Foreign Affairs Committee on Dec. 5th, 2006

[Diane Éthier]

As I've already said, we should learn from what the British did in a number of their colonies. It is really very interesting to see how they managed to create conditions favourable to democracy before these countries became independent.

It is not by chance that democracies that were once British colonies have proved stable and lasting—indeed a number have made considerable progress—while it is altogether another kettle of fish for former French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

It might seem odd that I am saying that, as a French Canadian, but you cannot hide from the truth. That is how it is.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Yet you also spoke about Kenya. It is a known fact that Great Britain left 97% of Kenyans in the red—only 3% of the population had enough money to live.

[Diane Éthier]

That is a very interesting question. Great Britain did not treat all of its colonies in the same manner. At that time—not to put too fine a point on it—Great Britain was extremely racist towards Africa and Central Asia. As a result, British policy in Southeast Asia was different to that in Africa or Central Asia. You are absolutely right in what you say. You have to keep in mind the context of the period.

Nevertheless, in most cases where they did try to create conditions conducive to lasting democracy, it did prove fairly successful. Obviously, one of the conditions is education. It starts with educating the elite, then a move to local democracy, which is progressively broadened and generalized.

The British tended not to use the same model in all countries. Credit where credit is due, unlike the Americans, they undertook an in-depth study of a country's history and idiosyncrasies in order to develop a strategy adapted to the reality of each different country. It was not a case of one size fits all.

I know one thing for certain—although it is said that no US soldiers in Iraq speak Arabic, British soldiers in India spoke several of the colony's languages. When you think about the language departments that they had at Cambridge and Oxford, it is really quite remarkable. Furthermore, anyone being sent to the colonies had to learn the local languages, and therefore, when the time came to leave, they had an understanding of the country's history, culture and languages. That is something which is very important.

Economic development is also, obviously, another important factor. I recall that former prime Minister Chrétien said that supporting economic development in China was more important than criticizing its failings in terms of democracy. To my mind, he was absolutely right.

It is the desire to become a market economy that will bring a country such as China into the democratic fold—this is what we are seeing at the moment. The third wave of democratization since 1975 has given rise to some 40 new democracies. They are all newly industrialized countries that underwent rapid economic and social development in the 60s and 70s. The exceptions to the rule are a handful of African countries that became democracies in the 90s. Unfortunately, however, the most recent reports on democracy in Africa are not very encouraging.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Goldring, please, you have seven minutes.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Welcome, Madame Éthier. I'm pleased that you're here today.

Your initial comments certainly sound very discouraging, and I agree with you; the policies that we have been trying to institute have not been bearing the democratic fruit, I guess you could say, that was expected of them.

Haiti in particular was one country. Yes, they had a peaceful election, but there doesn't seem to be very much substance underneath the election.

You talked about some of the British countries. I was in Guyana this summer, where they held their elections. This is one country that hasn't benefited from independence. They seem to have been stuck in a political time warp since their independence in 1962.

Another country that's in the news today is, of course, Fiji. I think this is the tenth overthrow of government they've had in approximately ten years.

So there seem to be many exceptions. That very level of difference is why what I think we're trying to do in this committee is to analyze what can be done—not one system to do all, but a system that would allow an approach to each individual country on its individual peculiarities and merits.

One of the things I read for this meeting today is a brochure by Rights and Democracy. This is an article by Hau Sing Tse, from the Asia branch of the Canadian International Development Agency. I'd like your comments. I'll just read a paragraph from this:

At CIDA, we believe firmly that good governance – meaning freedom, democracy, rule of law and human rights – is necessary to foster equitable economic growth—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Goldring, you'll have to read a little slower. I'll give you an extra ten seconds at the end.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Okay.

It reads:

...necessary to foster equitable economic growth and sustainable development.... Bad governance produces bad outcomes, such as corruption, poor service delivery—

...A discussion about whether security or economic development or democratic development should come first could help raise important issues. But it is not particularly helpful to local communities who seek a better life and reduced vulnerability to poverty. Progress in all of these areas must happen simultaneously, if we hope to help them build a better future for their children.

What I would like to do is have your comments on a statement like that, given the consideration that we as a committee are looking at having new initiatives and new ways to approach this democratic development. Given a commonality of the committee, we're beginning to realize that, yes, the democratic development has to be included with the poverty reduction efforts and good governance efforts--all of these combined. Is it your feeling that we cannot look at this again as a way to hopefully take new strides in development in these areas and regions in the future, rather then being pessimistic and trying to go way off base into another area that may or may not be included, although it may well be? Should we not try again with this combined approach effort?

