Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 13th, 2007

[David Donovan]

Yes, exactly--culture, history, all those aspects.

In creating a democracy Canada institute, we not recommending that Canada export Canadian democracy. We want to foster democratic growth in other countries.

To speak to your point, for a lot of the party foundations that are associated with the domestic political parties we see in, say, Sweden and Germany--their socialist party, or the Christian Democratic Party or whatever--if they're going to do democracy work in certain developing countries, they find that when they get there, or ahead of time, there aren't any parties that they can work with. For example, there's no Christian Democratic Party in country X.

So they have to alter their approaches and foster democratic development in regard to the local context.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Now, along with that feeling, you've mentioned some of the other things that go along with democracy development and are very much a pillar of it. Security has been mentioned, economic success, poverty reduction, and better governance of the country itself. You had mentioned that you're not an economist, and you spoke about the micro-managing or micro-financing, which is an essential component. But from a larger perspective of improving the economic success of the country overall, it's being said that what they really need is family-sustaining jobs on a large scale. This means industrial or business development going along with it too.

Is not the democratic development of a party level, and what you've been theorizing and promoting, part of four or five other very essential elements, and that you really have to look at all of those four or five various elements in each individual country?

[David Donovan]

Yes, I think that's true. With Taiwan, for example, they had all the right preconditions, strong economic reform, etc., to allow for democracy to take hold. There was stability there. So yes, I think you're right in saying they have to be looked at together.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

You mentioned Ukraine. It has some 45 political parties. Mexico for 80 years effectively had one political party. Zero is too few, and 45 is too many. Both create problems by approaching it that way.

How would you promote political party development on a party-by-party basis in a country that has 45 political parties? I think that would be very problematic. You might be interfering with the political progress that they're making. Would it not be better to promote this party development on a collective basis to all who wish to be informed of development?

[David Donovan]

Yes, I think so. International IDEA, for example, has a political party assistance branch, but they're not actually going out and developing parties in other countries. They're supporting the parties that exist through comparative information about how parties function and that sort of thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Donovan.

Mr. Casey, very quickly, please.

[Bill Casey, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you.

First of all, I want to compliment you on your paper. It's amazing how much meat there is in this paper. Almost every word has meaning.

It confirms or reinforces a concern I have that it's hard to encourage democracy in countries like Afghanistan. You say there are 30 languages spoken, and “Afghanistan's ethnic groups tend to consider themselves to be largely distinct from one another, and generally inhabit different regions of the country.” It must make it a huge challenge to develop a democracy as we know it, or even close to how we know it.

My question was going to be, is there a precedent for a country like Afghanistan, where there are 30 ethnic groups or whatever and they occupy certain specific regions of the country? Is there a precedent where a country has gone from the type of government they've always had to a democracy? Then I read a little further, and it says that many countries that have made steps towards democracy have “skilfully used a measure of state-monitored political openness to promote reforms that appear pluralistic but function to preserve autocracy”. So you answered the question.

Is there a precedent for a country like Afghanistan becoming a democracy, even close to what we consider a democracy?

[David Donovan]

None that come immediately to mind. I think the point I made in the paper that you touched on is sometimes there are liberal reforms that are scaled back or they are half-measures, but other times they can stick. As I said before, Afghanistan does have some experience with democracy in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, and there were parliamentary elections in the 1960s. So there are certain elements of democratic development, but they haven't taken hold.

[Bill Casey, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Is there another country you can think of that has gone through the process we're hoping will work in Afghanistan?

[David Donovan]

No, there are none that I can think of. There have probably been very few cases that have had the amount of international support Afghanistan has right now.

A lot of theorists will say we should maintain the support and enhance it over the long term. I don't know how long it would take, but in Taiwan it took 50 years. Who knows how long it will take in Afghanistan? I think the timetable has to be long.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Donovan.

Madam McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much for your paper, which I've only had a chance to skim. You may have actually been quite concrete about some recommendations, but I'm hoping we can draw some out of you.

We've been involved in this focus on democracy development and democracy building for some time. As you know, we spent quite a bit of time in Europe and now in both Washington and the UN.

I would have to say that our findings are sobering, humbling, and downright depressing as to the prospects for success in Afghanistan. One of the things that was underscored this past week in the U.S. was how much the waters have been further poisoned by the Iraq fiasco.

Having said all of that, I think we're all very sensitive to the fact that the desperate conditions in Afghanistan plead for international response. On an economic level, there's the fact that one out of five children don't even reach the age of five, and 70% of the population is malnourished. The current government is very urban-bound, when 90% of the population is rural, and so on.

