Canada-China Relations committee  Yes, this is fiction. Even the Quebec Superior Court, about 18 years ago, in François Parent's action against Singapore Airlines Limited, the Civil Aeronautics Administration of Taiwan, said that it was diplomatic fiction and that the courts were not required to maintain it. Our entire society does not need to maintain it.

Canada-China Relations committee  The court said it only applied to this very particular case, because a plane had crashed at Taipei airport. Mr. François Parent had sued the Taiwan Civil Aeronautics Administration. The Quebec Superior Court was obliged to decide whether Taiwan was a state or not. It did in fact decide and hold that, in this context, Taiwan was a state.

Canada-China Relations committee  I think this conversation has been going on for a while. What often gets overlooked is that we have decided.... Actually, when the secretary for external affairs Mitchell Sharp negotiated with China, the Chinese agreed to this framework of neither endorsing nor challenging. Sometimes I think we don't have to always do it publicly, but we have to remind the Chinese that we don't endorse their claims over Taiwan.

Canada-China Relations committee  I think the way we do that is by engaging them wherever we can, and often by working on things where we have values in common—on the indigenous issues, for example. Both countries have same-sex marriage and LGBT rights. There's a woman president and there's a high percentage of women legislators, so on feminist issues, our feminist foreign policy should have something there.

Canada-China Relations committee  That's absolutely correct. We've been sending these delegations to Taiwan since the 1970s, and many, many countries send these delegations to Taiwan. They're quite routine. I think we have to continue doing that.

Canada-China Relations committee  I don't have a when. Recently the U.S. government has been saying some things. They used to say 2049. Then it was 2027. Now they're saying maybe 2023 or maybe later this year. I don't think it's really my place to try to figure out when they're going to do that. I think what we need to do instead of trying to think about when they're going to do that is try to make sure we can keep them pushing that back as much as we can.

Canada-China Relations committee  Basically, we're making the world that we live in with the agreements we make, so I definitely agree with him about having closer relations with Taiwan all across the board—with FIPAs, with people-to-people relations, with relations between universities in Taiwan and other universities and even with the work of the Presbyterian church in Taiwan or the United Church of Canada.

Canada-China Relations committee  I think Canada was instrumental in getting China into the United Nations system. A big part of that was the argument that excluding them from things is a threat to world peace. We brought them into it with the assumption that having them join the world system would lead to world peace and there would be a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan Strait issues.

Canada-China Relations committee  Obviously that's a very difficult question to answer. It will take a lot of discussion in Canada about that. I hope I'm not being too hopeful. I think that it would be premature right now to do that. I think even those military exercises in August were not so threatening that we would need to do that yet.

Canada-China Relations committee  It's Dr. Simon.

Canada-China Relations committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm the coholder of the chair of Taiwan studies at the University of Ottawa. I've lived in Taiwan for over 10 years, which has included five years of research in indigenous communities, where people are very grateful for 150 years of Canada-Taiwan relations that brought them Presbyterian and Catholic missions.