Thank you, Madam.
To answer your first question, we do not advise that the government discontinue its bilateral dialogue process. However, we do want the government to discontinue this current form. As I suggested and as one of my colleagues also mentioned, bilateral dialogue should involve better participation from non-governmental organizations, what we call people-to-people participation. Let us have communication and discussion with our counterparts in China, not with what I would call pro-government counterparts from China but genuine non-governmental organizations from the civil society. The civil society is growing right now in China. At last count, there were 30,000 non-governmental organizations growing in China. We certainly would like to have the opportunity to talk to them as well.
On the second question, the China threat, I've been to a lot of media interviews in the last few days on the subject of our Prime Minister's trip to APEC. Unfortunately, the media has tended to associate the so-called China snub, or the Canadian snub, as a backlash to our stance on human rights. I want to assure the committee members that this is far from true. In fact, even domestically we have a lot of support from our business people. They may have been upset with the China snub, but not because of our human rights stance. It was purely from the point of view of perhaps their criticism of the current government's other dealings with China.
Now, as far as the trade sanctions are concerned, I can assure you, Madam, that the Chinese are just like any other merchants in the world. They pick the best price and the best quality of goods whenever they can. Certainly they would not ignore, because of political considerations, a good bargain.
We certainly have a lot of good bargains for China. We have a big trade deficit with China. We import much more than we export. However, we do have resources that we can export that China has been eying as it progresses to the 21st century. So even in the trade consideration, in the trade equation, I think we have certainly an advantage. I don't think we need to fear the so-called backlash.
I want to point to the example of Bombardier. They have been very successful in China. They've been selling many rail cars in China, not because we do or do not mention human rights, but because of their persistence, their patience, and of course their far-sighted approach to a big market.
As for any local governments, or any medium- to low-level contacts in terms of business contracts, we are no longer dealing with national institutions or national state enterprises. We are dealing more with local officials. A lot of experts from inside China will tell you that there is a growing dissatisfaction among local provincial governments with the central government. Even if the central government was displeased, I think the local governments would go their own way.