Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Two names come to mind: Dr. Bethune, and Dr. MacKay in Taiwan. Those names have carried a lot of weight in, I guess some would argue, one country.
You mentioned CIDA funding some of the organizations over there. One of the ones I referred to with our last guests who were here was a workers' group that was offering rights advice to farm workers. I walked through there, saw a poster, and said it looked like my friend...I won't name the individual, but it looked like his work. He had gone into China to assist in this program totally on his own hook.
There are a lot of people engaged in China who we don't even know about.
The dialogue is a tool. Looking at that, in my mind, we're in for an extremely long process. I do think Canada has a significant role to play because of the respect that's there. Sometimes it doesn't show itself, but it's still there. I mentioned before my belief that we should be investing in both CIDA and DFAIT and adding language skills.
The other thing that concerns me is long-term institutional memory. I notice your hair is the same colour as mine. We've got a lot of expertise and a lot of people who have invested a lot of time there. I'm concerned about how we capture and retain that and move it forward within our departments as well.