I think certainly it's important that we should be speaking out on this issue. I noted the extraordinary letter that the ambassador of China here in Canada wrote with regard to these hearings, warning us that this could cause a disturbance to China-Canada relations. I think the reason that the Government of China has made such an unprecedented attempt to interfere in a parliamentary committee process is that they are embarrassed when someone of enormous international integrity and reputation, such as Martin Lee, tells us things that are absolutely the truth. I read his testimony. Every word rings absolutely true with me. I think he's a very credible witness.
I think from the Chinese point of view, they prefer that representations be made individually. They would prefer that the Canadian embassy goes to the Chinese foreign ministry on one day and the Swedes show up the next day, and so on. But based on my past experience in the embassy, when we were able to get multilateral action with several countries jointly addressing the Chinese government, that was much more effective in receiving a response than country by country by country.
Certainly, Nathan Law here has mentioned that a number of countries endorsed the Sino-British joint declaration, which was what China and the British had hoped for, to get various countries to make a statement that they agreed with this process. I think our natural focus would be that the other countries that endorsed the Sino-British declaration would set up some kind of plurilateral mechanism where we could be hearing collectively from civil society and other actors in Hong Kong about the specifics of allegations that this agreement is not being maintained according to the international law, and we could therefore make effective representations to the Government of China. These representations would be made publicly so that the Chinese government would realize that what they are doing is causing the prestige of that government to be damaged because of this matter.
If we do nothing and take the attitude that China is a very large country, Hong Kong is a small place, and our interest is in keeping the Chinese Communist regime happy so that it won't interfere with our trade, that would be exactly what the Chinese government would hope would happen, that we would simply sacrifice Hong Kong to the greater good to Canada of other aspects in the relationship with China.
I would argue that this sort of irresponsible non-response by us would have the opposite effect, because we would lose respect from the Government of China. We could expect them to be pushing the envelope more in areas of concern to us, such as the consular case of Kevin Garratt, cyber-espionage in Canada, and unfair trade arrangements that do concern us now.