In any aspect of foreign policy, but particularly in democracy promotion, it's best to begin with humility. Nobody is arguing that Canada or any of the western democracies are necessarily superb. But what we can point to is that there are practices and traditions that other nations, that dissident groups, might find useful to learn from on a comparative basis. That's really the essential point.
Where we've had tremendous difficulties in democratic transitions--in Iraq, for example--hubris, almost a democratic imperialism, has been part of the problem, as opposed to listening and working with people on the ground. My experience has been, though, that Canadians are invited, are welcomed, are asked, everywhere around the world, by a host of people who want to at least learn comparatively what we've done in the Charter of Rights, what we've done in the status of women, what we've done in multiculturalism, what we've done in federalism, what we've done in election party financing. It's not that we are better, it's that we are different. We have had some experience, and we've learned some lessons.
I think anybody who works in democracy promotion learns as much in the countries they are working with. What we hope to achieve in our program at Queen's, for example, is to create a multilateral source of democracy promotion so that when we work with refugees in Bosnia, the next time we're asked to work on refugee problems, it will be with our Bosnian partners, who we worked with in Bosnia. And so it goes.
What I would like to do is take the local experiences of a host of countries who have some successes or failures and then use that for an international training or teaching corps. Canadians may put the overall framework, and Canada may fund it, but in our concept of the centre—as I've said, I'll be glad to send the papers to you—we want to help local partners do much of the work. My idea is for a consortium of democracy builders based on talent around the world but funded and guided from Canada, in part because we're not seen as an imperialist power.