This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends: The Cyber Weapons Arms Race, you stated that Taiwan is one of the best prepared countries in terms of cybersecurity. You probably know that the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians published its report on cybersecurity a few months ago.

What are the lessons that Canada could learn from Taiwan's experience in this field?

[Colin Robertson]

Again, I think there's an awful lot we can learn.

I think our officials and our representative offices in Taiwan are exploring it. Again, I would recommend that members of Parliament, this committee, visit Taiwan and make that one of their stops. Certainly, my experience when I visited Taiwan was that they shared an awful lot, and I learned an awful lot.

I recently did the report with the defence advisory board. The Taiwanese were very forthcoming with the information and best practices that they were prepared to share. I know we have some good Canadian teams, groups, that are looking at cybersecurity, and they have learned from the Taiwanese example as well, because they've been subject to it.

Again, it's all a question of being under constant assault, as they have been for quite some time. In many ways the Chinese are the probably the best at it, even superior in some senses to the Russians. They seem to hire lots of very smart, young hackers, but the Chinese do this extremely professionally, as we have learned with intrusions, for example, into our grids and pipelines.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Mr. Robertson.

We'll now go to Ms. McPherson for six minutes or less.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for their testimony.

There have been some very interesting responses. Of course, I think all of us in this room are trying to determine how we can best support Taiwan and deal with the constant but increasing threat that we are seeing against Taiwan.

Obviously, there's the fact that Taiwan is a democracy. The work that they do on the sustainable development goals and to support the LGBTQ community is very important. They align with all of our values.

I want to ask a few questions about the Indo-Pacific strategy that we are hopeful to hear about. We did hear some rumours of what will be in that Indo-Pacific strategy, though, again, it's a long-awaited strategy that we have not yet fully seen. We did hear from the minister that Canada will oppose the escalation of military action against Taiwan and seek to deepen our economic ties with the self-governing island.

This is a bit of a tricky question, and I'm trying to ask it in a way that I can get the answer but not appear in any way to support what China is doing.

Is there a risk of Canada increasing its economic relationship with Taiwan as being seen as enraging to the Chinese government? Would there be that risk there in other ways that we can mitigate that, because I think it is very important that Canada does play that increased role?

Perhaps, Dr. Lam, I could start with you.

[Dr. Tong Lam]

I think the question is about how we approach this. I think there are symbolic acts that often end up simply provoking China, but then there are things that could be done with great substance at the lower level. I can think about economic ties. Definitely that's one possibility, but I think there's also collaboration on the issue of public health, issues about indigenous people and civil society in general.

I think it is important that whatever policy Canada, as a democracy, ends up pursuing in support of Taiwan has to have received broad public support. I think it's extremely important for democracy to make citizens understand that we're talking about a place with real people.

I know there's a lot of talk about Indo-Pacific strategies and semiconductor industries, and all these are important, but at the same time we shouldn't talk about Taiwan as if the place were an abstract. This is a real place with real people with social texture, a very vibrant film industry, popular culture. We think about the Korean K-wave; one could argue that there is a T-wave.

I think those things need to be elevated, and I don't think they will be provoking China at all by these low-level civil society ties.

[Colin Robertson]

The answer to your question is yes. We do have to be quite diplomatic and circumspect in how we do things because we do not want to see Canadians once again taken hostage.

The way around that, in my view, is with diplomacy. We now have a new ambassador in Beijing, which is good, because she will get access to levels that others could not get access to. It engages the Chinese ambassador here in Ottawa.

The principle of “no surprises” is one that applies to all diplomacy, and that's talking with the Chinese before we do things. Megaphone diplomacy I do think we should avoid. The Chinese practise it, but we do so at our peril, because they are bigger and they will take revenge bluntly. It comes, as we've seen, in our pork, our beef and in things like that.

Use all the links we've got, all the business ties we have—there are Canadian business linkages that go back decades—and keep informed through diplomacy. At the same time, we have to be forthright about the defence of our values, but in such a way that we don't sound preachy at the same time that we make our point.

Again, as much as possible, quiet diplomacy is the route forward. I've observed Prime Minister Mulroney and Prime Minister Chrétien, and I thought they managed the Chinese relationship pretty well. They were pretty clear about speaking to them around human rights, but they did so behind closed doors and the Chinese did not feel embarrassed.

It's certainly my experience that Chinese, for some of the reasons Dr. Lam pointed out—from the “hundred years of humiliation”, as they call it—are very sensitive, and face is hugely important. We need to be sensitive to that on our part as well, because ultimately we have big interests in China and we are much more useful to the rest of the world when we maintain that relationship with China.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you.

Dr. Lam, you spoke about the Taiwan culture and supporting that culture and expanding it. You talked about civil society and enlarging the roles or the partnerships with civil society.

