Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2006

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our presenters today. I don't know if you were here to hear our previous presenters. I guess it brings me to this question. We have a lot of organizations, CIDA being one of them, and all of the witnesses we've had here today, and many others, who all seem to be focusing on democracy and how to achieve, promote—and certainly promote without imposing our values.... I'm glad you emphasize that, as it's very critical. We have an organization that's just gone through a conference, Global Oganization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption. All of these do great work.

The suggestion was made to form some centres of excellence. This raises a concern with me. Do we have too many organizations and not enough focus? The Department of Foreign Affairs funds IDRC; CIDA is involved in this very deeply. I'm not criticizing anyone's work, but do we need to focus this? Do we need to bring this down to one association, one body of excellence, if you will, one centre that can focus all these efforts so that we may be able to make a difference?

Look at the number of dollars we've put into development over the years. It's all well intended, but if we don't create a democracy that's able to handle this, that's able to sustain development, are we missing something very critical here?

I'd like your comments, if you would, about bringing this focus down.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Miller.

[Robert Miller]

We should certainly focus in the sense of establishing priorities, and there I think the key priorities are policy priorities. The two that stand out for me at the moment are the relationship between democracy and poverty, and the relationship between democracy and violence or conflict internationally. Those are two great areas where I think Canada over a long period of time could focus.

Looking at the history of our own democracy, I think its great strength has been pluralism and diversity. We certainly haven't been singular in building our own democracy. There are many different institutions in our society that contribute to it.

What I've suggested is not that we go to a single institution, but that we recognize now that we have an interest as a country in building a limited number of institutions that have the potential perhaps to be global leaders in certain fields of democratic development. That's what I mean by centres of excellence. I would propose that there be some competitive process of identifying those, equivalent to what goes on with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, or goes on with the Foundation for Innovation, and so on; that takes a look at the capacity of these institutions, both what they're doing now and what they could do in the future, and says, “Let's concentrate a certain amount of what Canada's doing in a limited number of areas of excellence.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Graham.

[John Graham]

I can support what Bob has been saying. I think it's important to note that a number of organizations who work in this field draw relatively little of their funding from government. There are civil society organizations, NGOs such as my own. Mine is not focused exclusively on democratic development, but democratic development is certainly a key part of it.

To add to the democracy dimensions that Bob has mentioned, I would say that democracy in education is absolutely basic. In the area that I know best, which is the Americas, Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been a decline in public education over the last ten years in practically every country in the region. That inevitably has an impact on the quality of democratic discourse.

And one other area, of course, in the same region, one of the great difficulties, is that the gulf between wealth and poverty has been growing. That has had the effect of eroding the confidence that people have in the democratic process and the expectations that rose up 20 or 25 years ago about what democratic institutions would produce.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

Madame McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much for your interesting presentations. I want to pick up a couple of threads and take the opportunity at the outset to say how really genuinely appreciative and impressed I was by the arrangements through the Parliamentary Centre to visit Haiti during not the presidential election but the follow-up election. I was very, very impressed by the whole operation.

I have one observation and one question. Reference was made to possible vulnerability when things don't turn out ideally—and one can never guarantee that they will—if a country tends to be a solo operator in the international observation role and the technical assistance. My observation, rightly or wrongly—and I'd appreciate any correction of this impression if in fact it's not correct—is that Canada might have been pretty exposed in that sense in Haiti, because there didn't seem to be much sign of other major international observers. I guess the other thing related to that is that it's a pretty costly undertaking for one country when we have a lot of different commitments. I don't say that to take away from the incredibly good job done and the importance of it.

The second one is that you couldn't be anything but utterly, totally overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task, the challenges that lay ahead, whether in terms of economic development, environmental remediation, basic infrastructure, human infrastructure, all of those things. How would you envision the kind of process that needs to flow through from that actual election process and clearly raising people's aspirations and expectations, and the follow-through on those many, many challenges?

Everything we've heard and observed was that it was just utterly unimaginable that it was going to be possible to eliminate corruption, for example, when the police were hardly ever paid, health workers were hardly ever paid, and prison guards were not paid. I'm asking, really, whether you have recommendations to put forward about how to ensure that there is some kind of appropriate magnitude of follow-through in what is such a herculean task.

[Robert Miller]

Let me make a very brief comment to say I agree with everything you've said. Certainly in beginning a program in Haiti we have the sense that--and we've worked in some difficult environments--we're probably working in the single most difficult.

The principle that I keep coming back to that's fundamental and that so often has gone awry in Haiti is respecting the people themselves and genuinely engaging the people in the society. It's so easy to get quickly to “We're going to do this for you, we're going to do that for you” and skip that part. We've been forcing ourselves to slow down, to start having a meaningful conversation, for example, with the speakers of the National Assembly and the Senate in Haiti so that when we finally do go forward, we're going forward in support of ideas they've developed themselves and have some commitment to. Often this work fails because that isn't the case; that very basic condition isn't in place to begin with.

