Foreign Affairs Committee on April 24th, 2018

[Dr. Charles Burton]

I really am not too confident that we can come to terms with North Korea through negotiations, as they have a consistent record of not fulfilling commitments that they make in the course of these negotiations, typically with regard to denuclearization in exchange for economic aid of different types.

That being said, when you have a president like Mr. Trump, it's always a surprise, and perhaps he would surprise us in a positive way and resolve an issue that has not been resolved by Presidents Clinton, Bush, or Obama. An issue that presents an increasing threat to us, particularly if North Korea is able to convincingly demonstrate the ability to hit a U.S. city with a nuclear device, is that it would cause South Korea and Japan to question whether the U.S. would genuinely fulfill its commitment to defend them in case of attack.

In terms of development, I think ultimately the only route to go with regard to resolving the crisis on the Korean peninsula is reunification, but reunification of North and South Korea would be a lot more challenging than that of East and West Germany, because East Germany was smaller in terms of population compared to West Germany, and the economies were not as diverse. After so many years, there doesn't seem to be a great interest in South Korea to make the enormous economic sacrifice necessary to develop that area.

But, you know, there are the areas that Canada is strong in: mining, agriculture, and food security. There's development of basic infrastructure like port facilities. North Korea is available for us, the Chinese, and all nations of the world to get in there and create economic activity to the benefit of all.

[Michael Levitt, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Potter, I want to talk a little bit about human rights in China and Canada, given that this a priority and a value that we hold dear. I also want to talk about the challenges of being able to move forward with trade and other discussions while also having to deal with some of these issues around human rights.

We travelled to China, and it's a difficult conversation to have, because while we want to talk about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and other fundamental universal human rights and freedoms, they come back to, “But we brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, we're putting a roof over their heads”. It's very different. They define things economically rather than in terms of what we consider human rights.

What do you feel? How can we gain ground on being able to advance a human rights agenda while also making sure that we're able to enter into trade relationships, expand trade relationships, and deal with the fundamental reality that this country is growing in its significance, and the region is growing?

[Dr. Pitman Potter]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you, Mr. Potter.

We'll now go to Ms. Laverdière, please.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to all three for your presentations today.

Mr. Burton briefly addressed the meeting between Kim Jong-un and President Trump. I would like to hear the views of all three of you on the dangers of such a meeting, of course, but also on the opportunities it presents and the sorts of issues that should be brought to the table. Given the leadership styles of those two men, what sense of security could we have, even if there is a positive outcome?

Thank you very much. Xièxie.

[Dr. Charles Burton]

Normally one would expect, as Madam Laverdière knows so well having had a career in the foreign service, that any meeting between two leaders of nations would not be spontaneous. We'd already know the people at the lower levels, and we would already have worked out what the two leaders will essentially agree to and discuss.

Mr. Trump doesn't seem to have a great deal of confidence in his current state department, and one has the impression that he might go into a meeting with Mr. Kim without a notion of how this is going to play out. This strikes me as extremely dangerous in terms of the consequences, because if there's a diplomatic failure and the people at the top fail, that's the end of diplomatic process. The next step is Mr. Bolton suggesting, as he has already done in writing, that the American interest is key. He says that if a nation is threatening the United States, the United States has a requirement to act militarily to remove that threat, regardless of the consequences. Any military action by the United States in North Korea would have consequences that I don't even want to think about. It's too devastating for the people in North Korea, South Korea, and all around.

From that point of view, it's a great concern. I cannot imagine the North Korean regime sincerely agreeing to remove its nuclear threat, nor can I see us giving a security assurance to that regime, because it is so unbelievably appalling in the way it treats its own people, and in terms of food security and repressiveness. Even if we gave them an assurance, could we in good conscience simply allow that regime to continue as it has, as one of the most repressive, dangerous, and failed regimes currently on the planet?

For all these reasons, I'm not able to see a way forward that would lead to a happy resolution, except, as I said, for the possibility of reunification of North Korea and South Korea.

[Dr. Pitman Potter]

I would just say two things.