[Diane Éthier]

That was the tied aid policy the World Bank introduced in the early 90s, in 1992, if memory serves me well. The idea was to do everything simultaneously: promote economic development, fight poverty, promote environmental protection, improve good governance and develop democracy.

The World Bank's tied aid policy comprised almost 10 streams, and it did not work. It could not have worked. I remember that many CIDA officers were critical of the policy, and they were by and large right.

In fact, for more than 50 years now, all theories on democracy have supported the view that democracy cannot flourish in a poor and underdeveloped country. This means that socio-economic development and democratization cannot be achieved simultaneously, as democratization is born of socio-economic development.

It is wishful thinking to believe that lasting democracy can be established in a country such as Haiti, which is one of the world's poorest. Indeed, not only is Haiti poor, but there is no rule of law. The state does not have control over all of its citizens and territory. Democracy is still a long way away, the country is only at the state of establishing rule of law. We cannot talk about democracy. It is all fine and well to organize elections, but the problems will resurface as soon as they are over. There is something highly artificial about stubbornly insisting on organizing democratic elections in a country that does not, and cannot, share any other traits of a democracy as its socio-economic infrastructure is too weak.

I believe that experts would say that if you want to help countries become democracies, first help them achieve economic and social development, and later you will be able to focus on establishing democratic political institutions.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

When we're looking at a country like Iraq, I think it's an example of a place where all three things are happening simultaneously. You have security issues and concerns, and of course your democratic development will be difficult to proceed with unless you do have your security and all things. Just as this article says, you really have to use what is unique to that country's needs. Some will need high security. Guyana, for example, is a country that needs democratic institutions, working with political parties to refine the system better, whereas Haiti is really a failed state. It needs to work from security on up, working within the villages and the towns to start that embryonic democratic effort. It needs so much, it's pretty hard to describe in one issue. Each country would have varying needs, and I would dare say that Fiji is another one requiring another modified approach to it.

Are you saying there's nothing you can do, that there's only a tied aid to try to force the Government of Haiti to do certain initiatives? Or would that in itself fail too because the government in Haiti may reject that?

[Diane Éthier]

I do not understand why Canada or other countries absolutely insist that every country on the planet be democratic in 2006.

I gave the example of Malaysia and Singapore, which are not, strictly speaking, democracies: they are hybrid regimes. In other words, they are countries whose political system has many democratic features, but also some authoritarian features as well. However, these regimes are stable and peaceful. They are countries that now have economic and social conditions that are the envy of many other countries.

I would just like to mention one point: 85% of the housing in Singapore is subsidized. People have such good living conditions that the fact that freedom of the press is incomplete, and the PAP must always be re-elected does not cause huge problems for people, particularly since over 76% of the population is Chinese and the culture is Confucianist. As you know, it is a culture in which citizens must respect authority. Consequently, the people of Singapore do not want a lot of individual freedom.

I have to tell you quite honestly that I do not lose sleep over this. I prefer a regime such as the one in Singapore or Malaysia to an extremely weak democracy where there is corruption and where part of the country is controlled by bands of drug traffickers, and so on. In such a case, democracy is meaningless.

There was a time when aid was focused on economic and social development. The question of democracy became a priority after the end of the cold war. There was a desire to extend the democratic model quickly to every country in the world. However, I repeat that this is wishful thinking and will not work. It cannot work. I repeat, democracy cannot work in a very poor country. There is a great deal of documentation that proves this. One of the greatest American sociologists, Seymour Martin Lipset, explained that very well in a number of things he has written.

Economic and social development changes people's culture. It creates middle classes. Thus it changes the structure of society, and the middle classes are able to negotiate political compromises with the elites and these will in part also meet the demands of the poor. This is how democracy can be established and can last. These cultural changes, these changes in political behaviour, are the result of industrialization, urbanization, education and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Goldring, Madame Éthier.

Madam McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much, Ms. Éthier, for being here today.

I want to ask a couple of questions to clarify, and then maybe one broader question.

I think I understood you to say that CIDA does no real assessment, no real evaluation, of the effectiveness of some of their programs. Were you referring specifically to the evaluation of democracy development initiative outcomes, or were you referring more generally to CIDA when you spoke about the lack of rigorous evaluation?

