Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, good afternoon.
The Canadian Constitution recognizes “peace, order and good government” as fundamental purposes of the state. It's now understood, if not universally accepted, by the international community that good government is a requirement and an essential element of sustainable development. Democracy--citizen voice in government and government accountability to citizens--is increasingly recognized as a global norm.
But democracy and good government do not happen automatically--far from it. They're the result of a long, hard, and frequently dangerous struggle by citizens over many years. Democratic development is the effort to assist that struggle through peaceful international cooperation. It follows that support for democratic development should be seen as a Canadian service to the world.
Some people believe that other countries do democratic development better than we do and that we should copy their approach. I believe that Canadians do this work as well as anybody in the world and that we should concentrate our attention on strengthening our own approach.
The Canadian approach has two key elements. First of all, over the last twenty years we have developed a strong family of institutions doing this work. In the early 1990s the Department of Foreign Affairs and ClDA began to fund programs in democratic development. Since then, that funding has grown substantially. Out of it has grown a strong family of Canadian institutions that specialize in delivering programs of assistance in many different areas. In our case, the Parliamentary Centre has specialized for the last fifteen years in a key area of democratic development, namely the strengthening of political institutions and processes in eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
Secondly, we've developed over those years a distinct philosophy of cooperation. Canadians have a clear and distinct approach to cooperation that's appreciated by many of our partners. We support the efforts of people to strengthen their own democratic institutions; we don't attempt to export ours. We share our rich experience and ongoing struggles to reform and develop Canadian democracy, while acknowledging both our successes and our failures. We try to keep ideological baggage to a minimum, preferring results to rhetoric. Most importantly, we believe that democratic development should be practised democratically, between equals.
Democracy is a complex of institutions, practices, and values--I don't need to tell the people at this table that--that develop slowly. It follows that assistance to democratic development must go beyond the relatively short-term, project-by-project approach that has characterized international assistance in the past.
The Canadian government has begun to implement a new approach to strengthening results. Among initiatives that should be recognized and I would say encouraged by the committee is the formation of the Democracy Council, which brings the Department of Foreign Affairs and CIDA together with a family of so-called arm's-length organizations of which the Parliamentary Centre is one. And secondly, I think it is important for the committee to recognize and encourage the fact that CIDA has been taking steps to develop a more strategic, knowledge-based approach to democratic development, particularly as it relates to the broader objectives of Canadian official development assistance.
Additionally, we recommend that the government invest in building a network of Canadian centres of excellence in international democratic development. An initiative of this kind would invest in competitively selected Canadian organizations to strengthen their capacity to innovate, apply, and share knowledge in key areas of democratic development. In turn, it would enable Canada to play a stronger leadership role in this critical area of international relations.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to emphasize the important role of this institution, the Parliament of Canada. Together with elections, parties, and civil society, parliaments are key institutions in democratic development. They are, or should be, institutional bridges between citizens and the state.
The Parliamentary Centre was founded in 1968 to help strengthen parliamentary democracy in Canada. Over the past fifteen years, we have evolved into a Canadian-based international organization, with staff and offices delivering programs in many parts of the world. Leadership in the centre comes increasingly from people like Bunleng Men, who heads our program in Cambodia, and Rasheed Draman, who is the director of our African program, based in our regional office in Accra, Ghana.
For more than a century, going back to the founding of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Parliament of Canada has participated actively in international organizations and programs intended to strengthen parliamentary democracy. Throughout the history of the centre, we have benefited greatly from the support and close cooperation we've received from the Parliament of Canada as well as from the provincial and territorial legislatures of Canada. This support adds enormous credibility, resources, and leverage to our work.
In the spirit of serving the cause of international democratic development, we believe it would be helpful for the Parliament of Canada to adopt a resolution affirming its commitment to international democratic development and pledging its continuing--and increased, if possible--support for programs of assistance in parliamentary development.
Thank you very much. I look forward to our discussion.