Madam Speaker, certainly it is charming and touching that we have people to people contacts and cultural things. However, that hardly deals with the issue. The issue is really about when we will have a nation to nation interaction with the democracy of Taiwan.
We have this bizarre situation where literally hundreds of thousands of people come from Taiwan to Canada, and back to Taiwan from Canada, and Canada will not support the country's admission to the WHO. Disease knows no global or jurisdictional boundaries, yet we have no protocols between the two countries.
We are in this bizarre position of where we say we support democracies but in fact we are supporting a dictatorship.
I put it to the hon. member again that as charming and touching as it might be for all of these people to people contacts, we need government contacts.