[Diane Éthier]

I was referring to the lack of evaluation of CIDA's democratic development programs. I looked at the democratic development programs in the 90s: from 1992 to 2002. I got in touch with senior officials at CIDA and asked if there were public evaluations of all these programs. The answer was no.

CIDA is not the only agency that does not evaluate its programs. I looked into it and found that the same is true in Denmark, Sweden and Japan. Nevertheless, this is a problem. How can we determine whether the programs should be continued or changed if we have no evaluations of them? USAID has a number of them, but as I said, there are weaknesses in their program evaluation methods. However, in my opinion, the situation is quite a bit better there than at CIDA, where there are no such programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Madam McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I was just interested in asking whether you would see an appropriate role for the International Development Research Council, which is at arm's length and exists under separate legislation from CIDA. Would you see it as an appropriate agency to be doing some of that research and evaluation of CIDA, precisely because they're at arm's length, as opposed to its being done in-house, where there may not be the same degree of objectivity or independence?

[Diane Éthier]

You are right. I think it would be preferable for CIDA not to evaluate its own programs. What does USAID do? The American legislation requires that it hire outside experts, people who do not work for USAID. The evaluations are done by academics, members of various foundations, but they are nevertheless paid by USAID. They are sent off for three weeks to do an evaluation, and the fact that they are paid by USAID may be a type of conflict of interest. It could change their findings to some extent. Therefore, it would be preferable to have this done by an independent body.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I think you're aware that we've been looking specifically at failed and fragile states. If I'm understanding your conclusions, they are pretty discouraging. I think—and I want to make sure I'm understanding you—your position is that really, economic and social development are a precondition to being able to successfully engage in democratic development.

That being the case, although I understand the point you're making about the EU, where conditionality can be introduced, it seems to me that's just about the antithesis of the kind of work we're trying to do. In other words, there's almost a reciprocity between the EU and states that want to gain admission. There's an incentive that applies to something that is very concrete and very real.

Let's go to Afghanistan as an example. There is a great deal of concern I think about the cart being before the horse in the instance of Afghanistan, particularly in Kandahar. I'm wondering whether, as part of your research, you've also looked at the whole question of the increasing militarization of aid as the method for that supposed economic and social development, which are preconditions to democracy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

The militarization of aid? Is that the question?

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

The militarization of aid....

Good luck, Madame Éthier.

[Diane Éthier]

That is an interesting and important question, but I cannot answer it, because that is a project I have just begun working on. It deals with experiences of democracy building under foreign control. There have been a number of such instances throughout history. I want to compare past cases of democracy building, in such underdeveloped countries as Afghanistan, and see whether they were successful or not.

At present, Afghanistan is somewhat of a failure. It is a relative failure, but at the moment, Bosnia is also a failure, and Kosovo is not doing very well either. Even so, there is the conditionality of the European Union, which is investing considerable amounts of money in Bosnia and Kosovo to improve economic and social development. And then there is the Stability Pact for South-East Europe. Some 40 countries and international organizations are members of the pact and are engaged in economic and social development is Bosnia to create the conditions for political democracy. The pact was created in 1995, 11 years ago, and the latest report by the European Union on Bosnia indicates that the country is still not functional. NATO and European Union forces have to remain stationed there, or else ethnic conflicts will reignite between the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians.

We can draw comparisons between Bosnia and Afghanistan. There is proportionally more assistance and intervention in Bosnia than in Afghanistan. I realize that what I am saying is not encouraging, but unfortunately, I am not very optimistic about Afghanistan. Quite frankly, I think that the war against the Taliban will be a failure, unless NATO decides to send 100,000 or 200,000 soldiers, but NATO will never do that. It will therefore be a failure. I am 100% certain of that.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Do I have time for one more?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You're at eight minutes. Go ahead, very quickly.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I'm just interested in whether you have done any analysis that you might share with the committee. I know there isn't a lot of time here, but along the lines of your work that you've already identified, have you done any analysis of the policy adopted by the previous Liberal government and embraced by the Conservative government that followed, establishing the three pillars of development, diplomacy, and defence as the underpinnings or the foundation for the approach being taken, supposedly, in Afghanistan?

[Diane Éthier]

I did not study Canada's foreign policy. I examined democracy-building processes in general and made a general comparison of several strategies to promote democracy: control, conditionality and incentive. My only Canadian experience was the work I did with CIDA, but that was a long time ago, between 1992 and 1995. I therefore cannot answer your question.