politics - Canadians give up on 'rights dialogue'

A surprisingly candid assesment of the dialogue on human rights between China and Canada in The Globe and Mail. After almost a decade of merely ritual meetings both parties are just bored with the whole process, a researcher has found.

In his report, Mr. Burton found that much of the dialogue consists of a prepared script, read by Chinese Foreign Ministry officials and repeated at meetings with other countries. The content of the script is well known in advance and of little interest to either side, he said.

It took quite a long time for the Canadians to discover they were actually talking to the wrong people.