Senator Yuen Pau Woo

Honourable colleagues, I am glad for the opportunity to speak to this motion, which is controversial for many reasons and has generated strong emotions.  Unlike in the House of Commons, we are having a real debate about it, which I believe does honour to the chamber of sober second thought.  There are of course different points of view, including some that are uncomfortable to many, but let’s embrace diversity of opinion rather than seek to shout it down. The motion has two par…

Derek Burney’s blistering attack on my recent speech in the Senate reveals more about the toxic nature of debates on China, than it does about what I said. He is entitled to disagree with my vote against the motion labelling the treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang a genocide and moving the Olympics away from China. What is unacceptable is his distortion of my speech and the use of a xenophobic trope. Burney is right that I compared Canada’s history of residential…

Senator Woo participated in the Ditchley conference focused on The new space race and its intersection with power, the rules-based order and the economy. The conference was not only about the science of space but rather how national and commercial moves in space intersect with other technologies, political power, a rules-based order and the economy.