{"id":564177,"date":"2026-03-27T11:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/564177\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T11:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T11:03:15","slug":"liberal-mp-sorry-after-confusion-over-remarks-on-forced-labour-in-china-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/564177\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal MP sorry after confusion over remarks on forced labour in China – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

MP\u00a0Michael\u00a0Ma, who left the Conservatives to join the Liberals, has apologized after appearing to cast doubt on reports of human rights abuses in China.<\/p>\n

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Ma\u00a0said he regretted making a mistake with his remarks, while pointing out that he had referred to the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, and not Xinjiang, where the Communist government has been accused of widespread abuses.<\/p>\n

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The misunderstanding about where Ma had been talking about lasted hours, consuming the rest of the parliamentary committee hearing where he made the remarks, spilling into question period and dogging Ma around Parliament Hill.<\/p>\n

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He had asked an expert during the hearing on Thursday whether she\u2019d seen forced labour with her own eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you witnessed forced labour in Shenzhen? Have you witnessed forced labour? Just a short answer \u2014 have you witnessed forced labour in Shenzhen, yes or no?\u201d\u00a0Ma\u00a0said while questioning Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo did you get that from hearsay?\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Ma\u2019s remarks were misreported by media including The Canadian Press as referring to the western province of Xinjiang, which had been the subject of much of the hearing.<\/p>\n

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The misunderstanding continued in question period, where Conservative\u00a0Michael\u00a0Chong said\u00a0Ma\u00a0intimated there was \u201cno Uyghur forced labour,\u201d referring to the Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

In response, MP Yasir Naqvi did not mention Uyghurs, Xinjiang, Shenzhen or China but said the government sees forced labour as \u201cunacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ma\u00a0was seen walking away from reporters and did not answer questions about his views on the matter.<\/p>\n

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In his apology, issued several hours after his original remarks,\u00a0Ma\u00a0said he \u201cinadvertently came across as dismissive of the serious issue of forced labour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be clear, my line of questioning referred to auto manufacturing in Shenzhen, China, and not in Xinjiang,\u201d said\u00a0Ma\u00a0in the statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI regret this mistake and apologize to Ms. McCuaig-Johnston and my fellow committee members.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he condemned forced labour \u201cin all its forms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ma\u00a0crossed the floor to the Liberals in December and joined Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s caucus and his official trip to Beijing in January.<\/p>\n

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The House industry committee is examining a decision Carney made during that trip to lower Canadian restrictions on Chinese electric vehicles and clear some of those cars for sale in Canada.<\/p>\n

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McCuaig-Johnston told the committee Thursday that Chinese vehicles are made with products that come from slave labour performed by members of the Uyghur minority.<\/p>\n

Ma\u2019s suggestion that reports of forced labour amounted to \u201chearsay\u201d prompted outrage from Conservatives on the committee, one of whom apologized on Ma\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Ma, in turn, demanded an apology from the MP who offered the apology.<\/p>\n

Ma\u00a0told the committee he had asked \u201cvery legitimate questions\u201d and had not expressed an opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had made no assertion of either support or deny it \u2014 I just asked whether she had witnessed it,\u201d\u00a0Ma\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

Tory MP\u00a0Michael\u00a0Guglielmin moved a motion at the committee to condemn forced labour practices in China.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just unclear if MP Ma\u2019s remarks are at odds with the Liberal party\u2019s position and the government\u2019s position, or if he\u2019s soft-launching for the prime minister\u2019s new position on the Communist Party of China and their permissive view on enslavement,\u201d Guglielmin said.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister\u2019s Office referred queries to Ma\u2019s statement, when asked whether Ottawa no longer believes Beijing uses slave labour in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

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The meeting was almost entirely occupied by debate about Ma\u2019s questions and MPs from all parties lamented the fact that they had to dismiss the witnesses to debate the committee\u2019s own behaviour.<\/p>\n

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McCuaig-Johnston, who is a former senior public servant, told The Canadian Press in an interview she was \u201ckind of dumbfounded\u201d by Ma\u2019s line of questioning, but is glad the issue is getting more attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cI looked around the committee as if to say, \u2018Is he kidding?\u2019 Because no westerner can go to China and see forced labour. They would never let you anywhere close to that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said\u00a0Ma\u00a0seemed to be employing a tactic meant to downplay the issue of forced labour.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly he was trying to undermine my credibility,\u201d she said. \u201cI think he failed at that.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCuaig-Johnston said after the meeting wrapped, she offered\u00a0Ma\u00a0her copy of the Human Rights Watch report on forced labour.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd he said, \u2018I don\u2019t believe in reports, I only believe in things that I can see with my own eyes,’\u201d she said, adding that\u00a0Ma\u00a0suggested the two of them could take a trip to China to see if there is forced labour in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

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Ma\u00a0did not address McCuaig-Johnston\u2019s account of their conversation, when The Canadian Press asked his office for comment.<\/p>\n

She noted that she has been sanctioned by China and will not travel to the country.<\/p>\n

The United Nations reported in 2022 that China had committed serious human rights violations in Xinjiang against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities that \u201cmay constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

A report issued that same year by Global Affairs Canada found China \u201cis using otherwise legitimate programs for retraining and relocation of unemployed workers as instruments of a broader campaign of oppression, exploitation and indoctrination of the Uyghur Muslim population into Han (majority) Chinese culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beijing vehemently disputes those claims, arguing it has addressed terrorism threats while offering economic opportunities to minority populations.<\/p>\n

Canada has repeatedly rejected Beijing\u2019s framing. A June 2021 government response to a committee report decried \u201cthe mass, arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in internment camps\u201d in Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Carney\u2019s office said public servants \u201csubmitted in error\u201d a report to Parliament that suggested Carney did not raise human rights with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his January visit to Beijing.<\/p>\n

The Privy Council Office, which serves the prime minister, wrote this month that \u201chuman rights and foreign interference were not brought up proactively\u201d by Carney when he met with Xi. His office later said a corrected document has been sent to Parliament.<\/p>\n

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This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 26, 2026.<\/p>\n

\u2014 With files from Sarah Ritchie and Nono Shen in Vancouver<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MP\u00a0Michael\u00a0Ma, who left the Conservatives to join the Liberals, has apologized after appearing to cast doubt on reports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,95,217673,43,149654,44,714,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-564177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-canada","tag-china","tag-forced-labour","tag-headlines","tag-michael-ma","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}