One of the other aspects we heard about in this committee is that students from Taiwan have chosen to come to Canada in quite large numbers. Of course, that was stopped during COVID. Is that another way that we could be working to strengthen our ties with Taiwan to make sure those opportunities are available to students again?

[Dr. Tong Lam]

Absolutely. I think currently there is a lot of student traffic between Canada and Taiwan. I think those are ways in which to exercise Canada's soft power. Canada is also a brand name globally, especially in certain areas, and high education is one of the areas where we have a brand.

We attract a lot of students from Taiwan and there's a lot of exchange between these two countries at the level of high education, and also between scholars and so on. I think this is actually a very important point because we do not simply attract students from Taiwan. We attract students from all over the world, including China. China is one of the biggest sources of international students for Canadian universities.

In other words, Canada is actually in a great position to foster those kinds of social ties between not simply Canadians and Taiwanese but also between Chinese and Taiwanese. I think actually it's a great opportunity for us to mitigate any kind of potential tensions at the higher levels. I think, as Mr. Robertson said earlier, diplomacy and conversations are extremely important.

Sometimes the lower-level conversations are also very important, because when people realize that we're talking to “real people”, when a mainland Chinese student actually talks to a Taiwanese student, they realize they are actually similar and share a lot of things. I think that war then becomes less likely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Professor Lam.

Now we'll go to Mr. Kmiec for five minutes or less.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Professor Lam.

You said in your opener that Taiwan is host to a lot of democracy activists who leave mainland China to continue their activism. Can you perhaps explain who these people are? How does Taiwan protect them from, say, rendition back to the mainland and from persecution by the government in Beijing when they travel overseas, or are these people basically, then, unable to leave Taiwan while they continue their activism?

[Dr. Tong Lam]

As far as I know, the beginning of that really started in 1989 when some of the student leaders of the uprising in Tiananmen Square fled to Taiwan, and some continued to stay.

I think the most recent wave, obviously, was some of the activists from Hong Kong who fled to Taiwan, and they continue to live there. I think they have publications. I don't really follow them very closely, but I know of their existence.

I lost track on answering the question about the Taiwanese government's protection when they do international travel. As far as I know, some of the early generations of activists are definitely travelling around the world.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I'll just continue on that thread.

I want to better understand if it is a policy of the Government of Taiwan to basically be a welcoming place for dissidents from mainland China, whether that be Hong Kong or Beijing or any of the provinces.

[Dr. Tong Lam]

Yes, I would say that in general it has been welcoming.

I should add that for the past few decades, there was major youth activism in Taiwan, including the occupation of the legislatures a few years ago. A lot of this traffic is going back and forth in different directions. Some scholars have pointed out that some of the activism in Hong Kong was actually inspired by their Taiwanese counterparts. There is a lot of traffic among the young activists, and Taiwan, because of what's going on elsewhere, has become this hotbed for Chinese-speaking political activists.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Canada has a very anemic approach, I'd say, when it comes to helping Hong Kong activists who are trying to leave. Their preference is usually to go to the United Kingdom. Many of those who come here are worried about being able to stay here as permanent residents in the long term.

Would it also help the Government of Taiwan if Canada took a bigger approach to relieve some of that pressure and offer itself up as a secondary destination? People leaving from Hong Kong and mainland China could go to Taiwan, and then co-operation between the Canadian government and the Taiwanese government would ensure that those activists could then come here. They could continue their activism from Canada instead of from Taiwan so that it's not always a Beijing-Taiwan conflict of hosting all these dissidents; Canada could host them here as well.

In the long term, they would just add to our communities because they are typically very strong democracy activists. They would just add to our already long history of hosting people like this.

[Dr. Tong Lam]

I think probably it would be a good idea, but I want to point out that having a more relaxed policy in Canada doesn't automatically mean that those activists from Taiwan will end up in Canada. They have very different cultural, economic and social contexts. Those are the choices people make due to different circumstances.

You definitely have strong points about the choice between the U.K. and Canada because, for the moment, anyone who has an overseas British passport can just land in the U.K. They can't do the same thing in Canada, which sort of prevents us from being the destination for those people. However, most of them are not activists.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

You have enough time for a short question and a short answer.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

This will be for Mr. Robertson.

You spoke about more support for universities and colleges to do more in Taiwan. Can you just elaborate on that?

[Colin Robertson]

Sure.

I think that university presidents' going and doing, kind of, marketing with, perhaps, provincial ministers would be a good thing. Again, the people-to-people ties.... That is our great asset in the world. One of our great assets is that our universities and higher education are highly regarded.

We have the capacity in Canada. Taiwan is a good place to attract people to come to Canada. The more of these ties we have throughout Asia, which includes China.... Let them see how democracy works. They go back and they say, “This stuff actually does work in places like Canada.”

We are a pluralistic society. There is a reason the Aga Khan set up his Global Centre for Pluralism in Canada. It works here. We're not perfect—we have warts—but we're better than the rest of the world. That would also be my evaluation from my diplomatic career.