Thank you, Mr. Chair. There are so many different things I'd like to pursue and not a lot of time to do so.
I want to say, and I think many members do, how much I welcome the direct comments by Dr. Kopstein, expressing concern about the cancellation of the international intern program, because we've heard testimony before this committee about how exceptionally important that program is, both to young people gaining experience that will open further doors for meaningful employment, but also because of the kind of brain trust that we need to be concerned about helping build up. I'm actually hoping it's something we're going to pursue at this committee level.
Dr. Perlin, I may be going out on a limb here when I say this, but it seems to me that if we're going to be serious about being involved in democracy development, one of the things that's absolutely critically important, and sort of fundamental, is to be clear about what the elements of democracy are that we are either committed to and forthright about, or not.
I'm going to take an example. Some other members of Parliament were with me on the same trip to Haiti when there was quite an impressive and exciting electoral process going on. I think Canada made an extremely important contribution to the logistics of all that, with very impressive results in terms of the overall level of voter participation and the limited numbers of incidents.
At the same time, we were visiting a factory, for example, where the working conditions were so grotesque you could hardly believe that people work under those conditions. But it was absolutely clear that the notion of there being a trade union introduced into that situation was completely anathema. In fact, people would lose their jobs without question, if there was a hint of that.
So it really raises questions about what is the concept that you're hoping people are going to embrace around what democracy means. It seems to me that it goes to the very heart of whether you can be authentic or not in offering to be part of democracy-building.
I wonder if I can ask you to comment—and I don't mean on the specifics of that grotesque workplace, but as a way of raising the question: if democracy doesn't have to do with some notion of people having some power and control over the conditions of their own lives, including their working conditions and so on, how do you make it anything but an abstraction?
A very provocative comment was made yesterday at an extremely good panel on the question of peacemaking and peacebuilding, and Afghanistan was very much the subject. But on a general level, there was the observation that one of the things we don't seem to get is that some of the extremist groups, which have been identified as terrorist groups in some countries, are busy addressing some of the very basic human needs of public services, food, shelter, and so on, and maybe hearts and minds are actually one better sometimes that way than they are at the other end of a barrel of a gun.