Mr. Speaker, this being my first full speech in the House, I would like to thank the people of St. John's East for giving me the honour of representing them once again in the House of Commons. I had an involuntary sabbatical during the last Parliament, but I am very happy to be back again. I appreciate the honour given me by the people of St. John's East and I thank them for it.
This is a very important resolution that has been brought before the House and I want to thank the member for Durham for bringing it forward. I think there has been some discussion about the appropriateness of having a special committee in this situation. I think the member and the opposition, through their opposition day motion, have brought forth something that is of concern to many Canadians.
The incarceration of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor has continued for a full year after an arbitrary arrest. They experience very severe conditions of want and a failure to have proper advice from legal counsel or contact with their family. This is a horrendous situation that I think Canadians from coast to coast to coast are very concerned about.
Canadians are also concerned about a lot of other issues, not only in terms of our relationship with China but also about what is going on inside of China. The protests and demonstrations in Hong Kong have been front page and television news for many months now. Canadians are concerned as to what is happening to the people of Hong Kong, Canadian citizens in Hong Kong, human rights in Hong Kong and the willingness of the Government of China to follow through on its “one country, two systems” promise to the world. That is something that we want our government to be fully involved in, as has been pointed out.
We have had a significant problem, only in the last year or so, with respect to diplomatic endeavours. When Mr. McCallum was appointed to China as our ambassador, things were very different. That turned out to be a very inappropriate appointment, partly because of the inappropriateness of the things that Mr. McCallum has said. It is interesting to notice that relationships such as Canada had with China can go south so quickly, and the Liberal government was not able to manage that relationship effectively.
We have seen in the last election that the Canadian public also decided to pass judgment on the actions of the Canadian government and the Prime Minister. The public did not think it was a good idea for the Liberals to have total control over Parliament and they wanted to give them a little help. The Canadian public, in its wisdom, said that Liberals should not have a majority. They felt that there should be a better balance and an opportunity to co-operate and that the Liberals should have to listen to the other side and be willing to work collaboratively to make Canada work best both internally and in our dealings with other countries, in this case China.
This motion would actually put into effect the kind of collaboration that Canadians wanted to see in the government in Canada. We still have a Liberal government and we still have the same Prime Minister, but we also have other voices at the table that are going to be able to have some influence.
The member for Montarville just went through details of every section of this proposed committee, including the structure of the committee and what the mandate is going to be in terms of our entire relationship with China. It is not just about the two individuals who are incarcerated, but also our trade relationship. The motion states, “all aspects of the Canada-China relationship including, but not limited to consular, economic, legal, security and diplomatic relations.”
That is an opportunity for a special committee to look at that whole relationship and see if there are ways that we can improve that relationship beyond what is being done now and in different ways. There may well be things that are being overlooked. There may be other opportunities. If the Prime Minister comes, or the Minister of Foreign Affairs comes, or our ambassador comes, it may be a way for our committee, through its actions and in the proper tone, to set up a new relationship and send a signal to China about what we want and how we might achieve it in ways that we could not do in any other way.
I cannot prejudge what will happen in the committee. I have to say we have some concerns. In the speech from the member for Montarville, we heard hints that we do not necessarily want to see an opportunity for a political battle between the opposition and the government or see finger pointing. That is not necessarily going to help the circumstances, so we have to be careful about that. As this motion goes forward today, I look forward to hearing from other members of the Conservative Party to see how they plan to do that.
It is one thing to be critical of the government's failures over the past couple of years, in particular over the last year with this particular crisis. Those failures are certainly obvious in many cases, including the failure to appoint an ambassador in a timely fashion. There are the difficulties that we have had with trying to ensure that there are appropriate responses. The Liberals did not move quickly enough to assure the Chinese government that our actions with respect to the arrest of Ms. Meng Wanzhou were appropriate in the context of our treaty relationship with the United States. That is something that could and should have been done very quickly, and there are other criticisms that can well be pointed against the government's actions over the past year.
However, at this point in time we have to decide how we move forward in our relationship with China. Is it possible to come up with ways and means of doing this that have not yet been tried? Obviously, whatever has been tried so far has not worked, so there is an opportunity here to find ways that might work and to develop ways to go forward.
