Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Oct. 31st, 2006

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

The response was quicker when you were in opposition.

[Alex Neve]

Certainly we've made some very concrete, quite specific, and, for some of them, time-specific recommendations. For example, we don't think the next session of the bilateral dialogue process should go ahead at this time. At the same time, we're hearing that plans may be advancing to do just that, so we're certainly looking forward to a response quite quickly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Do you mean to not do it, or to do it, just to clarify your last statement there?

[Alex Neve]

Sorry, that it not go ahead at this time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Okay.

[Alex Neve]

With respect to the Olympics, Amnesty is not proposing a boycott by Canada or any other government, but we do think the Canadian government and the international community more largely are really missing an opportunity to make use of the Olympics to advance a human rights agenda. As I said earlier, now is the time to get serious about that. There are still two years left, two years within which there's ample space to be pressing particular concerns. It will be too late if we come to this only a few weeks before the Olympics begin.

I will leave with you Amnesty's paper on the Olympics. I think it lays out a number of recommendations. Obviously there's a huge range of human rights concerns in China. In the paper, we've highlighted particular issues that we think have a connection to or in some way resonate with the Olympics themselves, and we therefore think they should be a priority for attention.

[Razmik Panossian]

May I just add one very quick point regarding the Olympics? I wholeheartedly agree with Alex Neve, but we shouldn't just see the Olympics as an end point. What could happen in China after the Olympics could be a lot worse than what is happening before them, so they are using this as a way of demonstrating.

In any kind of policy development or strategic partnership, we should be thinking about what is going to happen after the Olympics. I think that's going to be a much more fundamental question once the attention of the world is no longer on Beijing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

At the committee's discretion, I'm going to take a round, and then we'll hear from Mr. Silva.

This is to any one of you, but, Professor Burton, I'd be keen to hear your view on this.

In 1997, the Government of Canada decided to stop sponsoring or supporting resolutions at the UNCHR on the human rights situation in China. Mr. Burton, you said the decision was made to replace it with the bilateral dialogue in order to be more effective. Is that the view of all the panellists, that the decision was taken in order to be more effective, or was it taken—as you've just suggested, Mr. Burton—to avoid upsetting our interlocutors in China by being public about criticism at Geneva?

[Charles Burton]

This is a difficult question because I address it in the classified part of the report, referring to a classified tell that I don't think I can characterize here. If you have an opportunity to look at the classified section, it's pretty clear about discussions that Mr. Axworthy had with Chinese leadership in this regard. When I said to make it more effective, I was actually quoting from the press release that Mr. Axworthy and Mr. Chan put out in 1997.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Mr. Neve, do you have a guess on that?

[Alex Neve]

Our view is that the decision was made to get the uncomfortable topic of human rights out of the Canada-China relationship. While there may well have been well-intentioned and maybe even well-formed views that there could be something effective done with the dialogue process, the unfortunate thing has been that the dialogue process that was designed and delivered was simply not going to be the kind of dialogue that would end up being more effective than past processes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

You've all suggested that we need ways in which we can improve the dialogue. Would any of the three of you please comment on whether you think Canada should be precluded in the future from sponsoring or supporting critical resolutions at the new UNHCR on the Chinese human rights record?

[Alex Neve]

Absolutely not. Our view always has been and continues to be that the best strategy is one that combines a whole variety of different approaches.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Including the resolutions at—

[Alex Neve]

Including things in multilateral settings.

Whether or not a resolution is still the right way to go within the UN setting is debatable. The UN Human Rights Council offers a whole new set of tools and possibilities, most notably through what is known as the universal periodic review process, under which all countries are now going to have their human rights records reviewed by the council, probably on a three-year cycle. China will come before the council in ways that China's record never came before the commission.

I think Canada, working with other governments, and certainly with other members of the Human Rights Council, but even beyond the council, should really start thinking about the most constructive way to make use of that. We don't yet know when that's going to happen. It could be in ten months or it could be in two and a half years that China will have its first turn in front of the council. That's going to be a critical point, and governments should really start strategizing as to how to make the best use of that.

[Razmik Panossian]

I would like to echo that. We do not see the dialogue as an either/or; it should be complementary. If the situation reaches a point that a council resolution is necessary, by all means.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

With respect to a lot of questions here about CIDA funding, my understanding is that most of the so-called human rights or NGO support goes to organizations operating in China. To what extent can organizations operate independent of control by the regime in China? Is there really such a thing as an NGO in the PRC?

