Foreign Affairs Committee on May 27th, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

It's a huge briefing, and we certainly will leave it with each member, and they'll be able to go through it as well, but could you summarize and conclude, please?

[Daniel C. Préfontaine]

Let me conclude then with the issue of engagement. Based on the years of programming experience in China, there are five reasons we believe engagement with China on human rights issues works and should be continued. First, China is committed to transforming its legal-judicial system as part of its efforts to join the world community. They're motivated. Second, the Chinese change process balances learning from endogenous experiences--that is learning from within by themselves--with learning from the experience of others, which provides a host of entry points for engagement. Third, although the legal and human rights traditions of China and Canada are historically different, there are sufficient areas of shared interest to make for a productive rights dialogue based on mutual interest and learning. Fourth, we both possess the capacity to craft, manage, and sustain a cooperative relationship based on mutual respect. Fifth, the imperative for engagement between our two countries grows as the process of globalization accelerates.

A final word. We share a common goal. After 25 years of Canada working over there and being involved, it would be rather a loss of a big investment to just abandon it or to ignore it. We can't repress it, so we should engage.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Préfontaine.

We'll now go to our next guest, Mr. Frolic.

[Bernie Michael Frolic, Professor Emeritus, Political Science Department, York University]

My thanks to the committee for this invitation to appear before you today. I'm the last person standing in a long parade of witnesses you've had today, and most of the things probably have been said already. But I hope in my brief remarks I can raise a few other points.

My remarks are based on encounters with China that I've had over 40-plus years. I've been identified by many, rightly or wrongly, as the principal chronicler of the Canada–China bilateral relationship. I first visited China in 1965 and served in the Canadian embassy in Beijing in the 1970s. I've continued to visit and work in the PRC regularly since then.

In my experience, the contrast with China's past is truly remarkable. I'm not sure I can even express the significance of this. The economic developments are spectacular, the social changes are profound, and, yes, even the political changes are noteworthy. To be clear, however, today's China is an authoritarian society and political system, and the prospects for western-style democracy, in my lifetime if not yours, are slim. So in these remarks I want to address several issues concerning political change in China and our policy toward China. At the end I'll offer some recommendations for policy, for what they are worth.

First, our bilateral relationship has served us well, but it needs urgent adjustment in several areas, not just in human rights and democracy promotion. Aside from democracy and human rights, we need to re-think our long-term trade and investment strategy because we have problems there; make some hard decisions about continuing our development assistance funding, in what form and by whom; come to terms with the fundamental disconnect we have in consular matters--that's the Celil case; and tighten up our immigration procedures.

Second, the Chinese political system is changing, and it's changing incrementally if not dramatically. The party is more transparent, educated, professional, attuned to the outside world, and more democratic internally. This is based on my experience training 2,500 party officials in western management and other areas these past eight years in Toronto. There has also been progress in the development of state institutions and law. For example, the National People's Congress, formerly a moribund legislature, is now holding public hearings based on proposed legislation. It has acquired a larger role in the political system, and its work has become more transparent.

A decade ago I wrote that civil society in China was emerging, but was “state led”. Now we see budding grassroots civil society in the big city neighbourhoods, as property owners unite to use new-found laws against developers, against housing management officers, and corrupt local officials.

Of recent interest is something called strolling--like walking--in Shanghai. Thousands of residents recently took to the streets and silently walked about for hours in a successful protest of government policy. There are 75 million blogs today in China, and you cannot shut down all of them all the time. China now has 100 million religious observers, which is a significant religious revolution even if there are some limitations.

Is the glass half full or half empty? Those who see ongoing entrenched despotism, that is human rights abuses—Tibetans, Uighurs, etc.—opt for the empty glass. Those who recognize that it took us hundreds of years to attain democracy are somewhat more optimistic. For me, the glass is half full.

Third, the party is in control. The majority of Chinese citizens accept its leadership. Don't expect a Soviet-type collapse of the Communist Party. I lived in the Soviet Union in the 1980s when the Soviet party collapsed, so I have some sense of the differences here. Today's 73-million-member party is stronger than ever. Its legitimacy is secured by a big trade-off it has made with the citizens. Keep delivering the economic goods and we'll leave governance to you. Chinese public opinion polls confirm this support. The 200-million new middle class likes it. The mantra is stability, and the reminder is what happened to the Soviet Union in 1990. The party, yes, has its weaknesses, especially at the local level, in the rural areas where official corruption is substantial.