On the business of vulnerability in election observing, I'm going to leave that to John, except to say that spreading the risk in these high-risk situations through collaboration with others is important for all of us, without question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Graham.

[John Graham]

These are big questions: the linkage between an election and a successful election. You were there, and it was a successful election. I think Elections Canada did a great job.

I would add that I think we were fortunate, because it was, as you point out, mostly Canadian. That did not get us into difficulty. Sometimes it will. There, it did not.

It did, as you know, help to create a more promising framework—and I use the term “more promising” as a very relative term—in Haiti. I have a colleague who is just back a few days ago from Port-au-Prince, and there is at the moment greater calm. There is greater promise that things will happen there than I can recall in many years.

The difficulty, of course, is fragility. It can go wrong very easily. Gangs can organize—gangs that are not yet disarmed—and there is now apparently an undertaking by MINUSTAH, the UN organization responsible for security under Brazilian leadership, to more aggressively disarm the gangs. If they can do this, that will make an enormous difference, because the authority that runs from the government in Port-au-Prince into the country is very limited and, as you know, sometimes totally non-existent.

One of the great responsibilities, I think, is to get the donors to pay more attention to the need for job creation. As long as you have a majority of the country, particularly the young people, who are unemployed or whose employment is only a fraction of their time, that's going to fuel the security problems around the country, and particularly in the Port-au-Prince area.

Despite all of the huge financial commitments to Haiti, there is not yet enough money actually on the ground to generate accelerating levels of employment, which are needed. Efforts are being made on education, but that's a sort of Sisyphus thing, with a huge stone up a mountain.

And more needs to be done to encourage a private sector. There is a small private sector there, some of which has an unsavoury reputation, but surprisingly there are parts of it that don't, and they can do more, with help and encouragement and the kind of fragile framework the elections created.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

I am going to take a couple of very quick questions. Maybe word them within 30 seconds, and then we'll get a very quick response.

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Graham, you referenced the Ukrainian elections. Within nascent developing democracies, elections can be critical historic junctures. Canada has never had that size of observer mission. It was unprecedented—that was terminology used over and over—and it was organized in a two-week period.

Would you judge that particular mission to have been a success, and if so, what were the success factors? What led to the success?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Goldring, will you pose a question?

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Mr. Miller, in your brief you indicated the key components necessary in democratic development as being elections, and of course the parties and the civil society. Perhaps you could expand on what type of expertise you've had in political party development.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right. Mr. Miller and Mr. Graham, do you want to touch those two questions?

[John Graham]

Was Ukraine a success or not? Yes, it was a success, and it was an extraordinary undertaking to put all that together in a very short period of time. But it was hugely risky, and I think we took excessive risks. It's a bit like Haiti, but more so. The Russians and of course the Ukrainian government were looking for opportunities to discredit western observation teams. What you're referring to, of course, was the third in a series of elections.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'm more curious about the success factors, not what the risks were. I think everyone's aware of what the risks were, but what led to the unprecedented success in a short period of time?

[John Graham]

I don't think that we Canadians can claim credit for the success. It was a collective, cooperative undertaking. There were a number of international organizations there, including the OSCE, the European Union, and a number of others. If we had been on our own, it would have been very different, because the difficulties we had in organizing that and training our people would have been exposed. They were not seriously exposed.

Was there success? Yes, we were part of a large and successful group. This enabled the coverage of the country to be much wider than it would have been otherwise. The credit goes to the individuals who were there and who obviously behaved responsibly in difficult and sometimes provocative circumstances. I would not recommend that process again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Goldring's question.

[Robert Miller]

I believe that Canada should do a good deal more in the area of political party development along two lines, because how it's done is critically important.

First, we've begun to work on political parties in the context of building strong parliaments. As you know, political parties are a key part of a parliament, but establishing a legal and constitutional framework for the behaviour of political parties is very important.

Secondly, I believe that Canadian political parties themselves should become much more active internationally. There is nothing that prevents Canadian political parties from establishing arm's-length organizations—NGOs, in effect—to engage in this kind of work internationally. I think it's very important that the initiative be taken by the parties, because the message we want to broadcast to the world is that political parties belong within civil society, not within the state.

One of the major problems with political parties, in almost all the countries in which we work, is that the line between the political party and the institution of the state, including the military and the police, and so on, gets blurred. So the message that political parties grow out of the society and are an expression of civil society is a very important part of the Canadian model, which we want to make sure we communicate successfully.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

I want to thank you for attending. I have a feeling that some members may be getting in contact with your organizations a little later on. I know a number of them have paid very good compliments about your work. We're aware of that. Also, regarding some of the things in your submissions, we may look for further answers. So you may hear more from the committee a little later on.

We have an agreement among the members to postpone our committee business until the next meeting. I thank you for that.

The meeting is adjourned.