The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - The Uyghur Genocide

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprint. It is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:07.680 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, for the likes of Brock.

00:00:11.400 Really appreciate you showing up today to hear us and listen to us on this platform

00:00:16.420 on Facebook, but you can also download it and listen to it later on if you can't get

00:00:20.280 through it all today on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it,

00:00:25.040 it's out there. Together we can push back against the ever-moving Liberal agenda and

00:00:28.980 again. That's why we need you to like, comment, subscribe, share this program. Maybe there's

00:00:33.420 someone in your social media network that might be open to hearing the Conservative message

00:00:38.000 but may not have the opportunity to do so. By doing that, you can help us reach those people

00:00:43.820 and ensure that Erin O'Toole is the next Prime Minister of Canada. Great show lined up for 1.00

00:00:49.000 you today. I got to tell you, Canada is back, according to Justin Trudeau, as he fails to

00:00:53.420 show up yesterday for a vote in the House of Commons to recognize that genocide being committed

00:00:58.900 by the Communist Party of China, the government of China against the Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims.

00:01:05.340 To talk more about that, we have the foreign affairs critic, Michael Chong, the member of

00:01:09.920 Parliament for Halton, well, sorry, Halton, Wellington. I got that messed up.

00:01:15.960 Wellington, Halton Hills. Sorry, you're in my home province. I cannot believe I messed that up.

00:01:20.860 Anyways, Michael, again, thank you for coming once again on the show, good friend.

00:01:24.100 After that vote, you had to watch the Cabinet basically not even show up, the Prime Minister not

00:01:31.080 even log into his computer because he refuses to show up in Parliament. What are your thoughts?

00:01:36.780 Well, I think it demonstrates a complete lack of leadership. And it fits a broader pattern,

00:01:43.180 a pattern of failure on the Canada-China relationship. This government has taken a passive

00:01:50.800 approach, an equivocating approach in responding to China's threats. I don't believe it's working.

00:01:57.080 I think it's time for a new framework on China that includes the review of the entire bilateral

00:02:02.920 relationship that should result in Canada taking a much stronger stand on China in defense of our

00:02:10.000 interests and our values.

00:02:12.620 Now, it's my understanding a number of other countries have taken a similar approach to what

00:02:17.260 this motion in Parliament was yesterday, basically recognizing the fact that there are severe

00:02:22.440 problems in terms of a genocide going on against the Uyghurs. How does Justin Trudeau justify

00:02:30.120 not even showing up and standing in his place or logging into the computer and recognizing his stance

00:02:37.320 on this issue?

00:02:38.540 Well, I think it's an appalling lack of leadership. The government says that it likes to work

00:02:44.140 multilaterally. Well, the United States, through two consecutive U.S. administrations,

00:02:51.000 has recognized that a genocide is going on. And so the government should work multilaterally

00:02:56.100 with the United States to recognize this genocide and to work together to take actions

00:03:01.180 to prevent it. You know, the government often talks about how it believes in the international

00:03:06.320 rules-based order. Well, an integral part of that international rules-based order is the treaty system.

00:03:14.340 There's one treaty, the 1948 Genocide Convention, which was the very first international human

00:03:21.300 rights treaty adopted after the Second World War. That treaty was adopted in the aftermath of the

00:03:29.860 Holocaust, another genocide. And Canada was a leader in helping create and helping to 0.94

00:03:37.780 signify and ratify that treaty. And so the government is failing to uphold its obligations under

00:03:45.700 that law. That law requires signatories to the treaty to not only prevent a genocide, it calls on them to

00:03:54.820 actively punish the perpetrators of a genocide. And so the government isn't even upholding its own rhetoric

00:04:01.620 when it comes to upholding the international rules-based system.

00:04:06.340 And this, I just want to quickly, I don't know if they have the link, our production team. I threw a

00:04:11.540 quick last-minute link from a CBC article that, right, perfect timing, right to the rescue to talk this

00:04:17.540 motion away that it really wasn't Justin Trudeau's fault. I don't know if we have the link. I just thought

00:04:21.220 that was interesting. But it goes to a growing issue that we're having in Canada. I think that this

00:04:28.660 government is putting a lot of faith in the Communist Party of China, the governing party of China,

00:04:34.580 whether it be the vaccines we saw with Cansino, which caused Canada to fall well beyond the pack in

00:04:41.700 terms of getting vaccines available to Canadians. We're talking about the company that had communist 0.91

00:04:48.100 links to China that were going to provide security equipment to our embassies. You've seen potentially

00:04:54.500 Chinese soldiers being trained in Canada's Arctic, and the list goes on and on. And yet,

00:05:00.500 we have two Canadians still being held in China and are waiting any kind of decision on their fate.

00:05:08.020 Yeah. Frankly, their policy on China is a complete mess. It's full of contradictions,

00:05:16.580 it's full of incoherence, like I'll give you another example, is on Huawei. The government has

00:05:24.020 yet to make a decision on whether or not to ban Huawei from the build-out of Canada's 5G network.

00:05:31.540 And even though we adopted a motion in November calling on the government to do exactly that,

00:05:37.860 even though in May of 2019, then Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said a decision on Huawei

00:05:45.300 would be coming before the 2019 election. Several months later, he changed his mind. The government

00:05:51.300 said, he said in that summer before the election, but the decision would be coming after the 2019

00:05:57.460 election. Well, it's now been a year and a half since the 2019 election, and still no decision on

00:06:03.540 Huawei. You know, just one example of many of the complete incoherence and contradictions in the

00:06:09.860 government's approach on China. It's long past time for us to have a new framework on China,

00:06:16.580 one that looks at the entire bilateral relationship, and one that takes a stronger stand on its threats

00:06:21.940 to our citizens, our Canadian companies, and our values as we're seeing with the genocide taking

00:06:28.500 place in Xinjiang province. And we've already seen a number of other countries

00:06:32.900 deal with the Huawei issue. And you're right, Canada just does not seem to want to make a decision.

00:06:37.940 They just drag their feet and hope it goes away or something else happens. I don't know what they're

00:06:42.500 waiting for. That's another case in point. You know, the government says that it believes in

00:06:48.500 multilateralism. It says it believes in working multilaterally, but when given the opportunity to,

00:06:54.420 it often doesn't. And the example you've just highlighted demonstrates that. There is a network of

00:07:01.220 security and intelligence allies called the Five Eyes Network. It's made up of the United States,

00:07:06.260 the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada for decades. The Five Eyes have cooperated 0.62

00:07:11.940 together on intelligence and security issues in order to protect our national security. Four of the

00:07:18.740 Five Eyes, the United States, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, have taken steps to either ban Huawei from

00:07:24.660 the 5G network or to put restrictions on Huawei. And they've done that. Canada is the only country

00:07:33.300 that has not worked multilaterally to join four of our Five Eyes in order to do exactly that. So,

00:07:40.660 once again, another example of a contradictory approach to foreign affairs.

00:07:44.580 I often kind of see the messages on social media saying that Canada is kind of such a small player

00:07:51.460 in terms of its size economically. And, you know, we've all heard the arguments. But we've also seen

00:07:56.820 countries like Australia, as you mentioned, start to stand up to the Communist Party of China. And they

00:08:02.980 want the new framework, as you're talking about, that Canada should be developing and talking about

00:08:07.380 now. Or we could even say years ago, this should have been in production.

00:08:11.300 Well, that's a good, another good case in point. Australia is a smaller country than Canada,

00:08:16.500 smaller in population, and it's more reliant on trade with China. In fact, what China is,

00:08:23.860 what the United States is to Canada, China is to Australia in terms of trade. Yet the Australians have

00:08:30.820 taken a strong stand in defense of their interests and their values on China. Canada needs to take its

00:08:37.780 needs to take its cue from countries like Australia and come forward with this new

00:08:41.540 framework that takes that much stronger stand. I'm also wondering if Canadian taxpayers do realize

00:08:47.860 that quite a few of their dollars are going towards the Asian Infrastructure Bank, which is actually

00:08:53.140 creating pipelines in China, when we can't seem to get pipelines built right here at home providing

00:09:00.260 good paying jobs with some of the toughest environmental and labor standards anywhere in

00:09:05.060 the world. Yeah, another good example of the government's incoherence on China. I believe that

00:09:12.740 the government of Canada should withdraw from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

00:09:18.020 I think those public dollars could be much better put to use here in our own country. But more importantly,

00:09:25.940 I believe that this is the wrong foreign policy for Canada. This Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,

00:09:34.100 which is led by the Chinese government, its purpose is part of a broader push by the Chinese authorities to

00:09:41.140 extend their model of governance and their influence throughout the Indo-Pacific region.

00:09:46.500 And that influence and that model of governance is working directly against our interests and our

00:09:51.940 values. In fact, President Obama asked Canada not to join the Asian Infrastructure Bank because the

00:09:59.540 US administration at that time saw the threat it presented to the values that underpin the Western

00:10:06.660 alliance. And so my view is that the government has made a mistake and a conservative government

00:10:11.700 would withdraw from that investment bank and take a much more constructive role in defending democracy,

00:10:20.020 human rights and the rule of law in the Indo-Pacific region. Actually, Michael, you touched on something I

00:10:25.620 wasn't going to talk about, but I think it really needs to be highlighted on what China is doing on their

00:10:32.100 influence around the world. I look at Africa, for example, when the Communist Party comes into a

00:10:38.580 number of these countries that some of them are struggling and they'll promise them infrastructure,

00:10:42.980 but they won't just give them infrastructure. They'll exchange it for maybe drilling rights or mining

00:10:48.660 rights or port access or something like that. And it's really taking away some of these countries'

00:10:55.140 ability to get on their feet or use that infrastructure in a constructive manner, because in many cases,

00:11:00.340 the workers will be brought in from China that you're not really teaching the local population

00:11:04.500 on how to maintain or construct or build for the future. Their influence is growing and it's not

00:11:10.340 helping a lot of these countries that are struggling. That's right. And another aspect of what they're

00:11:14.980 doing is they're pushing massive infrastructure projects onto these developing countries, massive infrastructure

00:11:22.980 projects in ports, in highway infrastructure, in rail infrastructure and the like, all as an effort to

00:11:30.100 extend China's trade and investment into that part of the world. And they're doing it by offering debt

00:11:37.060 financing to these countries and frankly piling up a lot of unsustainable debt that these countries will have a

00:11:45.700 great deal of trouble repaying. And China is using that debt diplomacy as a way to further extend its

00:11:52.580 influence throughout that region and including, as you mentioned, in sub-Saharan Africa. We as democracies

00:12:00.180 need to start working more closely together to challenge this growing threat to our interests and to our values.

00:12:07.860 China is trying to export its authoritarian model that combines a capitalistic system with

00:12:17.060 authoritarianism in the form of a surveillance state. And we need to realize that that's what

00:12:24.180 they're doing throughout the region. And we need to counter that with effective foreign policy,

00:12:28.820 effective foreign aid policy, effective diplomacy that presents an alternative to these countries.

00:12:35.620 And that brings them into the international rules-based system that we have built after

00:12:40.980 the Second World War. And it's always important to remember that even the top people within the

00:12:48.020 Communist Party of China, within the government, they aren't the ones suffering. It's usually the people

00:12:52.580 who are suffering. You can look at Venezuela, you can look at any communist or socialist country.

00:12:57.220 The government always lives high while everyone else suffers the consequences.

00:13:02.660 That's right. You know, if we go back to the motion adopted yesterday in the House of Commons,

00:13:08.020 the suppression of the Uyghur people is a huge concern and should concern all of us.

00:13:15.300 They're using the full force of the authoritarian state combined with a capitalistic

00:13:22.260 system of technology to surveil each and every one of the 12 million Uyghur Muslim minority living in

00:13:33.060 Western China. In fact, reports indicate that they've built hundreds of detention camps that are housing

00:13:40.100 what is estimated to be up to 2 million people in incarceration. There's evidence of mass sterilization

00:13:47.620 going on of Uyghur women. There's evidence of sexual violence by state authorities against these women.

00:13:54.340 And there's reports that the 12 million Uyghurs living in Western China were required

00:14:00.420 some four years ago to report to their local police station to submit biometric data. In other words,

00:14:06.580 DNA sample, voice imprints, facial scans, and the technology the Chinese government has employed in

00:14:13.460 that region of China through very high-tech surveillance systems, which include Huawei,

00:14:21.700 Huawei's networks, is surveilling each and every one of these citizens 24 hours a day and tracking them in

00:14:30.500 databases in real time. Essentially what they're doing is treating the 12 million Uyghurs as human 1.00

00:14:37.220 guinea pigs for the development of a high-tech surveillance state that China believes it can 0.81

00:14:43.700 export throughout the world. This is the kind of challenge to our values that the genocide in Western 0.57

00:14:52.100 China is presenting. It's not only targeting 12 million people, it's also a threat to expanding this 1.00

00:14:59.700 kind of surveillance state across much of the world. How do we fight back against that? How do we fight

00:15:05.220 back against the surveillance state that I keep seeing on social media and comments that people

00:15:10.580 are concerned about because it is real? How do we fight back against that? Well, there's evidence,

00:15:15.940 for example, that up to half a million Uyghurs are being forced to pick cotton and are being forced

00:15:23.780 through a coercive state-run scheme to pick that cotton. There's evidence of forced labor in the

00:15:28.980 manufacture of certain products in the region. And so one of the things we can do is to ban products

00:15:34.900 from Xinjiang province on the assumption that forced labor is being used in their manufacture

00:15:40.580 and in their production. That's one thing we can do to make it clear that this is not acceptable and that

00:15:46.580 Canada will not allow this to stand. We can look at imposing Magnitsky sanctions on those officials

00:15:52.980 responsible for these gross human rights violations. So those are just some of the things that we can look

00:15:57.940 at in order to put an end to what is the largest incarceration of people since the Holocaust.

