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.