Thank you, Chair.
Picture a six-year-old—a child in grade 1 or maybe even in kindergarten. Now imagine that very young child living in a boarding school, going through a shockingly rigorous 12-hour schedule day after day, separated from their parents and family, having to study in a completely foreign language and often facing extreme abuse.
This six-year-old may get to go home on the weekends, but cannot go to any houses of worship nor speak their own language—their own mother tongue—even to their parents. Any engagement in religious practice is not allowed, and when they return to school, they're asked to tell the teachers if the parents are breaking the rules.
This is the reality of a six-year-old child inside Tibet. Tibetan parents have no choice but to send their children to these residential boarding schools. If they refuse, they will be harassed, threatened and face imprisonment.
Now, I'll go to the reality here in Canada.
The Chinese government has passed a law that openly declares a war on anyone who is not Chinese and tries to maintain their distinct identity. At the same time, the Chinese government has stolen approximately one million Tibetan children from their families and placed them in these boarding schools, where they're facing severe political indoctrination, and physical and psychological abuse and neglect.
Yet, the Government of Canada has back-seated the issue of human rights in the recent dealings with the PRC, namely with the Prime Minister's visit to China and the Chinese foreign minister's subsequent visit to Canada. It has to be said that this strategy seems short-sighted and flawed.
It is not megaphone diplomacy that we're seeking. It's really a reality check of Xi Jinping's predominant interest, which is really to consolidate and expand control at all costs. That's not a trustworthy trading partner for Canada.
Michael Kovrig explained this quite well in his Foreign Affairs article. By subordinating security and human rights to immediate commercial gain, these governments—Canada and our allies—are exposing their citizens to foreign interference, arbitrary detention and transnational repression with diminishing prospects for recourse. This subordination has very real consequences here in Canada for us, whether it is the experiences of attacks, such as the death threats and rape threats that I received when I was running for student leadership at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus, or threats to dissidents like Dr. Gyal Lo, who represents probably the single greatest threat to the CCP and its hidden policies of erasure, which are only now coming to light.
Tibetans know all too well that when we are dealing with the Chinese government, the road of accommodation leads only to further accommodations and further concessions that will be detrimental to our Canadian economy, our own citizens, our institutions, and the most vulnerable and marginalized people suffering under Xi Jinping's rule.
Despite that, Tibetans inside Tibet have defied all odds in their fight to protect all that they hold dear, especially their language, culture and Buddhist traditions. They face the real and devastating consequences for their resistance, yet they do not stop. All they need from us is our moral courage and support in action, now more than ever.
I truly do believe in Canada, which has the responsibility and also the opportunity to pursue a principled, realistic foreign policy approach to China that really balances economic and national security while upholding our own core values. This begins by drawing a red line when it comes to the abuse and incarceration of children in a residential school system designed to erase their language, culture and identity. It's far too similar to our own shameful Canadian residential school system.
The colonial boarding school system inside Tibet must be stopped. I ask this committee, Minister of Foreign Affairs Anand and Prime Minister Carney to use every available parliamentary and foreign policy mechanism available to condemn and oppose these schools. This could begin with the Prime Minister ensuring that China's colonial boarding schools and the new ethnic erasure law are condemned in the upcoming G7 leader statement this month. It could be ensuring that Canada is on record with a report, press release or statement from this very committee, ahead of China's rights of the child review at the UN, calling for the colonial boarding schools to be abolished and for Tibetan children to be able to go to school in their own language and live in their own homes. Otherwise, China won't stop.
That six-year-old child I described earlier, who is forced to sing Chinese nursery rhymes and then cries themself to sleep very softly—