Canadian Government Boycott of Olympic Opening Ceremony

My view is regardless of whether there is a formal boycott of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics or not, it is unlikely that any senior Canadian politicians will go to China at that time. For protocol reasons it would be very difficult for them to avoid being photographed shaking hands with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing. It strikes me that under the circumstances it is hard to imagine any Canadian politician of any party wanting to risk seeing themselves on the pages of our newspapers in the company of a grinning Chinese Communist leader. Another factor making this unlikely in my opinion is that based on my experience with this kind of thing, the opening ceremony is bound to include some ersatz Tibetan "singing and dancing." Han Chinese in the PRC are taught believe that all of the 56 officially recognized nationalities except themselves "love to sing and dance." It is part and parcel of the official strategy to debase non-Han cultures in China by reducing them all to folkloric elements.