Oh, absolutely. I am an educator and I believe deeply in the power of education. I've seen it: changing people's minds is the most powerful thing you can do. It's more powerful than shooting someone, because as soon as you shoot someone, you generate feelings in somebody else of wanting to shoot you for shooting that person. But education is changing people's minds, and that's why it is so critical for developing anything new, whether it be gender equality or racial equality or democratic institutions.
I've spoken about judicial education in particular, but education about human rights, I think, is even more basic than this in changing people's minds. The concept of human dignity, which seems so simple and fundamental to us that we don't even think about it, is a profound concept. If people internalize it, for themselves and others, it can change their mind about so many other things.
Canada has a huge role to play there. We're not a strong country in terms of our military strength and our population, but we have a huge ethic of respecting education and we're good at it. It strikes me that if we're to be effective in the world, we can take what we do best, which is to transmit knowledge and understanding and those kinds of fundamentals, rather than try to compete in this other world, where we don't have the population resources or the geopolitical position to do so.
That's been the focus of Rights and Democracy, and it's certainly been my focus in my human rights work all my life, that the most powerful contribution you can make is to educate people.