Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll go to Mr. MacLeod.
Please do give our best to the Celil family. I'm sorry, it looks like we may not be able to hear the testimony directly from them.
I want to ask you about your engagement with the Government of Canada right now. We had some frankly very disturbing testimony at the Canada-China committee back in February, where I had asked our ambassador about the Celil case. He initially seemed unaware of it, and then he said:
I'm looking into that case. I call him Huseyin. Basically, because Huseyin is not a Canadian citizenship holder, we aren't able to get access to him on a consular service side. We've tried, because he's someone I would like to see. I know it has been a long-standing file, but—
That's a quote from our current Ambassador Dominic Barton, in Beijing. I replied to correct him to say that Mr. Celil is a Canadian citizen.
It just floored me at the time. In a way it still does, that in testimony specifically where the ambassador spoke regularly about a number of important cases of Canadians detained in China, not only would he not mention the Celil case proactively but that there was that misstatement about Celil's citizenship.
I know it's important for you to work with the government on this, Mr. MacLeod, so I'd like to ask this: Have you been able to have any follow-up engagement with Ambassador Barton? Has he recognized the reality of Mr. Celil's citizenship, and is he taking it up with the same seriousness that he is taking up the cases of other Canadians detained in China?