I'll call this meeting to order. I think we have a quorum. Well, I see one, anyway--unless someone is going to challenge me.
Good morning, and welcome to this morning's meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. We continue this morning our committee's study of the Canada-China bilateral human rights dialogue and related issues.
This morning we have appearing before us
Ms. Adèle Dion, Director General Human Security and Human Rights, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and Mr. Gordon Houlden, Director General, East Asia Bureau.
We also have Hau Sing Tse, vice-president, Asia branch, CIDA; and Jeff Nankivell, director of China and Northeast Asia division, CIDA.
I imagine the witnesses are all familiar with the context of our study, which has been going on for a few weeks. To date, we've met with a number of representatives of NGOs, academics, and others with an interest who have expressed a point of view on the efficacy of the Canada-China human rights dialogue. In the context of this study, of course, we've looked not just at the dialogue; the actual human rights situation in China has come up frequently. I think the committee wanted to have an opportunity to hear from officials of two of the relevant departments about the departmental view, and programming, certainly as it relates to CIDA.
So we welcome you all and look forward to hearing your presentations, which will be followed by a question period.
Why don't we start with our guests from DFAIT.