Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I'm going to begin by apologizing for being late, but I'm at the environment committee. Normally it ends at eleven o'clock, but there's another filibustering going on, so we don't know how long the meeting is going to last. I had to be replaced, because I wanted to be here in this committee to hear what you had to say.
Obviously there's some good news when you talk about the bilateral relations between Canada and China and their relation to human rights and how much attention they've been getting, in the sense that there was bipartisan agreement among the members of committee to have this as one of the key issues we wanted to address. All of us on the committee are greatly concerned about the issue of human rights in China, so there was in fact agreement by all parties to have this discussed today and have it as a forefront issue.
Like so many of the people who have spoken before, and certainly Mr. Neve from Amnesty International, we have grave concerns about where this bilateral human rights dialogue is going. Obviously it hasn't been working. It was hoped that it would work; that was the reason it was established. But when we take a look at the reports we keep hearing coming out of China, whether it's on the Falun Gong or even the whole issue about harvesting of organs, which is of great concern for all of us, or when we look at the situation with the killing of Tibetans, or when we look at the situation even of people practising their different faiths—even the Catholic Church, which wasn't mentioned, but they're certainly persecuted as well in China—this all raises serious alarm bells for all of us who care about human rights.
The question is, what is the government going to do? What are we prepared to do as parliamentarians? Things have been tried in the past that did not work. I want to know what your opinion is of certain tools we have at play.
One of them is CIDA and the role it plays in China. My honourable colleague in the chair has certainly criticized CIDA in the past, or the Canadian government at that time, for giving moneys to China. I'd like to know your opinion about whether CIDA, which is a very important tool that the government has for development, should be there or not. I'd certainly ask for some comments on that issue.