The last question is a general one for Mr. Houlden or Madam Dion.
In his report, Professor Burton quotes an official at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating that the main purpose of the dialogue is “to defuse foreign unease with China's human rights record”. That's on the Chinese side.
On the Canadian side, I asked Professor Burton and other witnesses if they thought that Canada's commencement of the dialogue in 1997 was motivated principally by a desire to have an alternate track from presenting or supporting resolutions at the Office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. Mr. Burton's response was that he couldn't comment, because this related to a classified section of his report. But he said it was pretty clear in the discussions that Mr. Axworthy had with Chinese leadership in this regard, and he referred to public statements that Mr. Axworthy made in 1997.
Alex Neve of Amnesty International responded to the same question and said, “Our view is that the decision was made”—the decision to go into the bilateral dialogue, as opposed to the UN High Commission for Human Rights resolutions—“to get the uncomfortable topic of human rights out of the Canada-China relationship”.
So given that there are people on the Chinese side who say that the dialogue was designed to defuse foreign unease with China's human rights record, and there are people on the Canadian side who say that it was designed to avoid public discussion of these issues and to downgrade human rights in the dialogue, do you think these are fair and reasonable characterizations of the policy? If so, how can we expect to be effective if indeed it was developed to avoid a full and frank exchange?