One is—and I defer to my colleagues in terms of more specialized knowledge—that the developments in this conversation on U.S.-Korea so far underscore the point I made earlier about the importance of preparation. The example I would give is the language around “denuclearization of the peninsula”. That term means something very different to Kim Jong-un than it does to Donald Trump.

It is important, in preparing for senior-level meetings, to have staff-work that goes into clarifying terms, so that we're talking about the same thing. Then we can make decisions on purposeful ambiguity and all the rest of it. Therefore, the lack of staff-work on that could lead to a dangerous possibility of a breakdown in the meeting, because what Kim Jong-un thinks is denuclearization of the peninsula involves at least the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear capacity, whereas the U.S. position has been thinking about it purely in terms of North Korea. That would be, as Charles indicates, quite dangerous. It's important, then, when we have these terms, that we use the local meaning, that we understand that meaning, and that we understand that it's not our meaning.

The second point is that the North Korea matter has to be seen in the context of Iran. I think President Trump's comments just this morning on Iran are probably giving people in Korea pause, in terms of how reliable a partner they think the United States will be. We could talk about Korea, but the behaviour of the United States toward Iran is one that has given pause.

I think those are two factors that should be borne in mind, but I defer to my colleagues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Professor Evans.

[Prof. Paul Evans]

If I could just add one comment on this: I hope what can come out of it is a “cap and freeze” arrangement, and ambiguity about what “denuclearization” actually will mean.

The dark element of this story is that to settle the nuclear and the missile issue, we are going to have to give assurances to a regime that is extraordinarily distasteful. Can that bargain be sustained in the United States, in future? Boy, there are a lot of reasons to think not. I'm afraid that Professor Burton's idea—that our distaste for that government is not enough for us to not deal with the immediate danger and threat, which is the nuclear program—will at least get us over this particular hurdle and into deep negotiations and then into the “cap and freeze”.

We're going to have to swallow something very hard, then, to work with that government and hope that over time openness will be the best way of dealing with its development issues and ultimate denuclearization. Although, maybe it will be at the same time that the United States decides to denuclearize itself, that the North Koreans will be willing to do that as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

Colleagues, we're going to have to wrap it up and leave it there.

I want to thank Professors Burton, Potter, and Evans for their presentations. The information is very useful to something that's been a theme in this committee on Asia, which is that there needs to be a strategy. I must have heard that 10 times now. I'm going to have to find a definition for what people are saying should be the strategy, because it suggests that we are sort of disconnected completely from this particular part of the world—both our government and the previous government. We're going to have to explore that a little more as we make recommendations to the government.

Thank you very much for your comments.

Colleagues, I'm going to take a couple of minutes of suspension, and then we'll go right to the next group of witnesses for our committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Colleagues, let's try to keep on time, because we have a few minutes of work. I understand that Madam Laverdière wants to move some motion, or that there's some discussion she wants to have.

We'll bring this meeting back to order. In front of us today is David Matas, as an individual. As well, we have Ngodup Tsering from the Office of Tibet and Yonglin Chen, who is the former diplomat, People's Republic of China.

We're going to start with the representative from the Office of Tibet, Ngodup Tsering.

I just want to remind the witnesses to try to stick to the time, as hard as it is. I would appreciate if we do stick close to eight minutes; otherwise, we get virtually no time for questions, which is a little frustrating for members of Parliament.

I'm going to turn the floor over to Mr. Tsering and start with his presentation. The floor is yours.

[Ngodup Tsering, Representative, Office of Tibet]

Thank you, honourable members.

I'm here to speak about the human rights situation in Tibet. As all of you know, there have been 152 cases of self-immolation so far, which is the only evidence that speaks to the situation in Tibet itself. No one really wants to self-immolate, but it's not the number—152—it's the people who are self-immolating. That speaks to the dire situation in Tibet in everything: human rights, including religious freedom and access, movement, and daily life inside Tibet.

Tibet has become a police state. Literally, there have been restrictions on everything, including Tibetan language. Although you'll find all these ethnic minority rights and freedoms in the Chinese constitution, but actually there's been nothing lately, if you talk about freedom for the Tibetan language and religious freedom. Leading up to March 10, 2018, the Chinese government announced 22 points; three were considered reactionary. One is that speaking your mother tongue is an important way of keeping your identity, and another is about the middle way approach.

