Mr. Speaker, we certainly agree with the report and the study in the Senate.
There is another class of citizen that falls similarly into this category. I refer in this case specifically to Hussein Celil. In 2006 he was picked up in Uzbekistan, and given the terms of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization between Uzbekistan, China and Kyrgyzstan, he was extradited to China. He had absolutely no consular access and was summarily tried and sentenced to jail for some 15 years.
Incidentally, he is a Canadian citizen. He is a Uighur, a Muslim. He is an imam who lived in Burlington, Ontario with his family and has a mosque in Hamilton, Ontario.
I remember going to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the day to ask him about the case. He said that it dealt with consular affairs, which were on another floor, as if Foreign Affairs had nothing to do with consular affairs. That is exactly how this happens. They delayed and denied there were problems. It was not until this really broke and everything was over that the Prime Minister ran into the President of China in a corridor at an APEC summit and raised it casually and said I was doing the job.
The issue is that many Canadian citizens have not had the support and the representations of their government, and it appears that this is a matter of failure to appreciate the international conventions, the Geneva conventions and, in fact, our commitment to protecting and defending human rights.
I would like the member's comments.