With regard to the relationship between the CIDA programming and dialogue, from the beginning there has been CIDA funding for this activity. But in the early rounds of the dialogue CIDA was reluctant to make it known to the Chinese government that they were providing this funding, because in the context of that time CIDA was concerned that the Chinese government might start to perceive CIDA as a political agency.
Incidents occurred. For example, when I was working in the political section we requested that the head of the CIDA section might take a prisoners list on a trip to Tibet, and he felt that was inappropriate.
Now CIDA has changed its focus in China. As you know, China, because of its relative prosperity, is no longer one of the 25 primary countries, and the CIDA programming is in human rights, good governance, democratic development, and environment.
Seeing that CIDA now is explicitly referring to the words “human rights”—in the early nineties, because of the sensitivity of that word in China, CIDA used to refer to human rights programming as “public management programming”, and now we can actually say human rights—it would be possible for CIDA to use its substantial resources to follow up on some of the possible technical cooperation Canada might want to have with China in human rights.
But at present, one aspect of this activity that I bring up in the report is that the resources dedicated to it are limited. The human rights division of Foreign Affairs doesn't have sufficient resources to really design major projects and to research issues that should be explored in terms of dialogue. CIDA does have these resources and might be able to play a useful role, but CIDA also engages in many other areas.
I think another aspect of this activity, as it's a government-to-government activity, is that Canada obviously does not want to engage in cooperation with the Chinese authorities, as this is seen as increasing the state capacity of a regime that behaves in a way not consistent with international norms. There's a fine line to be drawn between development cooperation and standing on the side of Chinese citizens who we feel are suffering from social injustice.
From that point of view, it's important that CIDA's programming should be examined. The intentions of the government with regard to what we want to do with human rights in China should be compared against that programming to see if the CIDA programming is in fact serving Canadian values and Canadian interests, and I dare say that will occur.
In general, all Canadians want to stand on the side of people in China who are suffering from social injustice. The question is really what the appropriate mechanism is and whether there are mechanisms by which Canada can engage China on human rights without having to pass through the Chinese regime, which is a regime that we feel falls short in terms of its compliance with the UN human rights covenant.
Would it be possible to arrange activities in a new context in China, wherein there are new possibilities that were not available when we started this activity fifteen years ago to engage in new kinds of projects that would genuinely better serve the interests of the constituency in China that we hope to serve?