Mr. Speaker, I wish I were both a foreign affairs critic and a foreign affairs expert in order to answer the member's questions. Certainly my colleague has raised some very important issues.
I have followed the issue of persecution of people around the world based on their beliefs quite carefully over the years. The main reason is that members of my family escaped from Russia because they were not allowed to express their faith and live their faith in an open way in that country. They were not willing to be participants in the revolution and hence were considered to be enemies of the revolution. Many of our people were summarily killed because of that.
I cannot believe that in our world there are governments that think it is their moral right to suppress people's thoughts. In Canada, the United States and most of the western world, people enjoy a large degree of freedom, although even then it is attacked. For example, during the last election in our own country statements were made by our political adversaries which really went over the top and unfairly attacked people of faith. We had better be careful before we arrogantly say that we in Canada are in a position to tell China how to run its affairs unless there is some improvement in our own country in that regard.
As we build a relationship with China I hope that more and more we will interact with the Chinese and our values will hopefully catch on. That is the best way. Values are caught, not taught. It is much more important for people to see what they can do. At the same time however, I am certainly supportive of sanctions as appropriate.
I think of a country like Sudan. The oppression of its people is immense. Why we are not rising in international protest against what that government is doing to its people is a mystery to me. That certainly is part of it.
The member also asked how this trade agreement would actually affect the ordinary folks of China. I am not terribly knowledgeable about this, but it is my impression that probably the most oppressed people in that country are the agricultural people. In many cases they do a lot of very hard, physical, tedious work without adequate equipment for a very low income.
In our trade agreements perhaps we could sell China some of our farm equipment. Perhaps some of our manufacturers could go over there and design equipment especially for the fields in China. That would help the Chinese by easing their workloads and hopefully improving their income.
Nothing should be automatically assumed. It ought to be monitored. As our relationship grows with China it will give us more and more moral right to be in there and to speak up when we see abuses and different parts of that society being suppressed and oppressed.