Thank you for your presentation.
I am more and more worried when I hear about that type of democracy promotion. It’s strange, because I am in total agreement with everything democracy represents. What I will say is probably due to the fact that I come from a country that was perceived to be under-developed, a country that is probably more on its way to under-development. I often have the impression, when we attempt to promote democracy abroad, that we want to bring democracy elsewhere but that we fail to examine the state of democracy in exporting countries.
I also have the impression that we don’t take sufficiently into account the notion of freedom that you spoke of and freedom is at the heart of democracy. If people don’t accept democracy in the way that we want them to, it isn’t going to work. We go as far as to decide who has a right to democracy. That worries me.
In this country, democracy has many aspects. Our acts and regulations reflect its general aspect. We can go so far as to say that democracies don’t fight amongst themselves. The fact remains however that democracies often have profound differences. Indeed, in a democracy such as ours in Canada, certain parts of the country don’t agree on the fundamental principles of democracy.
That being said, what worries me, is when you send the International Development Research Centre, an organization that promotes democracy, in countries whose citizens have voluntarily chosen or accepted a government, to tell them how their government should work.
Is there not a danger of interfering in the internal policies of that country?