Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate today. I will be splitting my time with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
I would like to start off with a couple of technical matters and I would ask the previous speaker to take note of my suggestions.
The motion before the House has two aspects to it. The first part requests the granting of observer status to Taiwan with regard to the meetings of the WHO, and the second part calls upon the government to actively urge other member states and non-governmental organizations to support that goal. There are two separate items involved here and the second item may be problematic in terms of the best approach in pursuing this issue.
Given the sensitivity regarding the sovereignty matters of mainland China, this would cause some difficulty for some members who may want to vote in favour of observer status but who may want to vote against the second part of the motion. Rather than asking for the consent of the House at this time to split the motion, I raise it for the consideration of opposition members so that maybe prior to the vote they would consider recommending to the House to split the motion.
I noticed in some of the briefing notes that there is reference to the World Health Organization, the WHO, and also the World Health Assembly, the WHA. I have asked the question of other members, and it is not clear at this time, but it appears in the context of those notes that the WHO is a UN agency. It is an organization with a constitution with no provisions for observer status.
However, when the WHA hosts meetings or its members have meetings, it is called an assembly. It is the World Health Assembly and it is an assembly of those members. There are certain groups, such as the International Red Cross, Rotary Clubs, the Red Crescent, the PLO and others who have, by consent of the members, been permitted to be observers at the World Health Assembly to discuss various issues.
On a technical matter, it is interesting to note that most of the information we have before us calls for observer status for Taiwan to the WHO when in fact nothing exists. The motion may be technically out of order because it is not possible.
For the purposes of this issue, we should talk about the importance of having the involvement of Taiwan in the international community of those who have a common bond of interest in terms of global health.
I have had a great deal to do with the Canada-Taiwan parliamentary group over the last number of years. I have had an opportunity to travel to Taiwan on a number of occasions as a delegate. I have taken the opportunity to carefully inform myself about the sensitivities of the one China policy and about mainland relations between Taiwan and China. This is an extremely complex and sensitive issue. It would be totally inappropriate to introduce into this debate aspects related to those sovereignty questions. Canada has talked about our own sovereignty and how we as a sovereign nation must make certain decisions. When we get into those matters, it is for that country to make decisions.
This is a very unique situation. Taiwan split from mainland China in 1971. We must consider that China has about 1.4 billion people whereas Taiwan has about 23 million people, less than 2%. Taiwan's economy is 40% as large as the entire economy of mainland China. Even though Taiwan's population is less than 2% of the population of mainland China, its economy has been referred to as an economic miracle.
That is why countries around the world have extraordinary economic relationships with Taiwan. Taiwan had, the last time I was there, about seven to ten products that were rated number one in the world, mostly on the high tech side, so it is not a surprise to me that Taiwan was included recently in the World Trade Organization as a major trading entity. That did not threaten anyone, including China, simply because it made a great deal of sense to have a very large economy participating in the dialogue in a global economy.
However, there is another aspect to that. When we have a global economy it means that we have people who are globally mobile. It is this mobility that is the issue and I think that is what we should be discussing here. In China I believe there have been about 5,000 infections identified, as a round number, and there have been approximately 315 deaths. That is less than 10% of the infections that resulted in death. In Taiwan there are 570 infections but 72 deaths, so wait a minute, the proportion of deaths to infections is much more. Something is wrong there.
We have Chinese citizens, residents who are living on the mainland, who are also living on Taiwan. We have 400,000 Chinese business people from Taiwan who are doing business on the mainland. How is it that the number of deaths per infection is so much higher per capita in Taiwan than it is on the mainland? Somebody's numbers are not right, I would suggest.
It goes further. I think we have missed the point in the debate with regard to the SARS health issues we are talking about. Incidents of SARS in China in Guangdong province were detected in November 2002, but it was not until March 10, 2003, that the outside world was advised about SARS. China is a full member of the WHO. It interacts. It is there. It has access to all of what is offered by the WHO and to all its members, but the incidence of SARS was not revealed to the outside world for months.
I am concerned about why that happened, because as a consequence of that SARS spread around the world and people died. This is a very serious question and I hope the WHO will be able to deal with how one of its members was able to withhold this important information, which has affected the lives of the people of Taiwan, the lives of the people who died in Canada and the lives of people around the world where these hot sites are. It is a question that is ancillary to what we are discussing here today, but it concerns me a great deal. Why would one want observer status in an organization that cannot even rely on its own membership to play ball? It is a really interesting question, but I will not pursue it any further.
I have heard many members say that Taiwan could have everything it wanted and does get everything it wants even without observer status. Why is it, then, that the United States, the European Union and Japan all have come out in favour of Taiwan having observer status at the WHO? This is a problem. We cannot deny the fact that there must be something there. I believe Taiwan has something to contribute. We have 150,000 Taiwanese travelling to Canada each year. We have 15,000 students from Taiwan in Canada. It is our 40th largest trading partner and it is our 4th largest Asia-Pacific trading partner. It is part of our economy as well. It is part of the Canadian family. If it has a problem, that problem affects Canada as well.
I think it is in our best interests for Taiwan to be part of the observer network of the WHO and I would hope that members would consider it in the context of global health issues. I think that is the gist of the debate today. I ask members to seriously consider Canadian health issues in this global perspective.