Canada-China Relations committee  I agree with Guy on the Taiwan question. It's got a lot to say for it. On Hong Kong, I would say that we also need to be more robust in our discussion with the Hong Kong government. I live there, and the Hong Kong government has often not stood up in the way it should stand up to protect the rights of Hong Kong citizens, including 300,000 Canadians.

Canada-China Relations committee  They are very widespread.

Canada-China Relations committee  Of course.

Canada-China Relations committee  Yes, and I think that, except for the last few years, personal freedoms in China grew substantially between 1978 and 2014. The legal system evolved in positive ways. It hasn't gotten to where we would have liked it to get. These were indirect changes brought about, in part, by their entering the WTO.

Canada-China Relations committee  I wouldn't change our general balance of focus. Always we should be arguing for both and we should be trying to encourage positive change in China, which does serve our interest, which is to have China become a greater and more law-abiding part of the global community. We can't be unidimensional in this.

Canada-China Relations committee  It was interests-based. It is in our interests to have our universities working together with China on finding scientific solutions to agricultural problems. It's in our interests to have our security agencies working with their Chinese counterparts on international crime and the flow of fentanyl and other drugs.

Canada-China Relations committee  I would embark—not today, because we have problems in our relationship—on encouraging China to enter into the comprehensive partnership we have in Asia with other countries, probably as a first step—

Canada-China Relations committee  Yes.

Canada-China Relations committee  I'll go quickly because I'll follow up from what I was saying. In the past, we have funded Canadian studies in Chinese universities. Our embassy has engaged in social media in reaching out to the people. Our network of diplomatic posts in China is large. Having our diplomats go out to universities and go out to the centres that are the most open towards change in China is something that we should be doing all the time.

Canada-China Relations committee  I'm going to answer that right away, because that particular former diplomat has been spouting that for a long time.

Canada-China Relations committee  He wasn't actually a career diplomat, and he is wrong. When I was ambassador, Guy Saint-Jacques was my number two, and he ran a political-economic section of maybe 10 people. There wasn't a single person there who didn't speak Chinese and who didn't have his own networks and didn't reach out into the community.

Canada-China Relations committee  It was the policy of every government that I served. I started looking at China intensely in the 1980s, when Mr. Mulroney was prime minister. That got upset for a little while because of the Tiananmen crisis, but he started to re-engage before the end of his time, and then Mr. Chrétien's and so on.

Canada-China Relations committee  We must be very strict that any financing that comes into the country comes into it in ways that are transparent, and also that it is used for the purposes for which it is intended. I am sure you will talk to university presidents. I have met with university presidents to talk about this, to make sure there are no strings attached about what the financing does.

Canada-China Relations committee  Something I would encourage you to look at is an actual tightening of the Investment Canada Act. We now have rules that insist that takeovers by state-owned companies act like Canadian public corporations in terms of transparency and activity. I think that can be tightened without any damage to the inflow of foreign investment.

Canada-China Relations committee  We have many interests in China, absolutely. On the export file alone, agricultural and raw materials are very important. We also have a lot of services interests in China. China also has significant interests in our country. If they start taking specific measures against our goods, we should absolutely look at taking specific retaliatory measures.