FAIT Committee Report

Supplementary Opinion of the Bloc Québécois

The Bloc Québécois supports without hesitation all of the findings and recommendations contained in the report of the Subcommittee on International Trade, Trade Disputes and Investment entitled Economic Relations between Canada and Asia. This said, we consider it most unfortunate that the report addresses such important issues as human rights only superficially.

A number of witnesses stated that it would be difficult for us to address questions pertaining to economic relations between Canada and the Asia-Pacific region without reference to the issues of human rights and major poverty-related problems. Despite significant efforts by certain countries, such as the People’s Republic of China, tangible results in the area of human rights and freedoms have yet to be seen. Thousands of individuals, in particular, Falun Gong practitioners, are still being detained in Chinese jails on highly questionable grounds and in deplorable conditions.

The case of Burma (Myanmar) is even more striking, particularly in light of the unjustified internment of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Ky. The Bloc Québécois supports without reservation the government policy on Burma to curtail contact as much as possible with military authorities and to discourage Canadian businesspeople from doing business there.

All the members of the Subcommittee recognize these indisputable findings; however, not all are particularly keen to refer to them openly. Accordingly, most of the Subcommittee members have preferred to eliminate explicit reference to real situations, favouring instead the approach chosen in the end: to refer indirectly and in veiled terms to what the most elementary judgment and candour should have obliged us to address much more directly and openly. Instead, of holding to principles that would brook no compromise, we preferred to bury our heads in the sand.

This is why the Bloc Québécois believes that the report should have contained at least two sentences more, one of which had been included in the preliminary versions of this report. The two sentences in question would appear at the end of paragraph 3.20, just before recommendation 7. The passage should have read as follows: “The only exceptions would be in cases such as that of Burma (Myanmar), where human rights abuses have prompted Canada to actively discourage trade. Although they unreservedly support the goal of increasing trade relations between Canada and the Asia-Pacific region, the Subcommittee members have expressed concerns about the state of human rights in a number of countries in the region, such as the People’s Republic of China.”