Mr. Chairman, in elaborating on my remarks, Elections Canada I think has an opportunity to make a real contribution to the process. I'll use a relatively concrete example. The Nigerian electoral commission came here recently. They were interested in knowing how they can make an election happen. They're caught with this. They get a lot of advice from people who go there, but they don't get the knowledge from people who actually deliver elections.
I've heard this from many countries. When we initially went to Haiti, people were saying that at least we deliver the goods in our country and that they're able to talk to us and get something meaningful. Cameroon came. They were trying to establish--I don't know how far they've gone--how it works. They want to know how an independent body becomes independent, what makes it maintain its independence, and how to relate to Parliament and to government. Through exploring this, we're able to provide assistance to them.
I agree that there may be varying degrees of independence, but there has to be a minimum. There has to be a minimum that's acceptable. And by the way, we look at that before we involve ourselves in other countries. We may be asked to help a particular country, but we'll want to make sure of that. For example, in Haiti, the Conseil Électoral Provisoire was set up in such a way that there is the requisite amount of independence. We did the same thing for the Iraqi elections.
I wouldn't want to go into a country because it's on the list of 25, but the electoral commission is all warped and it's not going to work. I wouldn't want to do that, because there's no point. It's not going to get us anywhere unless the mandate is to change it.
I don't know if I'm answering your question in a way that makes sense to you. I hope I am.
But that is where the strength comes in. Reputation comes from the ability to deliver, and at the same time the ability to advise and to relate, based on their culture and based on the forces that are in play in that community.
In Iraq, there were three basic communities. All three were represented on the Iraqi electoral commission. That gave us a feeling that things were there. The legal mandate was clear that they were independent. At the end, we also made recommendations about the number of people that they should have full-time on a commission. They have eight now. We felt that this was too many. We suggested there may be another way of structuring it or keeping the same structure, but with commissioners who are not there all the time. It makes it very difficult for a chief executive to carry out his or her tasks under such circumstances.
This is where the expertise comes in. It's not a straight transposition of the Canadian electoral system, as you can well imagine. I don't have commissioners overlooking my work. I have the procedures and House affairs committee, principally, doing that work. I have Parliament looking at how I behave and how I perform my tasks.
It's relatively easy to transpose ourselves into other cultures and to discuss ways they could improve their system and enhance and maintain their independence.