It's a great question. The strategic partnership agreement was signed between Canada and China in 2005. I opposed it at the time. Then, when we had the Indo-Pacific policy come up, all of a sudden we forgot about strategic partnerships and talked about disruptive forces in affairs. Now we have the strategic partnership back, articulated by Minister Anand and the Prime Minister, as you said.
The Chinese interpretation of a strategic partnership goes along with the other stuff that the Prime Minister, in his meeting with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and that indeed Deputy Minister David Morrison in his speech to the celebration of China's National Day last September...which is that we are buying into the Chinese language about being pragmatic and constructive, as well as their other language about seeking common ground while setting aside differences.
By using this language, we're essentially saying that we're going to do Canada-China relations in the way China wants to do it. The idea of having a partnership with a country that the Commons, through a unanimous resolution, determined was engaged in genocide and facilitates third world dictatorships by providing them with Chinese surveillance technologies and all the other things China does—menacing Taiwan, the abrogation of the Hong Kong agreement and so on—is completely extraordinary to me. I mean, are we partners? I don't want to be partners. I don't feel that Canada should partner up with a regime whose values are so discordant with what makes our country great.