One person who spoke about the Tibetan language situation, Mr. Tashi Wangchuk, is still under detention. Some court cases were done in January 2018, but the verdict is still not issued. Arbitrary cases of arrest, torture, and detention are rampant. One person, Dhondup Wangchen, was captured by the Chinese government for making a film Leaving Fear Behind during the Olympic Games and imprisoned for six years. Recently he was able to escape from mainland China and Tibet, and he's now based in the San Francisco Bay area. According to him, the situation in prison is horrible and political prisoners are tortured a great deal. He is now with his family members, but he undergoes trauma every now and then.

As for the religious situation, a lot of people know about the Yarchen Gar, Larung Gar cases where there's a huge destruction of the monasteries. Almost 50% of the monasteries have been destroyed. Before there were more than 4,800. More than 4,500 monks and nuns having been expelled from Larung and Yarchen Gar because they do not want them to continue in the monastery. When the monks and nuns were expelled, they were even told to sign a bond that says they will not come back to the monastery. That is the dire situation inside Tibet.

Also now, as we all know, any religious institution—a monastery, temple, or church—is normally governed by the people in the religious order, but Yarchen Gar is now managed by 200 Chinese of the party cadre, who do not believe in religion and know nothing about what is being taught in the monastery. Now it's totally under the Chinese persons, the party persons, which is unacceptable.

Therefore, the situation in Tibet is terrible right now. It's dire and needs immediate help. In fact, the Freedom House has said that Tibet, in terms of freedom, is second to Syria. The Washington Post recently mentioned that Tibet is more difficult in terms of access for journalists than North Korea.

Gentlemen, that sums up the situation in Tibet.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Erin O'Toole]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Yonglin Chen, please.

[Yonglin Chen, Former diplomat, People's Republic of China, As an Individual]

Mr. Chairman and members, I'm honoured to be here.

I was a career diplomat of the People's Republic of China from August 1991 to May 2005. I used to work at the Department of North American and Oceanian Affairs. For some period of time, I was working as a desk officer for the Canadian and South Pacific Affairs.

I've been posted to the Republic of Fiji, and also to Sydney, Australia. I left the Chinese consulate in Sydney on May 26, 2005. At that time, I was first secretary. I was granted a protection visa on July 8, and I am now an Australian citizen. I present this testimony according to my personal experience as a Chinese diplomat and my knowledge about Chinese diplomacy.

Chinese diplomacy is an extension of the country's domestic political agenda. It is fair to say that politics, more than anything else, dictates the way in which Chinese authorities conduct diplomatic affairs.

The communist ideology has never ceased to play a crucial role in Chinese education. The school textbooks are heavily censored to ensure that views praise the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese community organizations, such as Young Pioneers, the communist youth group, and their propaganda, are everywhere in the daily lives of the mainland Chinese.

Following the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, and a brief diplomatic and economic sanction against China prior to 1992, there was a passionate discussion in the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs that there be a window of opportunity of over 20 to 30 years of economic growth for China.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Erin O'Toole]

Mr. Chen, my apologies, may I interrupt for one moment?

[Yonglin Chen]

Yes.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Erin O'Toole]

Our translation team is having difficulty providing simultaneous translation. As you know, Canada is a country with two official languages. I think because of the Internet connection, they're having trouble providing translation into French.

I'm wondering whether on your end, you could be closer to the microphone and perhaps slow down. We're trying to make sure that we meet our official languages requirements. I think it's a problem because of the Internet-based quality of the communications. It's certainly not the subject matter.

[Yonglin Chen]

At that time, the Chinese leaders decided to stick to Deng Xiaoping's 16-character strategy, which means “hiding our capacities and biding our time”. That strategy lasted until Xi Jinping took power in 2012. He gradually adjusted the strategy to “be proactive and aggressive, strive for achievements”. China is becoming more and more aggressive now.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Erin O'Toole]

Mr. Chen, I'll get you to stop there for a moment with my apologies again.

Thank you. That's slightly better. If you can be slower and louder, I think the translators will appreciate that. We will extend your time a little bit, if we can, in order for you to slow down and be as loud as you can for our translation team.

