Mr. Chair, a former deputy minister has taken the rather unusual step of writing an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail to talk about what he perceives to be a major deterioration in the political relationship between Canada and China. This is a relationship, I might to say to hon. members opposite, that Mr. Diefenbaker started by significantly opening up trade along with the minister of agriculture, Alvin Hamilton, back in the days of Mao Zedong. He did not seem to have any difficulty doing business in that way, and neither did Mr. Pearson, Mr. Trudeau, and Mr. Mulroney, the former Prime Minister of Canada.
I would like to ask the minister once again, does he not see the folly of insisting that we either choose the human rights route or the economic route, and does he not believe that, as the minister said in his opening remarks, “it is a matter of Canada pursuing both its interests and its values”? I would ask him: Does he not see the importance of the Prime Minister understanding the necessity to do that with respect to China?