Foreign Affairs Committee on May 7th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Schellenberger.

We're going to move over to Mr. Dewar for five minutes, please.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Just to follow up on that notion, I want to go to Mr. Lung and Professor Young in Hong Kong. Are the current proposals being put forward by the Hong Kong authorities for the 2017 election of the chief executive compliant with Hong Kong's basic law and the spirit of the 1984 declaration?

[Prof. Simon Young]

The joint declaration doesn't say very much. It says elections or consultation.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Right.

[Prof. Simon Young]

So is it compliant on the letter? Yes. As for the spirit of it, we can go around in circles talking about that. But in terms of the basic law, again I think this is something you have to give China some credit for. They are trying to work with the language of article 45 and the previous decisions of the standing committee. If you look at the language there, it's generally consistent.

One thing I pointed out that is a bit of an anomaly is the two to three candidates. That, of course, is not in the basic law. As I've written, that is driven entirely by expediency. One of my most recent proposals to the pan-democrats is that they should counterpropose increasing that, maybe up to five, because there's a chance they may be able to get past the 50% threshold, but they're not going to be in the top three. They should increase the number of positions.

The two to three candidates is just a matter of expediency, but regarding the majority rule, there is language in article 45, and I can understand why they said that. Of course, the reference to the election committee goes back to one of their earlier decisions. So based on the text, there is consistency.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Lung, what do you think of that proposal?

[Alan Ka-lun Lung]

If a proposal, say, barred the Conservative Party of Canada from being nominated, the Conservative party would certainly oppose it.

On complying with the basic law, certainly that compliance...there is a major thing about the system. This is a constitutional issue and I will defer to the professor. It seems to be that even when there's a basic law, NPC has the power to enact new things such as the 8.31 decision and it becomes part of the basic law.

After having said that, even with the 8.31 decision of August 31, the proposal put forward by the government hasn't used up all of the room. It's still a very restrictive proposal. Why? We can only interpret that as a political decision. Even under the 8.31 decision, which is now part of the basic law, political decisions can give more room. A political decision must be negotiated, but no one is putting those negotiations forward—and this is a very graphic way of saying it—because of the experience of the Democratic Party who took the initiative to negotiate, I believe, in 19—

[A voice]

It was 2010.

[Alan Ka-lun Lung]

—yes, it was 2010. They are saying, “You want to me jump out the window”, because if they are perceived by their supporters as having compromised they will not be re-elected. If they ask four people to jump out the window, they won't. They want at least 12 people to jump out together. To get 12 people to jump out together it must be a more lenient, fairer proposal that is closer to what we understand as universal suffrage. Even under the 8.31 decision, which is now part of the basic law—which is why China is saying they will not change it—there is room for improvement.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're going to finish with Mr. Wilks for five minutes, please.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have one question for Mr. Lung and Mr. Young.

About two weeks ago in a speech to the Legislative Council on April 22, 2015, outlining and advocating for proposals, Carrie Lam, chief secretary for administration of the Hong Kong SAR government, stated that “It is neither practical nor realistic to expect that one package of proposals can meet the ideals cherished by different people.” She continued by noting that the proposals “are attempts to find the greatest common ground and strike the right balance amongst numerous divergent requests and perspectives.”

However, what caught my attention was that in her concluding remarks Ms. Lamb also commented on the need for legislators to weigh very carefully whether the passage of these proposals, or a standstill in constitutional development, would be a more favourable outcome for the overall and long-term interests of Hong Kong.

I wonder if you could comment on her closing remarks with regard to a standstill in constitutional development. Either one of you can start.

[Prof. Simon Young]

One of the things the government is pointing out is the irony that the pan-democrats are going to veto democracy. That's one of their driving points because, if you're a pragmatic person, I think you will appreciate that having some development is better than the existing system. But the pan-democrats are principled, and their principle is that they invoke the international standards reflected in the ICCPR, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 25 of that covenant says that everyone has the right to vote and to stand for elections without unreasonable restrictions. Their starting point is that each of these three restrictions in the 8.31 decision are unreasonable restrictions; hence, they all need to be removed.

So that's their principle, but they don't care what the policy impact or the practical impact might be of the change under the government's proposal. That's why we're stuck. Then, as Alan has just mentioned, they feel that if they went back on their principled position, then they would lose votes.

I just read on my iPhone that Martin Lee today came out and said that the pan-democrats should engage in negotiations with the central government. Maybe something that would come out of that would be that some of those restrictions might be amended and not the complete withdrawal. That's basically what I've been arguing as well: focus on things that are doable, and maybe we can increase the number. That negotiation hasn't happened, and that doesn't look like how it's going to happen. It's unclear how it's going to happen.

[Alan Ka-lun Lung]

Talking about principle, certainly I would support the pan-democrats rejecting the current proposal for governance reasons, for very practical reasons, because if you were restricted, the competent people simply would not get in and Hong Kong would never get out of these governance issues of putting the right people in government so that Hong Kong would work. In my mind, it's as simple as that. We want the right people, a system that can choose the right people to run Hong Kong. Behind this so-called principle, there's a practical, pragmatic consideration too on whether there's room for negotiation.

Subtle things are happening, despite what Professor Young said. Subtle changes have been made on both the government side and the Democratic Party side. They are now saying in very subtle terms—and only people like us will notice, because we read the papers every day—that instead of rejecting the 8.31 decision totally, the Democratic Party is now saying that it needs to be changed.

In today's newspaper, the Hong Kong Economic Journal, this is really a summary of what many people have said. Many people are ballooning the ideas that it may not be rejected. It may be passed by four votes. There may be more of a compromise offer by Beijing.

So those are the subtle changes that are happening, but nobody is negotiating yet, as far as I know.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wilks.

To our witnesses, we want to thank you, Ms. Wright, for joining us from Cambridge today; and we want to thank Mr. Lung and Mr. Young from Hong Kong for staying up into the middle of the night so you could participate with us. Thank you.

And to Mr. Young, I am a graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University as well, so it's good to see a fellow graduate here tonight.

And in Ottawa, Mr. Tiberghien, thank you very much for your participation today.

I'm going to suspend for 30 seconds. We'll let the people here by video conference go, and I will come back in camera just to go over a very quick motion.

Thank you very much.

The meeting is suspended for 30 seconds, so we can go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]