I just said, Mr. Chairman, to Maureen that I would say that I'm in complete agreement with everything she said, but I may add two or three things.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
We are delighted to be here, and there are three reasons for that. The first one is that the topic that has brought us together is at the core of the mandate of Rights and Democracy, which, as you know, was created by Parliament in 1988.
The second one is that I believe it is necessary for us in Canada to periodically discuss what the country is doing to support democracy in the world.
The third one is that I am very anxious to see the assessment of our partners—IDRC and others—of the state of democracy in the world.
I think we have to say, at the outset of our work and deliberations—that's what we feel—that we live in a world that has moved substantially toward democracy in the past 30 years, and that the geopolitics of the world has been changed by democratic values. That's the case in Central Europe and Eastern Europe, that's the case since the 1980s, in Latin America, and that's the case, in a more limited way, in Africa. Some very large Asian countries have become democratic, like Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc.
The international political agenda is still one of growth and expansion of democracy in the world. No other item should take precedence today, in my view, internationally, for the reasons we have just heard, be it for research or for other reasons related to fundamental rights and freedoms.
I have already told this committee and I will not go over it again, we, the members of Rights and Democracy, have a vision of democracy that has as one of its essential elements all of the human rights that are recognized under international law and by the United Nations, as well as by governments that have signed and ratified the international instruments.
Mr. Chairman, your committee has asked us a lot of questions. I will try to summarize them into four questions and to provide two or three partial answers to each as a way of setting the stage for our subsequent discussion.
The first question you asked was the following.
Is the world moving towards acceptance of the global principle of democracy, similar to the development of international human rights standards? We have answered in our brief with a cautious positive answer--a cautious yes.
If we look at what is going on at the United Nations--the creation of a democracy fund at this level, the creation of a conference on failed and restored democracy, the electoral process that is sustained by the United Nations and other elements that you know better than I do--at the global level, the notion of democracy and the actual--