Secondly, given that other countries such as the United States support truly independent NGOs that promote human rights in China outside of the PRC in the Chinese diaspora, do you think Canada should consider doing the same to build up organizations, NGOs, outside of China that try to support groups within that may not be controlled by the regime?

[Razmik Panossian]

I can start on that one. I was in Beijing about two months ago. Rights and Democracy is developing a modest program in China. I can say this: a civil society is emerging in China. It is not a strong civil society. It is not a strong independent sector. It faces all sorts of legal registration problems, but nevertheless a very good group of people is emerging with whom we can work directly, not necessarily to stand on a pedestal and denounce the Chinese government and talk about human rights, but to work with them in terms of building their capacity to organize better by giving them the capacity to advocate better on certain issues.

As Alex said, we have to be very careful about whom we engage, how we engage, what we say, what we do publicly. We don't want to put any of our parties in danger. Nevertheless, China has reached a point that we do not have to go to government agencies all the time to do things there.

[Charles Burton]

With regard to the question of the diaspora organizations, in my view, one reason why it's difficult for Canada to be as effective in China as one would like is that we rely on our Canadian diplomats, most of whom do not have strong Chinese language skills and/or in-depth knowledge of the Chinese situation, because of the rotational nature of diplomatic service--three years in China, and then back to work in Pittsburgh and then.... In fact, I believe that Foreign Affairs could be making more use of the few Mandarin speakers they have. I know people who have fluent Mandarin who have had one posting in China and then they didn't go back for fifteen years.

On the other hand, Chinese is the third most spoken language in our country, and we have people within Canada who have a lot of knowledge and expertise about China. So the question is, can we make the most of this national resource of Chinese people who have moved to our country and have knowledge to better realize Canadian interests in China? My feeling is that these people--and I mention it in my report--would like to be more involved and to be supporting government in what Canada does in China. I hope that may come to pass.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Thank you.

Mr. Silva, you have the last round, and then we have to do some committee business.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you.

The old way of dealing with China in a bilateral way was that dealing with human rights was contained within China. Yet we've also heard other reports. Specifically, I have an Angolan community that's growing very quickly in my riding of Davenport. They've told me stories about how the Chinese have brought slave workers into Angola to build their highways and their airports. They're not employing the local population in their reconstruction, and they're doing this in exchange for oil.

As China's economy grows, it needs more and more resources. I think it's now the third largest or the second largest investor in Africa, so it's played a major role in Africa, from Sudan and resolutions in Darfur, to much other work that's been done. It's not developing the human rights and the economic viability of those countries; it's hurting those countries because it's taking oil and resources back to China. It's saying, “We'll give you an airport and a highway, and instead of five years, we'll do it in two years”--by having workers who are not being monitored under the same standards as we are in terms of their working conditions. It's hurting the local people as well. We can no longer look specifically within China in terms of human rights; it's also the impact the Chinese policy is having now in a lot of third world countries and in Africa.

[Alex Neve]

I couldn't agree more. Obviously we're spending a lot of time this morning and this afternoon talking about engaging with China, with respect to human rights concerns within the country. It is vitally important to engage with China with respect to its foreign policy and the human rights dimension of its foreign policy, which is problematic not just in Africa, but certainly Africa is an area of grave concern.

Amnesty has put out a report recently looking at the degree to which Chinese weapons have very much fuelled the conflict in Darfur, and it's shocking. Of course, then it becomes no surprise that China has not been—I guess the generous way to describe it would be—a strong supporter of robust UN action to deal with the crisis in Darfur. That's obviously unacceptable.

Part of engaging with China around human rights issues has to be taking on that foreign dimension as well.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That's the question I had and the comment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Thank you very much to Messieurs Neve, Burton, and Panossian, for your very informative presentations to us today.

In conclusion, I'd like to draw particular attention to Mr. Neve's remark, encouraging the committee to deepen and broaden our study of the broader issues.

Quite frankly, we're going to be going into a closed business session in a moment, but we haven't quite determined the scope of this. This is just an initial informative meeting for us.

But certainly as chairman, I take your suggestion, Mr. Neve, that the committee seize the opportunity to look more broadly at the related issues here and bring in other witnesses to give a voice to other NGOs, the Department of Foreign Affairs, respondents from the Chinese embassy, and members of the diaspora community as well, so we can have a full study on these important issues.

I want to thank you all for starting us on a very important examination of a very important issue. Thank you all.

The committee will now move into closed session. We invite all of our guests to please leave.

[Proceedings continue in camera]