[Yonglin Chen]

Okay, great. Thank you.

In Xi Jinping's initiation of a “China dream”, 2049 will be the year China will rise to the status of a superpower, so China's ambition is to become the world's superpower in 2045.

In the last 25 years, the Chinese authority has silently infiltrated major Western democracies, including Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Australia has been a testing ground for China's soft power, which has proved a great success. The evidence of China's massive infiltration into Australia has been presented in the book called, Silent Invasion: China's Influence in Australia, written by Professor Clive Hamilton, who interviewed me prior to its writing. It is almost too late for Australia to defend itself against China's interference, given the difficulty the Australian government has experienced recently in introducing legislation on the foreign influence transparency scheme.

In the eyes of the Chinese authority, Canada has a similar position to Australia. The only difference would be the geographical difference. Both countries are seen as a weak link in Western democracy where China can snatch high tech and exert influence. Both are rich in natural resources, and both have a huge immigration intake and implement a firm multicultural policy and anti-discrimination laws. Canada's mineral resources, energy, timber, medicine, high tech, and nuclear power technology are badly needed in China. When the U.S. imposes any restriction on high-tech export to China, Canada is the alternative source of supply.

China has exercised its overall diplomacy on Canada since the 1989 Tiananmen for democracy movement, and Canada has played a big role in China's global strategy. Canada was the first Western country to decouple its human rights policy from its trade policy, and the breakthrough instrumentally helped China to secure MFN status from the U.S. Of course, the appeasement of Western countries has helped China join the WTO without completely fulfilling its obligations. That enables China's economy to really benefit from free trade without making the slightest move towards democracy.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Erin O'Toole]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chen.

I'm sorry for the difficulties we had with the audio connection, but we received your testimony to the committee. We will have that translated and distributed to all members of the committee with our thanks.

Now we have Mr. Matas, please.

[David Matas, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me.

On the general subject of Canada's engagement in Asia, I want to focus on something specific, Canada's engagement with China. Even within that subject, I want to address something particular—the form engagement by Canada with China should take in light of the evidence of organ transplant abuse in China.

I know some of you are familiar with that evidence, but allow me to say a few words. David Kilgour and I concluded almost 12 years ago that the bulk of organs for transplant in China were being sourced from practitioners of the spiritually based set of exercises, Falun Gong, a Chinese equivalent of yoga. The Falun Gong practitioners were killed through organ extraction and their bodies cremated.

Since we released our report, the evidence has accumulated, and other researchers have engaged the issue. Ethan Gutmann, a journalist who wrote a book on that subject, David Kilgour, and I concluded in a joint update to our work released in June 2016 that the volume of transplants in China was up to 100,000 a year and that the bulk of the sources were prisoners of conscience: Tibetans, Uyghurs, house Christians—mostly Eastern Lightning—and practitioners of Falun Gong. The abuse is a black market with an unusual feature. It is institutionalized, state run.

The evidence of this abuse by now is overwhelming—hundreds of pages, thousands of footnotes, several books, the footnotes mostly from Chinese state sources, and several documentaries. No interested researcher who has gone through the material has questioned our conclusions.

The Government of China does not want to talk about this abuse. They respond with bluster and bafflegab. They produce a wide variety of denials and accusations, but do not in reality engage the issue.

The mass killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs cannot just be put to one side. We in Canada cannot say to Chinese officials that we disagree with them about the evidence of the mass killing of innocents for their organs, but let's talk about something else.

Engagement with China calls for engagement on this issue. Engagement on this issue has several facets. Charles Burton, whom you just heard from, has done a study on the futility of the Canada-China bilateral human rights dialogue. Canada needs to return to multilateral institutions to raise human rights issues about China rather than rely on that dialogue.

Your subcommittee on international human rights endorsed a couple of useful statements on this issue in November 2013 and February 2015. The statements addressed engagement in two ways. First, both statements called on medical and scientific professional and regulatory bodies to name, shame, and ostracize individuals, institutions, and their affiliates involved in the forced harvesting and trafficking of human organs. Second, both statements called on the Government of Canada to consider ways to discourage and prevent Canadians from taking part in transplant tourism, where the organs have not been obtained in an ethical, safe, and transparent fashion. I agree with both of these statements, but more needs to be done.

