Of course that's one of the great dilemmas we struggle with. People may be aware that four years ago or so I chaired a task force on integrating human rights in Canada's trade policy in Asia. That was published by the Asia Pacific Foundation. In it, we took the position—and I have taken it many times since—that the integration of human rights and trade policy is not only doable, but necessary. When we talk about human rights, it's not simply about civil and political rights. It also involves economic rights, rights in property, rights in ideas, and so on.
Part of the issue is really to have an expansive perspective on human rights and to encourage the Chinese not to think of human rights as a threat or a call for political reform, but rather as a recognition of internationally accepted standards for treating the citizens of a country.
I hasten to add that China is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Many of the obligations raised by human rights groups are not, as the ambassador tried to suggest a week or so ago, about transplanting Canadian rules into China. They are about asking China to honour the commitments it has already made to international law standards.
Part of the way to do that is to try to de-escalate concern that human rights are a ruse for challenging party rule. Party rule is going to stay there, and there's not much we can do about it. At the same time, we can articulate ways of linking trade positions on things like transparency, subsidies, and non-discrimination to issues of labour rights, environment, and so on, which can make a meaningful difference. It's really a question of picking the issues, finding opportunities for overlap between trade priorities and human rights priorities, and de-escalating the sensitivity of the terminology.
The last thing I would say is that the Chinese government did not lift 800 million people out of poverty. The Chinese people lifted themselves out of poverty as soon as the government got out of the way.