My question really goes to the issue of whether a lot of the focus and a lot of the attention on elections, as if it were a kind of precondition and the be-all and end-all of democracy, isn't in fact a curse in a situation like Afghanistan, where you have ten million Pashtuns who are really excluded from any participation in peace-building, economy-building, democracy-building, or security-building. We have a recipe for disaster even before you deal with some of the other tribal wars, warlords, drug lords, and so on.

I guess my very direct question is this. Do you have specific recommendations that pertain not to the theory or to the studies but to the current practical realities in Afghanistan today? Are there about three or four points of emphasis that you feel should engage the Canadian government in the attempt to improve the conditions of the people of Afghanistan? Where does democracy-building fit into that?

[David Donovan]

On the first point, there has to be sustained security. All the people I've spoken to and all the research I've done lead me to believe that you can't have democratic development without stability, and stability has to come from security.

Economic development is another point that's obviously been mentioned. It's very difficult to achieve.

A third point is the establishment of a democratic values curriculum. I think it's something Canada could take a leading role in.

I know George Perlin came to speak before the committee in October. He still runs the Ukraine democratic development project that the Centre for the Study of Democracy undertook. I think something Canada could do would be to model that project for Afghanistan.

To get back to your point on the focus on elections and whether or not it's positive, as I mentioned, there's the procedural aspect of democracy, which at first can be shallow. But over time it can lead to a demand for more meaningful democratic development, taking the route of the more normative aspects of democracy, rather than simply the procedural aspects.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

There's one minute left.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Can you conceive of sustained stability and meaningful security being attained in Afghanistan, with the continuing lack of any real representation of or participation by ten million Pashtun, and without taking a regional approach, given the potential for destabilization of various kinds from surrounding countries in the region?

[David Donovan]

Yes, it's obviously going to be very difficult to secure all those aspects. But the democratic values curriculum is one way to get at fostering a more deep-seated democratic belief in the country. And we're there. We could start it in our PRT, through Kabul University or these sorts of things. It's obviously a difficult problem, but I think there are small steps that could be taken in democratic development.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

I guess my question is whether small steps begin to get at the really big issues that seem to stand in the way of any possibility of the remotest success.

[David Donovan]

There has been success in terms of electoral outcomes and voter turnout and these sorts of things. It's only been two or three years since the presidential elections, and then only about two years since the legislative elections. That's a very short timeframe, and most people will say that any sort of timeframe will have to be in the decades.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Donovan.

Mr. Casey, you have time for a really quick one, and then we have Mr. Obhrai.

[Bill Casey, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

I want to go back to this democracy issue again. Also, in your paper you said that the World Bank has indicated that Afghanistan... I'll quote here; it's quite amazing:

...Afghanistan, which has always been at the bottom of the poverty and social indicator rankings of countries, must now be considered the poorest, most miserable state in the world.

That must create incredible challenges in creating a democracy, when people can't find anything to eat or can't put a roof over their heads. So how can we best help create democracy in the poorest country in the world?

[David Donovan]

I've touched on that already. I think one thing that Canada can do is create a democratic values curriculum through universities, and foster that through the education curriculum. More people are going to school in Afghanistan now, especially women, so I think there's a lot of room to —

[Bill Casey, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So you're saying it should be in schools, not just in university but in schools from the ground up?

[David Donovan]

Yes. The Ukraine project targeted all sorts of areas: universities, colleges, police academies, military training, and the regular education system. And a lot of academics and teachers and government officials were brought to Queen's University in the mid-1990s and were given training seminars on democracy and democratic government, and then went back, and experts from Queen's and elsewhere — and this was sponsored through CIDA — helped them develop locally democratic values curricula in all sorts of areas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Donovan.

Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you very much.

Some of the questions that have been coming out here deal with the forms of democracy. As Alexa said, elections are not the only route to that.

Let me challenge your conventional thinking. Many of these societies, for example Afghanistan, prior to being colonized and everything, had their own forms of government, their own forms of local structure that for centuries had worked very well. In all the debates that we are seeing, nobody ever refers to democracy as getting down to looking at whether we build on those models of — call them democratic values — human rights and the ability to have women's equal rights and things like that, which are called strong values across. Nevertheless, the basis for all these things would be what existed there before.

All the documentation that we see and everything we see, including yours and everybody else's, says we've got to go have a democracy. You just mentioned building Afghanistan from scratch. There existed a society prior to that. There existed a system prior to that, which may have certain values we don't agree with, but which we can build on.

Why is nobody moving into that arena, picking up there and building it from there? Doing so, in my point of view, would have a better chance of success in that particular region. Can we not have our kind of democracy, but...