Mr. Speaker, for a long time now, Canada has been urging Peking and Taipei to use peaceful means to resolve their differences.
We believe that the two parties should renew their dialogue as quickly as possible in order to arrive at a better understanding and thus reduce tensions in the region.
Canada continues to avail itself of opportunities to communicate its concerns. During a visit to Beijing on February 21 to 24, the assistant deputy minister for Asia-Pacific and Africa, Joseph Caron, emphasized Canada's concerns directly with the vice-minister of foreign affairs in Beijing. Our ambassador to China further underlined these concerns in a separate meeting with the vice-minister. In both of those meetings we stressed our concerns about the threat of military confrontation and strongly appealed for a peaceful and negotiated settlement. These concerns were also reiterated to the Chinese ambassador in Ottawa.
Canada's one China policy remains unchanged. We do have extensive economic, cultural and people to people contacts with Taiwan. We have used our informal channels to convey our concerns on this issue to Taipei.