In general, our expectation is that the Chinese government should be respecting international agreements that are made, and that would extend to the WTO and all the international agreements that China has ascribed to.

I think there is a tendency of the Government of China to push the envelope beyond the normal range for interpretation of these agreements, and I think that we should be making it clear that we are not going to stand idly by and let that happen. With regard to article 45, raised by Mr. Garneau, it's the same sort of thing. There is no question that when the Government of China and the Government of Britain were representing to the Government of Canada how this thing was going to pan out, it was not going to be a sham election in 2017 but an election where Hong Kong people would be able to freely elect representatives of the aspirations of the people in Hong Kong so that they could maintain the character of Hong Kong and the existing laws and practices, including freedom of speech and freedom of expression, until the 50 years were over. That's the way we understood it, and that's the way it was represented to us by the Chinese.

Do Hong Kong people who are claiming that they support the agreement genuinely want to see their human rights limited? How many people want their Internet access limited? How many members of the Roman Catholic Church would like to see the Roman Catholic Church become an illegal organization, as it is in the People's Republic of China, where they won't recognize the authority of a foreign figure, the Pope, and have to belong to something called the Catholic Patriotic Association?

People yearn to enjoy the benefits of citizenship and to be free, and I think that this is what we want to preserve in Hong Kong, because we can. In terms of China, we don't have an international agreement that compels the Chinese government to treat its people in any particular way beyond the normal expectations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but its sovereignty over Hong Kong is limited by the joint declaration. We endorse that declaration, and if we don't hold them to it, the Chinese government will continue accordingly in its relations with Canada, which is that we don't expect them to maintain the promises they make to us.

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