Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 5th, 2019

[Derek Mitchell]

Sure.

Yes, Silicon Valley is a country unto itself in some ways. