Toronto – Premier Dalton McGuinty has acknowledged he has mild concern at China’s abuse of human rights as grudgingly as if his teeth were being extracted and some of his party’s former MPPs must be turning over in their graves.
The Liberal premier concealed as long as he could his economic development minister’s plan to visit China, and a Chinese leader’s plan to visit him here, while many around the world were protesting against that country’s harsh treatment including murders of demonstrators in Tibet.
McGuinty in both cases was anxious to protect trade and when opposition parties argued this was no justification for being silent on abuse, said the province takes its cue from the federal government and, if it decided it would be inappropriate for his minister to go, he would consider it.
Eventually, through a spokesman – McGuinty could not utter such words – the premier was bold enough to say Ontario, as a longstanding friend of China, expressed concern at the situation in Tibet and encouraged both parties to engage in meaningful dialogue, an exercise in avoiding taking sides.
Liberals in the legislature two decades ago would have been offended, because they fought hard to set up a system through which the province would speak up regularly against abuse in other countries.
The majority Progressive Conservatives, New Democrats and Liberals, in an unusual burst of unanimity, declared a province had not only a right, but a duty to speak against abuse abroad.
This started when New Democrat James Renwick moved the legislature to find a mechanism through which it could express concern at political killings, imprisonment, terror and torture overseas.
The MPPs were concerned about Biafra, where so many were killed it was called genocide; other African countries including South Africa, where blacks were brutally repressed under apartheid; much of the Soviet bloc, which allowed little freedom to speak and jailed and killed many who did; and large parts of Central and South America, where military regimes tortured and killed.
The MPPs suggested the select committee on the province’s Ombudsman, who investigates complaints against government here, should look for a mechanism.
This committee of all parties consulted the United Nations, Amnesty International and other experts and concluded the legislature had an obligation to speak up and could have some effect, because repressive governments sometimes listen when more voices are raised.
The committee, because of its experience in investigating government in Ontario, recommended designating itself to consider abuse abroad and recommend when and how the legislature should speak up.
But the government was headed by premier William Davis, whose only interest in far-flung places was sunning at his condo in Florida and would not protest abuse abroad unless it would win him votes, particularly of those who had fled Communist-dominated east Europe.
Davis had his party refuse to welcome Soviet trade delegates sitting watching the legislature, deplored martial law in Poland and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and once rushed back from his cottage, his supreme sacrifice, to greet a dissident who overcame many obstacles to flee Soviet rule.
Davis would not want a committee of the legislature urging Ontario join a world-wide boycott and stop buying products from South Africa and it was left to a later Liberal government to answer that call.
Nor would Davis want himself embarrassed by a committee quibbling with a long procession of bloodthirsty dictators, such as Indonesia’s Suharto, (his full name) to whom he gave warm welcomes.
Davis refused to permit the MPPs’ proposal, and a subsequent resolution by Renwick the Ombudsman committee be given power to speak up, to come to a vote, denying Ontario politicians the freedom of expression he argued countries behind the Iron Curtain should allow.
A brave attempt to make Ontario’s voice heard on abuse abroad therefore never came to fruition and premiers of all three parties, New Democrat Bob Rae, Conservative Mike Harris and McGuinty have since visited China, one of the most notorious abusers, without making any real attempt to raise concerns -- Ontario is marching backwards.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s Park press gallery.
