If we position ourselves against those states, one of the challenges is that it becomes a race to the bottom, because there are a lot of things that are acceptable in the People's Republic of China, Russia and North Korea that I don't think we would ever want in a Canadian democracy. There are considerations for democracies about the ethical application of technologies.
The best approach we have is diplomacy. We have to work with those adversarial states. Unfortunately, our discussions at the international level have largely focused on like-minded states. We don't engage often enough with adversaries. There are some instances of bilateral discussions, particularly between the United States and China, on some of these emerging technologies. However, there is also an enormous race, whether it's for semiconductors or other aspects of emerging technology, which is hampering what's possible in the diplomatic domain.
In Canada, I am aware that there are, of course, concerns regarding these adversarial states. I don't want to undermine them or somehow downplay them. I think they are quite an issue for us to address. However, we don't want to go down the route of a race to the bottom and say, “If it's acceptable for China, it should be acceptable for us.” I think we have better values than that.