Fourth, hard diplomacy by other countries—linkage, sanctions, blockades, megaphone politics—has been ineffectual in changing China's human rights agenda.

In 1989, China did not budge after we condemned them and asked Beijing to apologize. Not for us or for any of the other countries that sanctioned them did they do this. The Americans, more aggressive than Canada on human rights, have strongly and repeatedly condemned China's record for years. However, in truth, we cannot document any lasting concrete changes resulting from that American policy. Confrontation has not produced discernible positive change. In my view, dialogue is the better option. It trumps isolation and confrontation every time.

Fifth, China's huge population, long history, isolation, and authoritarian political culture make it unlikely that China's political values, institutions, and practices can quickly change. For us, democracy and human rights are universal values. Our focus on the individual, the basis of our democracy, on his or her rights, ownership of property, protection by rule of law, representative institutions, and accountability of officials are the logical outcome of our history. That is what we celebrate. China needs a lot of catching up before it is ready to celebrate western values and develop the democratic institutions to sustain them. In the short term, we may have to live with an authoritarian global economic power that is moving vaguely in the direction of political pluralism, if not democracy.

I have some policy recommendations to suggest here.

First, re-establish the bilateral rights dialogue, but in a different format. Open up the process to provide broader participation by Canadian stakeholders. The process has been narrowly confined to a few bureaucrats and a few organizations at the upper levels of government. Find Chinese interlocutors who have a more direct stake in the democratization process when you do this. Learn from the Americans, who are about to resume their human rights dialogue in Beijing; I think they actually resumed it yesterday. Find out what they're doing. Why are they doing it again, and what are they doing?

Second, support the creation of a democracy foundation--which is something that came out of this committee or subcommittee last year--but with several caveats. I note the high cost, the danger of centralizing and bureaucratizing this enterprise, the long lead-in time before this foundation can be effective, the ambitious scale, and the substantial use of public funds. These are all serious concerns. What leading role can a latecomer like Canada play here? Isn't this a bit of hubris on our part? The National Endowment for Democracy, which is an American democracy foundation, was created 25 years ago. Realistically, what can we do that all the others, with budgets currently in the billions, haven't been doing for 20 or more years?

Third, organize, consolidate, and expand our human rights, rule of law, and governance projects currently carried out in China by CIDA, IDRC, DFAIT, etc. These are low-cost programs focused on human resource training and institutional development. Here are some examples of projects: working with the Central Party School to improve environmental management; working on the five-year program to develop China's legislative capacity at the national and provincial levels; providing legal training for judges; establishing legal aid clinics--we've heard about those--and exposing senior Chinese public servants to Canadian management experience.

Fourth, expand participation from the Canadian civil society sector and be more inclusive. That was one of the main recommendations of the report of July 2007 to this committee. Some suggestions: organize an annual series of two to three one-week cross-Canada leadership seminars with young Chinese leaders and their Canadian counterparts to expose them to Canadian life and values. The Draeger-Stiftung has done this for eastern Europe for the last 20 years.

Now that religious practice is becoming more acceptable in China, we should promote more active interchange between Chinese and Canadian counterparts. One promising area is in charity work. Taiwanese religious organizations have established a good cooperative relationship in this area.

Develop cooperation between Canadian and Chinese media. In our programs at York University we have worked with CCTV, Beijing TV, Chongqing television and newspapers, and the Chengdu media. They in turn have established links with Canadian media organizations.

One delicate area is the inclusion of advocacy groups that violently oppose the Chinese government. The challenge will be how to incorporate their activities within a framework that seeks positive engagement rather than confrontation.

Fifth, develop links in the ethnic-multicultural area. Given Canada's experience with its own ethnic minorities and our ongoing multicultural policies, why not encourage the exchange of Canadian and Chinese views on cultural autonomy? We have had a program of this type between our first nations and Taiwan aboriginals for several years. I floated this today--just before I came here--to the Chinese embassy. I mentioned Tibet, and they were not too supportive of this idea, but at least they listened to me.

Sixth, focus on democracy building first. First focus on democracy, then on human rights. Democracy provides the context--rule of law, institution building, and good governance practices--for the subsequent attainment of human rights. You can't have human rights if you don't have a functioning rule of law system.

