Madam Speaker, I want to thank again the hon. member for bringing this motion forward. This is a timely motion and I want to congratulate him for his initiative.
I am speaking in two capacities: one in my capacity as the member for Scarborough East and also in my capacity as chair of the Canada-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Group.
As recent public health issues have disclosed, health knows no political boundaries. It is therefore quite foolish to leave certain jurisdictions out in the cold while arguing about status. Taiwan occupies a bit of ethereal status in the world. We all know it exists but we just cannot mention it out loud.
For most purposes, this works. Taiwan is part of the WTO but it has kind of a special trading entity status. It is part of APEC and is recognized as an economic entity. Therefore for the purposes of money and trade we seem to be able to find where Taiwan exists but for the purposes of health it has no status.
The only link therefore appears to be economic. Therefore I would like to suggest that really it is in Canada's best interest economically to recognize Taiwan for its desire to enter into this status of observer at the World Health Organization, and indeed it is in the world's economic interest.
In Toronto we have recently had a graphic lesson of the economics of health. The SARS scare has literally shaved off millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, off the GDP of the greater Toronto area and probably will in turn shave percentage points off the GDP of our nation.
The equation is rather simple. If we do not have health, we will not have any money. People do not shop, they do not travel when they are afraid of getting sick. Therefore, no shopping, no money, no GDP, no economy.
I do not know what the impact of SARS will be on Taiwan, but it will be an order of magnitude several times greater than that of Canada. The impact has been far deeper and far harder in relative and absolute terms than the impact on Canada. Even today's newspapers detail new deaths and fresh cases both in Taiwan and in Toronto. That is all the more reason Taiwan should be included in the WHO instead of being treated as an international non-person.
We appear to be only too happy to trade with Taiwan, for example, take its money, but when it comes to recognition even if it is to our benefit, then we have a curious case of blindness.
How did we get to this contradictory state? I suggest it all goes back to Prime Minister Trudeau's recognition of the People's Republic of China as the rightful representative of the Chinese people. During the negotiations, the prime minister was pressed to recognize China's claim to Taiwan. The prime minister, very cleverly I would suggest, would only go so far as to take note of the Chinese claim. I make the distinction that there is a great of daylight between taking note of somebody's position and actually accepting someone's position.
The take note policy formulation was acceptable to the PRC at the time and many other countries, including the United States of America. This in turn paved the way for President Nixon's historical visit to China.
Taiwan in a monumental blunder withdrew itself from the United Nations in protest, which in turn paved the way for the PRC to flex its diplomatic muscles as and when it needed on other countries and force countries to start to backtrack on this take note position. That has resulted in some evolutions and distortions of the one China policy, which really has come to mean we do not do anything with respect to Taiwan without checking with the PRC first. We then calibrate the cost and decide on how much we want to irritate the PRC.
One of the flash points is the WHO. Our position is hypocritical. At least we are joined in our hypocrisy by quite a number of other nations. There does seem to be hope however as the United States has recently come out firmly in favour of Taiwan's admission and the EU seems to be leaning that way.
However if we play this right, we can successfully irritate everybody instead of doing the right thing and recognize Taiwan for what it is, a fully functioning state with legitimate aspirations to join multinational organizations which are designed to help the world function in a better way.
Why should we care if in fact this little island has a big problem with its enormous neighbour? The problem is that all of our inconsistencies will come home to roost one day.
The politics of the PRC-Taiwan are getting to be too serious for the health of the rest of the world. Reluctantly, the PRC has acknowledged to the rest of the world that it has been a little less than forthcoming about its SARS problem. Clearly it understated the problem by several orders of magnitude. Given the PRC's tendencies, in the words of the Wall Street Journal , to cover-up and deceive, we will probably never really know the magnitude of the problem until the crisis passes.
I remind members that this is a world health problem, not merely a Chinese problem or a Taiwanese problem. What happens there directly affects us and our constituents. I put it to members, visit any hospital in Toronto and see the results.
The source of much of the SARS outbreak in that part of the world and its understatement of the magnitude of the problem is, as one doctor put it, a little like having unprotected sex while knowing that one is HIV positive. The deceitful decision of the PRC to suppress information has a direct impact on the health of all of us and is literally costing us billions of dollars.
However it gets worse. Taiwan immediately and accurately reported its SARS outbreak to the WHO, which did not get reported initially because of pressure from the PRC, and then only later as a province of China. The WHO refused to send its health experts to Taiwan or to allow Taiwanese health experts to participate in developing their knowledge about the outbreak, therefore imperilling the health of the Taiwanese, the Chinese, the world at large and Canada in particular. This has to stop.
It is one thing for the PRC to imperil the health of its own citizens. However it is quite another thing to imperil the health of citizens of other nations. The world is too small for this kind of petty politics. It is particularly galling to have a cooperative state like Taiwan shut out by the political muscle of China, a less than cooperative state. This is not the first time.
In 1999 Taiwan had a devastating earthquake, killing 2,400, injuring 10,000 people and leaving over 100,000 people homeless. Taiwan needed the WHO. Time is crucial in a matter like that, and the WHO spent useless hours and days working out ways to deliver unofficial and indirect assistance to Taiwan.
Parliament must speak on this issue. We say that we value democracy and the rule of law. Taiwan is an economic tiger but it is also a democratic miracle. It has emerged from the gloom of a brutal repressive dictatorship into the sunlight of a vigorous multi-party democracy. Yet when Taiwan requests a legitimate form of recognition, we turn our back on her. We do not walk the walk; we only want to talk the talk.
I urge my colleagues to support this resolution as it would get Canada a little closer to walking the talk.