00:16:08.020 I've seen some pretty disturbing images and I know you too, you have too, Michael,

00:16:11.620 I'm sure our viewers and listeners have. The one that sticks out to me the most is the surveillance,

00:16:17.780 the satellite imagery of the Uyghurs being loaded into boxcars to be taken to camps. Every time I see that, 1.00

00:16:25.700 it just gives me shivers and I can't believe it's happening in this day and age.

00:16:33.060 There's always a back story to all of this and this is where values become really important. China

00:16:42.420 doesn't respect human rights. China believes that human rights are a pain. They believe that human rights

00:16:51.380 are an irritant and a naive approach to governing a society. And so in public they won't admit that,

00:16:58.100 but in private they think that our approach, Western democracy's approach to human rights,

00:17:04.820 is naive and a problem. What happened in Xinjiang was this. Starting in around 2009, up till about 2014,

00:17:18.260 there were ethnic tensions between the Uyghur ethnic minority and the Han Chinese majority.

00:17:24.820 Those ethnic tensions culminated in a series of clashes and terrorist attacks that were perpetrated

00:17:30.660 by the Uyghur minority, including one terrorist attack in Tiananmen Square in the heart of the Chinese

00:17:36.180 state. These terrorist attacks killed and injured hundreds of ethnic Han Chinese. But what happened next

00:17:44.500 was not justified. None of what the Uyghur people had done justifies what the Chinese authorities did next.

00:17:54.020 President Xi, who had come to power in 2012, indicated to, gave an order to Chinese authorities that

00:18:02.580 the full powers of dictatorship should be unleashed on the Uyghur people and that human rights should be 1.00

00:18:09.140 disregarded, criticizing democracies like the United Kingdom and prioritizing human rights over and

00:18:16.900 above their war on terrorism. And he instructed them to show, quote, absolutely no mercy, end quote,

00:18:25.380 and to unleash the full power of the authoritarian state to suppress the Uyghur people.

00:18:30.660 Flowing from that order, everything else happened. The genocide that's taking place right now comes

00:18:38.980 from those orders. And it is a threat to the values that we have long fought for for over 75 years,

00:18:48.500 an international rules-based system that's based on human rights and the rule of law. China does not

00:18:55.220 believe in that system and is developing, further developing their alternative of authoritarian

00:19:02.500 governance through a surveillance state within their own country and looking to export that model

00:19:07.940 throughout that region. Michael, that is pretty powerful stuff. I've kept you way over time. The

00:19:14.740 conversation has been very engaging. I don't want to end it, but I do. Unfortunately, question period is

00:19:20.420 coming up and we need to do some switching over. Any last comments? I always give the guests the last word.

00:19:27.460 You know, it's an increasingly turbulent and unstable world that we live in. And it's really

00:19:34.900 important that Canada have a coherent, comprehensive foreign policy that defends our interests, that defends

00:19:42.980 our values. In the long run, we have to always return to the principles and values on which we're

00:19:50.180 based. Those are the enduring things that will ensure that we continue to do the right thing

00:19:55.540 on the world stage. Michael Chong, thank you very much. The Shadow Minister for Global Affairs is also

00:20:01.540 the Member of Parliament for Wellington, Halton Hills. I got it right. See, that's what happens when you don't

00:20:06.100 write it down. You forget it when it comes time. But I appreciate the contribution. I have so many more

00:20:11.780 questions on. We'll have to get you back for another episode because we could just go on for hours. So I do

00:20:16.740 appreciate the contribution and appreciate your time. Thank you. And thank you very much for joining

00:20:21.620 us. New content every single Tuesday, 1.30pm Eastern Time. Hope you liked the episode. If you

00:20:27.460 did, please like, comment, subscribe, share this program. Help us push back against the ever-moving

00:20:32.740 liberal agenda. If you want to listen to this later on again, because there is a lot of great information

00:20:38.180 in Michael's testimony here, you can download it on platforms like CastBox,

00:20:42.100 iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it. It is out there and together we can do that. We can reach

00:20:47.620 that eligible voter who might be open to hearing the conservative message. And again, we need your

00:20:51.380 help to do that. Thank you very much for joining us. Remember, again, I need to say it again,

00:20:55.540 1.30pm Eastern Time, every single Tuesday, new content. Thank you so much for joining us.

00:20:59.940 Remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom. That's the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - February 24, 2021

The Uyghur Genocide

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