Developing democracy and human rights is a holistic experience. Make the creation of a democracy infrastructure the primary goal, with human rights the beneficiary. And remember, there are no miracles to be found here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Frolic and Mr. Préfontaine. I mean it. I really want to thank you for your testimony, specifically for being so clear on the recommendations. It was not just testimony, but some conclusive remarks were made.

Thank you as well for your concluding summary, Mr. Préfontaine.

We're going to go to Mr. Patry and Mr. Chan. Maybe we'll take the two questions, and then we'll go to our guests.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Mr. Frolic and Mr. Préfontaine, I must say I read both of your presentations and they are both great. I will go right away to the question.

In your presentation, Mr. Frolic, there are six recommendations, but number four was about expanding participation from the Canadian civil society sector. In the first paragraph you wrote that the lack of transparency in the past is viewed as a weakness. I would like you to elaborate on this.

My second question is this. We know there is a major political change in China--there is no doubt about it. Even the witness just mentioned that there will not be an election at the higher level for a long time. But capitalism is there, and there is a little inclusion of some democracy, if we can say so.

What about human rights? At the end, I would like you to elaborate a bit on human rights. Which one comes first, human rights or democracy?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Chan.

[Raymond Chan, Liberal, Richmond, BC]

Thank you.

Once again, it's nice to see both of you again in this context.

When you answer my colleague's question, perhaps you can be a bit more specific, Mr. Préfontaine, by detailing how the legal system reform has implicated the livelihood of the general citizens in China. How has the average citizen benefited from the legal reform that we have helped them proceed to?

Also, Professor Frolic, you talk about the democratic reform, the change that is happening there. Can you be a bit more specific on what kinds of changes have happened and how you see that development in the near or mid-term future if they continue with that kind of change?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Chan and Mr. Patry.

We'll go to Mr. Frolic.

[Bernie Michael Frolic]

Thank you very much, Mr. Patry.

I referred to the lack of transparency in the past as a weakness. I was referring to the report, which, in a sense, talked about a wide range of things. In this case I believe we need to open up the system more. The question is, I'm not sure which report. I think I'm talking about the Burton report here.

I felt in that report, which I only had a chance to see just recently because it wasn't easily available, that people like me never knew anything about these human rights dialogues--and I've only been in the field for 40 years. Not that I necessarily had something that profound to say, but at least I felt that the circle of people who were involved was a little too narrow, and we needed to broaden the base.

There is always a risk. I know why they did it. They were afraid of bringing in advocacy groups that might disrupt the process. But I think this is a real challenge. How do you include and what do you exclude? We were excluded, I think. I'm not saying I should be included, but there should be a broader base for this.

On the subject of what comes first, I thought I made it fairly clear. I think you can't really move to deal with human rights until you have an effectively functioning political system, one where the political culture is already changing--that's not the case in China, as it's still an authoritarian political culture--where people begin to respect the rights of the individual, and that's not been the case in China.

The focus of politics, of law, is the individual's right to property and to defend his or her right to property--his or her own person and property in general--and to be protected by the rule of law. You need an infrastructure to get to that before we run around talking about giving this person more political rights. You can't enforce those rights without these kinds of values and institutions. That's what I meant.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Frolic.

Mr. Préfontaine.

[Daniel C. Préfontaine]

As it affects the individual citizen, you have to look at how the different organs of justice, as they're called in China, have been changing the way they do their jobs, as well as the form of professionalization that is taking place in the Supreme People's Court. Where 20 years ago, 10 years ago, very few people were legally trained, now almost all...not all, because there's grandfathering and grandmothering that has taken place in terms of the quality of the judges and prosecutors. When you see that you have 120,000 judges who are now all very close to being legally trained, or will be in the next five years under their plan, and you see some 140,000 prosecutors who will be in the same category of being legally trained, with law degrees, in other words, and when you see that there are 160,000 lawyers--whatever the comments were about lawyers--who are doing their jobs in terms of making sure that when you make laws, the laws will be respected and implemented, then you can see that evolution of professionalization. It makes the institutions respond.