Right now there's an active debate within the international transplant profession about whether to engage or ostracize the Chinese transplant profession in light of the Chinese official opacity about transplantation and the overwhelming evidence of continuing transplant abuse. I support ostracism, as your subcommittee did, because engagement removes the lever of peer pressure, which historically—when there has been ostracism—has had an impact. The Government of Canada should be supporting the voices for ostracism as the subcommittee did.

As for discouraging transplant tourism, the Government of Canada can do a lot more than it has done. It can introduce into Parliament legislation already proposed as private members' bills in different parliaments by Borys Wrzesnewskyj, whom I'm pleased to see here, Irwin Cotler, and Garnett Genuis. That bill would make complicity in organ transplant abuse an extra-territorial crime, ban entry to Canada of those complicit in this abuse, and make reporting to the authorities by health professionals of transplant tourism compulsory.

More generally, the Government of Canada should call on the Government of China to co-operate with an independent, institution-based international investigation on organ transplant abuse in China.

This investigation, were it to take place, must be able to visit businesses and hospitals unannounced and view original prison and hospital files. That sort of request has been made by the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the United States House of Representatives, and the European Parliament. Given the widespread support for this investigation, there's no reason why Canada cannot join the chorus.

One facet of organ transplant abuse in China is the almost complete absence of information about this abuse within China. Engagement with China on this issue cannot be shifted only to health professionals and those engaged with human rights. There should be widespread discussions with Chinese nationals generally on this issue.

Canada can take advantage of engagement with China to break through the shroud that covers this issue. Ultimately, as we've heard, change in China has to come from within China. However, it is impossible to expect to end transplant abuse in China when the only Chinese who know about it are those complicit in it. Engagement is an opportunity to spread the pool of knowledge beyond the perpetrators.

Engagement cannot mean disengagement. We cannot both engage with China and disengage on the issue of Chinese organ transplant abuse. If we are going to engage, we must engage consistently.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you very much, Mr. Matas.

Colleagues, I want to remind you that the bells will start at 5:15 p.m. There's a half-hour bell. We'll have to get to the House at some point, so we'll try to manage our time as best we can.

Mr. Genuis, we'll go straight to you. Let's keep it tight at six minutes each. We'll see how far we can get. Then we'll do some business, and then we're going to try to wrap it up so we have time to get the House for the vote, of course.

Mr. Genuis.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's such an honour to pose questions to three, in my view, heroic witnesses.

Mr. Matas, I don't know if you've seen this yet, but for your information, the Senate version of the organ harvesting bill has just passed second reading. We'll be studying it at committee. It's proposed by Senator Ataullahjan, and I believe it's the first time we've seen a bill on this issue pass second reading in either house. I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to see that bill come back to the House of Commons and become law before the next election. I know you have friends in multiple parties—probably in all parties—who are very interested in working on this issue.

I wanted to start my questions with Mr. Chen.

The whole discussion about the influence that China seeks to project in western democracies is fascinating and very important to us. We heard when we were in Asia, particularly from people in Hong Kong, about the activities of the United Front within the Chinese Communist Party. We've had some debate here in Canada about substantial donations coming to political parties and to the Trudeau Foundation, which is named for the current prime minister's father, from people who may have connections with the Chinese Communist Party.

I'm curious for your thoughts, first, on the operations of the United Front and how it is involved in diplomatic activities, and second, on what might be going on when you see very substantial donations to something like the Trudeau Foundation coming from people who have ostensible connections with the Chinese Communist Party.

[Yonglin Chen]

China's political infiltration of Canada involves several areas: political infiltration based on the United Front Work Department, the Confucius Institute, and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association. All these infiltrations are based on the communist doctrine of the United Front Work Department to exploit Canadians with Chinese heritage. In China, people believe that money talks.

In Canada's case, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau was considered an old friend of China. I'm not surprised that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, according to the news reports, admired the basic dictatorship of China. That, I think, is a challenge to the values of mainstream Canadian society, as well as to the Chinese community in Canada.