Thank you, Professor Leung.
As the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, together with our subcommittee on human rights, the Government of Canada and all parties of Canada are concerned about the policy tools that Canada uses in order to influence countries around the world, and in this case to influence China in order to help promote human rights in China. One of those policy tools that we use is the Canada–China Bilateral Human Rights Dialogue. It's not just a generic case of us saying we're going to dialogue with them. It is a policy tool that we use that has come under some criticism.
Our Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, for example, received a lot of criticism on this policy tool, the Canada–China Bilateral Human Rights Dialogue, to the extent that in 2005 our Department of Foreign Affairs asked Dr. Charles Burton to produce a report evaluating that tool. In his report, I think Dr. Burton was fairly clear, in that he said China has improved on some human rights. There has been a progression in human rights, in freedom of the press, freedom of religion, some of those freedoms.
But when it comes to this policy tool, where we sit down specifically on certain issues—they may be consular services or specific individual human rights concerns—Dr. Burton came to the conclusion that there were not a lot of verifiable, observable results. So in this policy tool of the bilateral dialogue, there is a concern that we are not seeing enough results in specific cases.
My question is not so much generically how human rights have advanced in China, but how Canada can better address specific cases. Are you aware of that policy tool, the Canada–China Bilateral Human Rights Dialogue? And how can we better influence China toward the promotion of human rights?