So what we have been trying to do on behalf of Canada is indicate to them what other countries do, what the basics are that need to be taken into account, provide them with the information, and show them how we do it, what our value system is, what our ethical codes are. And that includes the work the Canadian Bar does with the legal profession, the work that the National Institute of Justice is doing with the judges, what we're doing with the prosecutors, and what parliamentarians are doing, as was mentioned, with the legal and justice committee of China on how to legislate and draft laws so that you can properly interpret them.

An example is the story I mentioned in the brief. It shows you today as compared to 1999. In 1999 there were 600 legal aid centres operating throughout China, handling about 60,000 cases a year, providing advice to about 800,000 people on both the criminal procedures law and the lawyers law. In 2006, the last count, they handled 318,514 cases and 3,193,801 persons. These are the Chinese statistics.

So legal aid, in and of itself, with the help of Canada--because we were the first ones in there to set up a national legal aid system--hits the individual citizen, hits the vulnerable groups, hits the women who are facing violence. There is a lot of work being done on violence against women, protection of children, and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Préfontaine.

We'll go to Madame Barbot.

You have seven minutes.

[Vivian Barbot, Bloc, Papineau, QC]

Thank you.

Professor Frolic, you mentioned dialogue and you quoted the Burton report. More specifically, you asked for a transparent process, and, at the same time, said that the Canadian government is not being transparent. You made it very clear that some groups should have been involved, but were not.

I would like to know what is happening on the Chinese side. How have the efforts at dialogue been received, and what influence does Canada really have to change things? I asked the previous guests the question too. I understand that it is being done in legal matters, but once laws are written and people are trained, we need one more step. We must be sure that people going through the justice system are treated in a way that we would call democratic, or more or less democratic. I understand the constraints in China, but I would like to hear about concrete results and to know how real Chinese people are reacting to them. I would also like to know exactly how Canada could change its approach, if it had to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Barbot.

Mr. Préfontaine, we have seven minutes for the question and the answer.

[Daniel C. Préfontaine]

I thought it was addressed to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Well, whoever. I think she wants both.

Sorry, I apologize.

[Daniel C. Préfontaine]

I think it's a democracy, so the legal side precedes it.

[Bernie Michael Frolic]

First I want to say a bit about the Burton report. I finally read the Burton report, after not seeing it for a long time and hearing all kinds of things about it, and actually first reading the transcript of your committee hearings. What's interesting is that the Burton report is a lot less critical and milder than were the comments made in the hearings by Burton.

When you read the Burton report, actually it makes a lot of sense. There are a lot of good things happening, but there are certain problems, and we have to deal with those problems. The problems are partly that we want to widen the participation base on both sides, focus discussion more, get clearer topics where we're not talking at each other but connecting to each other, perhaps find out whether DFAIT needs to be supplemented by some other organization as well, and on both sides get the ministries of foreign affairs out of it and so forth.

As I said, I came from a meeting of a couple of hours with the chargé d'affaires of the Chinese embassy, and I asked him about the human rights dialogue. I said “I'm going to testify about this soon. What's your view on this dialogue? Is it worthless? Do you want to continue it?” They were quite open and said, “We think this is a good thing. We learned a lot from Canada.” That's their view.

We can take that for what it's worth. This is an official talking, obviously, so other officials can hear. But basically they learned a lot from Canada. There are a numbers of areas where they profited by the Canadian experience. They think that if it is to resume again, there needs to be proper preparation here to define the topics more clearly. This was something that was useful for China, and they've had these dialogues with other countries; they're not useless to them. They have made a difference. That's their view. They didn't give me too many specific details.

From my point of view, I can't speak to the tangible results of this dialogue in China, since I wasn't a participant in it, but I can speak to what Raymond Chan said earlier, which is that there are tremendous changes that have taken place in a number of areas, whether it's opening up the capacity of China's parliament or whether it's opening up the party to be more transparent. In that case, we can talk to these people, we can actually talk to the top leaders of China on a fairly regular basis. We never could do that before.

Whether we can influence them so that they will do what we want them to do, that's another question. As the people in the embassy said today, “We don't want you to tell us what you want. We're not interested in you telling us what we should do in our country--that's our business--but we're willing to listen to you. And if you can help us to develop in certain areas, that's fine.”

