That's a very good question.
Part of what the Canadian government received in some criticism about having our Prime Minister not attend.... We didn't boycott the conference. We sent a very distinguished colleague of yours, a member of Parliament and parliamentary secretary, who did a very good job, but part of the argument was that if you're there, you can raise these issues.
Well, the reality is that the agenda for every Commonwealth conference is set by the president of the host country, or the prime minister, as the case may be, and the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth. They would have zero interest in having a discussion about human rights, judicial independence, accountability, etc. In fact, that was not discussed.
In fact, when you look at the many thousands of words that came out in the Colombo declaration, you see that references to human rights, rule of law, judicial independence, democracy, and freedom of the press are completely absent. Completely absent, and that is less than a year after the Charter of the Commonwealth, which laid those out as precise Commonwealth values, was signed in the presence of high commissioners from every country, including Sri Lanka, by Her Majesty the Queen, in March.
I have no evidence from any source that at the conference itself this matter was discussed. The Prime Minister of Great Britain went to Jaffna, and various others said things outside the conference, but at the conference itself, not only was it not discussed, but in fact there was no evidence of it being discussed in the press release, the communiqué, that was put out at the end of the meeting.