Perhaps I can begin and say that the central message I was trying to convey is that we can and must deal with China on a range of human rights issues, a broad range of economic issues, and also a range of global issues. We are not in a position yet where we have established the high-level political relationship with China that I think will allow us to deal with those issues in some sort of balanced or comprehensive way. Until we have that high-level political relationship, individual cases and the dimensions of what we want to do in promoting good governance and democracy in China not only falls on deaf ears, they fall on ears that are both confused and hostile.
If we take a step back on the Canada-China relationship, for almost a third of a century there has been a consensus on the way to balance these multiple concerns. That's even before China became as important to us as it is now. We're at an interesting moment when that consensus is being looked at again—revisited—and it's natural and proper for any new government to do it. At the moment, I think we're not square on what we would like to do in advancing our human rights agenda.
So far, there are trade-offs, Mr. Cotler, as you noted. Are there specific instances in which Canadian pursuit of human rights issues or consular cases have cost us in the past? I don't know. It's always hard to measure where retaliation responses come, with another party who doesn't agree with you. I think as we move forward it's essential that we have a way to speak with the Chinese so we can dig into those issues and the trade-offs can be minimal.
As I looked through the testimony given before this subcommittee over its four months of deliberations, one of the remarkable things is that there's almost total agreement on what we should do by way of programming substance. Some want to go a little further than others, but we have a 90% consensus out there. The point is, though, before we can move on these individual activities on human rights, we have to have the political relationship that will allow us to be effective. There, I think that some of the lessons Mr. Marchi pointed to about how Canada deals with other countries, including the United States, where we're not always eye-to-eye on some very difficult bilateral issues and human rights and consular cases—The situation of having a warm relationship with Washington first does matter.
Mr. Cotler, it's amazingly difficult to be able to calculate where retaliation or consequences come if we have disagreements with the Chinese, as we've had many disagreements with the Chinese government over the last 35 years. My sense is, though, that we won't find specific acts of retaliation. Simply, if our relationship cools or even cools further, we're going to fall further behind in connecting with China. That's not on individual deals; our relationship with China is so much bigger than individual deals. This is about the very structure and nature of industrial restructuring in Canada.
I can't give you specifics at this point. We don't know them. Virtually every country in the world is trying to build a political relationship with China at the same time that it deals with a host of economic and other issues. The balance sheet is not yet clear, but it seems that's the necessary condition.