The one point that really always strikes me is civil society. There's been tremendous opening up of civil society in China in different areas. The recent earthquake was an excellent example. You have people getting in their cars in Shanghai, driving 2,000 kilometres, and then using their precious cars that they don't let anybody ever get into because they're brand new, to chauffeur people back and forth to the earthquake sites. You have people donating huge sums of money to this. You have so many people going there, the blogs, the e-mails and everything; I get so much stuff from my Chinese students and everyone on this. This has been an extraordinary experience.

The media got opened up. It will shrink again. The regime is not going to allow the media to stay open like this for very long, but media openness, as somebody mentioned earlier, is a big change in China. It is more open. But it's certainly not like our media, although sometimes we have some problems with our media too. I get misquoted all the time in The Globe and Mail, but that's a whole other story.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Préfontaine.

[Daniel C. Préfontaine]

From the perspective of a political reflection of what a state is all about and what kind of constitutional framework or legal type of system it has, you then can begin to figure out how it's used. In using it, perhaps democratic principles will be reflected and perhaps they will not, because the legal system, the rule of law, can be as oppressive as it can be reflective and forgiving. I mean in the sense that you pay attention to what the law says, you practise what it says, and you're guided by the way the courts interpret it. In that sense, what comes first, a democratic form of government or a system of laws that will lead to more democratic forms of government? What we have is an international set of standards, and that's the door we all seem to be going through. Even in Canada we have problems sometimes with some of the international standards and norms. How do we implement them in a day-to-day practice?

I would suggest we work with the practitioners more and more. Practitioners are like us; they're people, and they're not all wanting to beat the other person down. I believe if you get people to see what is right, in terms of their situation, you will get some results that we're seeing now, in my view, in China and more respect for the accused person when he's arrested, less oppression on the part of the police. But you're going to have the usual exceptions. You're going to have crackdowns, because we have them, and we have them in different ways. I'm not equating us with China now in terms of what we do with religious groups or anything like that; that's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying sometimes your laws have to go a lot further than you want them to and what your constitutional restraints are. But you have your court to limit you, and that's where ours works, I say, perhaps better for us than for anybody else.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Préfontaine.

We'll go to the government side, to Mr. Khan and then Mr. Goldring.

Mr. Khan.

[Wajid Khan, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll ask a couple of very quick questions and give you all the time to answer them.

Mr. Préfontaine, in your years of work in China, could you tell us the most and least human rights progress you have seen? And is any progress you have witnessed related to any Canadian effort?

Mr. Frolic, acknowledging that Canada does not loom large in China, as some of the witnesses have said, in your view, what is the most effective way of engaging China on human rights, which would deliver progress? I'd also like, sir, your comment on how the rapid increase of the middle class in China, as it integrates into the global economy, will influence the human rights issues? Is it realistic to expect a single country to be able to effect a change in a country as powerful as China? Anybody can answer.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Those are three fairly simple, concise questions that I'm sure shouldn't take too long to answer.

We'll begin with Mr. Préfontaine, quickly.

[Daniel C. Préfontaine]

Well, as Canadians, we have been there with other countries--the U.S, Australia, Germany, and the U.K., to name a few. Strangely enough, we have been very active. Maybe it's because of the kind of relationship we've had with the Chinese over 25 years, and more that we've been invited to come and tell them how we do business and how we do things, and they're paying attention. You don't find out about it right away. You might find out about it two years or so later.

As a quick example, we brought a group of senior prosecutors over there for work in their anti-corruption group in the Supreme People's Procuratorate. They looked at our integrated enforcement model, how the RCMP works with the border agencies and other government departments and so on. I found out two years later, in an off-the-cuff conversation, that they had gone ahead and recommended it and that they'd adopted the form, but adjusted to their needs. That's not bad. So a little country like....

In Canada, we've been there. We were the first foreign organization--foreign for them--working in this area of justice reform, particularly in the area of implementing human rights standards. We've published books. In 1998 we published a compendium of human rights standards. We have volumes we've produced that now are being spread. This one has gone to about 220,000 prosecutors and judges and academics across China. So we are making a difference in that respect.

How do you measure it? That's a tough question. In our results-based management world, it's not as easy to have predictable results and always have indicators that match this and that in that context. What you do see, though, if you happen to go and visit, is that there is change taking place. You see in the newspapers things we have never seen before about the prosecutors and the judges throwing out cases. Wrongful conviction cases are now being paid attention to. Who would have thought five years ago that this would have been possible?