On the first question directed to me, I don't think it's acceptable that people continue to be abused. I don't think it's wrong for a prime minister to publicly raise issues he cares about. The question we are most concerned about—and the reason I thought we were here—is what is the best way forward? What is going to get us the maximum success, not only for Canadians travelling in China, but for the lot of the Chinese people in general?
I spoke earlier about the dialogue, and many witnesses have said there's something amiss here. One of the reasons we went to the dialogue was for the same reason as many years ago. Prime ministers then were simply not pleased with how the human rights commission in Geneva was working. I had the opportunity to spend some time in Geneva, and every year there were roughly eight weeks of very intense human rights endeavours. I can tell you that most of the ambassadors who were involved day in and day out were not convinced at the end of the process that we had moved the file one iota. That was broken as well.
When we moved from basically passing resolutions in Geneva to a dialogue, it was done because we were convinced that a frank, honest, and more intimate dialogue would enhance the files for the causes we felt strongly about. I think at that time it was the correct action.