Mr. Speaker, I relish this opportunity to stand and talk again about a topic that I raised in the House on September 27, which was Canada's Asia Pacific strategy.
As a result of my own experiences working in the Asia Pacific region over the years, I have a continuing interest in this topic. I worked and lived in Indonesia, I worked and lived in the Philippines. I have done study tours and other kinds of exchanges and projects in other places in the Asia Pacific region. However, my specific reason for raising this topic was sparked by my attendance at the Business Council of B.C. Asia Pacific conference, which was called “Realizing Canada's Asia Pacific Opportunity”.
I would say, with regret, I was the only member of Parliament who was at this conference in Vancouver. Because the House was in session, we could not all be there, but it would have been very educational l think, particularly for members of the government, to be there and hear what was said about its Asia Pacific strategy.
This was a gathering of business leaders, not leftists, not critics of the government, but people working in business in the Asia Pacific region. The Minister of Heritage did come and give a short speech about the Asia Pacific strategy, but as I said, otherwise I was the only one there through the conference.
The keynote speaker was the president of the Asia Pacific Foundation, Mr. Yuen Pau Woo, who complimented the government on two parts of its Asia Pacific strategy. He said that it had done a good job in expanding our forestry exports, in particular to China. He said that the government had a good focus on infrastructure development to help improve our port facilities to encourage trade. However, what he went on to say that this was not enough for a true strategy to develop Canada's trade relations over the next years with the Asia Pacific. He emphasized that there was a real need for an Asia Pacific strategy which focused on human capacity development.
He was really talking about three things.
First, he said that Canada needed to identify and build on its comparative strengths. He said that the government seemed to believe it had done that at the Asia Pacific strategy when it focused on energy and resources. However, what he said, very interestingly, was he thought we were missing the most important comparative advantage that we had in Asia, and that was the depth of our human connections. In Canada we have a very large Chinese Canadian community. We have a very old Japanese Canadian community. We have a very new and growing Filipino Canadian community. On the west coast, we have a very strong Korean Canadian business community.
He said that the narrow focus on infrastructure and resources missed the biggest opportunity we had, which is to develop and strengthen those personal contacts that will actually lead to further business opportunities.
The second thing he said was that Canada was failing to recognize Asia as the region which was the new power centre of the world and that we needed to develop our cultural and not just our trade understanding of Asia.
Third, very specifically in the area of human capacity building, he said that Canada needed to build our network of human relationships. We do that through language training, cross-cultural communication training, international business education and in building those enduring human relationships, through exchange of international students, through study tours. Those kinds of things were completely absent from the government's Asia Pacific strategy.
Therefore, I rose to ask the question of the minister as to why we had this narrow focus and when would the government turn to this broader human capacity and relationship building strategy that business leaders so overwhelmingly endorsed in Vancouver on September 23.