There are two points. The first is that I think Sudan is quite an extreme case. You have a government that is not moved by many of the mechanisms and levers available in the international system. They're not moved by naming and shaming. They're not moved by public outcry, and the threats, which the international community, including the Security Council, has made over the last four years related to its activities in Darfur, have largely gone unfulfilled. Therefore, the credibility of our threats, the degree to which our leverage has clout, just by our words, is quite low.
The second point to make is that the government, or specifically the ruling National Congress Party, is threatened by a peaceful transformation of the country. They're maintaining power. They are embedded in the status quo. They are opposed to peaceful transformation, peace and stability in Darfur. They're opposed to the national level reforms included in the CPA. That provides the context.
Economic sanctions, particularly those that have already been authorized by the Security Council, make sense as a disincentive, as a political tool to hold the government accountable, hold the parties accountable, to their commitments, but they'll only work if they have sufficient clout to create a real change in the government's calculations.
The short answer is that Canada alone will not make that difference. Canada is a minimal player in Sudan's economy. This leads to the broader point I tried to make in my presentation, that if we're going to be effective, there needs to be a more coordinated international approach to Sudan.
I'll leave off there with that point. If we're to see significant change, recognizing the difficulties of the context we're working in, it's only going to come with a heavy push from the international community and probably not from unilateral actions.
The U.S., for example, far bigger than Canada and a much bigger player economically, has had a robust set of sanctions on Sudan since 1997. The Sudanese government is not unaffected, but they've been operating perfectly fine with those in place for more than 10 years.