Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to bring up again a matter that was first discussed when I put the question to the Prime Minister on April 24 of this year. It was one of those rare occasions when I put a question to the Prime Minister and he answered it himself.
The question was to explore the contradiction between his government's position that in the Summit of the Americas, which deals with Latin America and Canada and the U.S., we would not allow Cuba to participate, and we joined the U.S. in this exclusion, while at the same time we are expanding our agreements for trade with China. We are expanding the access to Canadian resources for Chinese companies that are increasingly buying up Canadian energy resources and other resources. In answer to the question, the Prime Minister was, at best, attempting to be humorous, saying that China could not be in the Summit of the Americas because it is not in the Americas, and he went on to say that the Summit of the Americas was exclusively for countries that were recognized as democracies.
It weakens the Summit of the Americas to exclude a country as important to the region as Cuba, and we really are on thin ice here in terms of any kind of distinction that can be made in terms of human rights and reasons to exclude communist Cuba while embracing communist China. Having gone through records of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, I see clearly that Cuba is making far more progress than China at being open to, for instance, religious freedoms.
In Cuba in March there was an open mass in which Pope Benedict was able to perform a mass for Cuban Catholics with President Castro in the front row. In contrast, in China any Roman Catholics who wish to have services hold them in houses in private and are at risk of arrest or detention if they are caught. Certainly the most repressive region on earth, according to many of the reports, is within China, with what is happening now in Tibet with suppression of Tibetan monks and the Tibetan Buddhist religion. We also see repression of other religious groups in China, whether Falun Gong or others. Freedom of religion does not exist at all in China. Since the Olympics in China, Human Rights Watch reports there has been a greater crackdown on freedom of expression within China. Regarding the record on capital punishment, the Chinese government executes prisoners at a very alarming rate. On the other hand, Cuba has commuted the sentences of some people who were on death row, and as of 2010, which is the last year for which I could find statistics, there were no prisoners in Cuba on death row.
There is very clearly some reason that the government prefers communist China to communist Cuba. The obvious reason is that communist China is prepared to pour billions of dollars into the oil sands. However, I ask members opposite if this is sufficient grounds for Canada to sell away our principles, our concerns for human rights, our concerns for freedom of religion or our concerns that we exert ourselves on the world stage as partners with other nations. Surely we should invest in and trade with Cuba. We should also invest in and trade with China. However, it is very important for Canadians to ask how much of Canada we want China to own.
If we are to proceed with a greater relationship with China, we surely must see the text of the agreement that the Prime Minister has already signed with President Hu of China, so we know what rights the Chinese corporations will have to sue Canada whenever they do not like our laws.