Madam Speaker, it is an honour to be in the House once again. As this is my first time giving prepared remarks, I would like to thank the people of Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill for electing me once again. This time I ran as a Conservative, and I am so pleased that they saw fit to send me back here as a Conservative. I am humbled by the opportunity. I take this responsibility very seriously, and I want to thank all the volunteers and all of the people who supported me from across the country. I would also like to thank my family, without whom I would truly be lost.
We are here to today to talk about a very important motion for a very important point in our history. The Canada-China relationship is probably the greatest diplomatic challenge of our time for Canada. That is why we are proposing the composition of a special committee.
We need a special committee to examine and review all aspects of the Canada-China government relationship because we have standing committees and they are focused on individual subject matter areas. These include foreign affairs, international trade, official languages, and health and well-being. They have many other things that they need to study as well. We want to ensure that those other committees have the opportunity to study the things within their mandate that are important to Canada. However, regarding something of this magnitude, complexity and breadth and depth of scope, we need to examine and review all aspects from foreign affairs, to health and safety, cybersecurity and defence. The only way that we can look at it from a cross-functional perspective is by having a special committee.
That is why we are proposing it. Why is the Canada-China relationship important now? What really is at stake?
In the last five years, we have seen an incredibly rapid deterioration of the relationship. We have seen everything from wrongful and arbitrary imprisonment to pressures on our trade agreements. China buys $4.7 billion of agricultural products from Canada, yet at the moment it is not honouring our trade agreements and punishing our canola farmers. That affects everyday lives. Everyday Canadians are being impacted by the relationship and the failed approach to that relationship.
We are also seeing that we have foreign state-owned resource companies, from natural resources to technology companies, and there is a concern about whether we can protect the viability and the national security interests of Canada. We have seen cyber-attacks from the Chinese government on our Canadian government departments. We are worried about the potential for influence, interference and spying in our telecommunications networks with the introduction of Huawei.
Other countries have taken the step of banning Huawei from their internal communication networks for those very reasons. At the same time, Canada needs to have the opportunity to have a robust discussion, examination and review to understand whether that is the course of action that we need to take.
Everyday Canadians are also facing challenges from the Canada-China relationship with respect to health and safety. We find that we have an overwhelming number of illicit drugs, fentanyl and others, coming into the country and literally killing our citizens. We need to find a way to stop that and prevent that from happening, but the only way we can do that is if we understand the size and the scope of how it is coming in and where it is coming from. We know that the United States has done an initial review. There was a 60 Minutes documentary talking about just how serious this is, leading to a congressional committee that said that the highest number of illicit drugs, including fentanyl, is coming from China into the United States.
Do we have a similar problem here in Canada?
We can talk about defence and security. I mentioned Huawei but there are other mechanisms where our telecommunications, information, banking, and infrastructure are under threat. Money laundering is also possibly an issue that we need to look at, as well as other aspects of espionage.
The Chinese military is the second-largest investment behind the United States at $250 billion. That is significant and something to be concerned about. Some of those investments are going into icebreakers and submarines, which we are finding in Canada's Arctic. The Chinese government is talking about itself as a near-Arctic state. That is an interesting proposal. We would need to understand how that would affect our sovereignty, our security and our ability to leverage the opportunities that Canada's Arctic offers. These are serious issues that affect Canadians not only today but into the future. We need an opportunity to review them and examine them in depth.
China is building 3,000 kilometres of pipeline. It is looking at massive expansion in the belt and road initiative and in many ways having the opportunity to leverage certain countries simply by making investments in their infrastructure.
Those are the types of things that we are competing with. If we are not able to understand how we are going to leverage the resources that we have here, then we are not going to be able to compete in the future.
Then we look at climate change. There is no question that climate change is very important. We need to take action on climate change. China's emissions have gone up exponentially and continue to do so while Canada, although still expanding our economy, is not seeing the same rapid rise in our emissions. We are working to bring them down and we have some of the most advanced, highly technological and environmentally friendly approaches. These opportunities would allow us to help China look at how it can reduce its emissions. This is also another opportunity for us to examine and review how we can best leverage.
Why now? Obviously we have seen a deterioration. We have a Liberal government and a Prime Minister that admires the Chinese government and does not have a strategy and a plan to actively move forward on improving the relationship.
We as parliamentarians are entrusted with the responsibility to have these in-depth reviews and conversations. That is why we have parliamentary committees. This is exactly what we should be doing as parliamentarians. We should bring in experts and stakeholders, and bring Canadians along with us as we do this important review.
That is why we need this committee. That is why it should be an all-party committee. That is what we as parliamentarians can do to fulfill our role. It needs to be an interdisciplinary committee so that we can look at all aspects, understand the complexities and the balances, and make strategic improvements for all Canadians.
