My observation is that Canada engages China too much with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and that's not a powerful agency in China. They speak English, so it's easy for our diplomats to contact through that ministry. But the senior-level Communists I've had some contact with—because I went to university in China and I know a lot of people in the higher levels of that party in Beijing—regard the Chinese foreign ministry as interpreters. They don't see them as being in the policy-making area.
I don't want to be too critical about things I'm not familiar with, but it seems to me that we could have handled the Huseyin Celil case differently if we'd been engaging the people who actually had authority over this case, rather than trying to work through a ministry that I don't think has the power to bring about effective change.
So I agree with you. I think we should be engaging Chinese at all levels, not just at the government level but at the people-to-people level. I think we also ought to be engaging the Chinese system.
When Canada functions in the United States, in Washington, we don't just engage at their Department of State. We engage their Congress; we engage the President; we engage all the elements of political power in the United States, because we decided a long time ago, under Mr. Gotlieb, that was the most effective way to function in Washington. We need to have a similar sort of approach to China, because China is a very important place to us, and we could be doing it better.