One suggestion along the way is that perhaps we can come up with a protocol that might be agreed upon in terms of consular work in dealing with individuals who are arrested in China for various reasons, a protocol as to how Canada and China would deal with these matters. We similarly have an extradition treaty with the United States, but we might want to find ways of dealing with issues as they arise in terms of how prisoners are treated, to what extent they have access to legal counsel and other aspects. Moving forward, we can hardly expect them to follow our laws in all respects, but we could have an agreement as to how matters could go forward.
We have had other suggestions come forward. I do not know whether they were testing the waters, but there were suggestions that a prisoner exchange might be a good way of dealing with this. I do not think that was a very helpful suggestion, frankly. We are not dealing with the same kind of circumstances, and the analogy to the Cold War is not a good one. We do not want to see what is going on here between Canada and China and what is happening with China and the world developing into a standoff like the Cold War, which took place for such a long period of time.
The opportunity that this motion presents is for Canada and China to reset a relationship going forward to avoid some of the negative consequences that could come about. This is a positive opportunity but one that we have to be careful and cautious in implementing. It is going to require some significant restraint on the part of the official opposition and all the opposition in dealing with this issue.
We have to recognize that diplomatic relations are just that, diplomatic, and they have to be carried out in a spirit of willingness by all members in this House who might participate in this committee, and by all parties in this House, and that must be kept in mind in the operation of such a committee. Without that spirit of collaboration, there could be a danger that the relationship could be harmed. It is a leap of faith of the members of this House, a test of the notion of collaboration and a test of the maturity of this Parliament to be able to operate such a committee in a way that meets the needs of Canada in trying to find a solution, but it is also an opportunity for constructive criticism or at least for attempting to find out what does work and what does not work.
It is a positive and optimistic proposal. I do not think it is naive. I think we have to be concerned about not being too naive. We are dealing with a significant country with a very powerful place in the world and a very long history.
As was pointed out by the member for Durham when introducing his motion, we do have a long history of Canadian-Chinese relationships, as has been mentioned by a couple of members. Dr. Norman Bethune was very influential within China and very well respected by China. His work has been acknowledged in Canada. In fact, in Montreal, we will find a statue of him not far from Concordia University. If members are there, they should have a look at this very fine statue. We do have that history. Hopefully, we will have an opportunity of making it a positive part of future relations with China.
We have a complex relationship and significant trade relations with China. We have seen how disruption in that trade can so quickly and seriously affect Canadians, particularly, as we have seen, Canadian farmers with canola, soybeans, peas, beef and pork, which cost many millions of dollars and are still costing many millions of dollars to Canadians in the case of canola. Some of these issues have been resolved, but others are still outstanding. It is an important relationship and something we have to take very seriously.
It is a complex relationship, particularly as China has a political system that we are not satisfied with in terms of how it deals with human rights. We are not satisfied with the situation in Hong Kong. We are very sympathetic with the concerns of the demonstrators, and on their opportunity and desire to have peaceful demonstrations to seek influence on the future course of what will happen in Hong Kong. We recognize and support their efforts to have their own say in what is going on. We decry some of the tactics used by the police forces in dealing with these demonstrations.
Also, from a human rights perspective, concern for the Uighurs is extremely high in Canada. We have to find ways to put pressure in whatever way possible to seek to resolve some of these issues. We have long-standing concerns about Tibet as well.
These issues have been there for a long time and are not going to be fixed by this committee. I do not think we could have too high expectations. However, we can try to find a way to ensure that Canada is doing everything it can in this relationship to seek the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor as soon as possible. Dealing with this issue on the anniversary of their incarceration is paramount in my mind and, I think, in the minds of many Canadians, and certainly the families of these two individuals. All Canadians see this as something that needs to be resolved. One of these individuals is a Canadian diplomat who is on leave from the foreign service. He was working with the International Crisis Group, which is an important international agency. It is highly problematic that he or any Canadian should be subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment such as has happened.
I will conclude my remarks by saying that we will support this opposition motion with the cautions that have been laid down by me in my remarks here today.
