Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member for Don Valley West engages in parliamentary friendship groups and many of these very informal social engagements that many MPs can engage in, but that is not a serious diplomatic effort on behalf of Canada.
In fact I am disappointed, because at the time the member was the parliamentary secretary for foreign affairs and he would have known that if he sent a few lowly functionaries or higher than that, a parliamentary friendship group, and the Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs were not seized with the matter, he was not showing seriousness regarding the relationship with China.
This is why last December, Conservatives and their leader asked the Prime Minister to engage personally, as Mr. McCallum said. His words were to engage personally to show how seriously Canada views the diplomatic dispute and the detention. Months later sending a parliamentary friendship-type group is not the way to show Canada how seriously we take the detention.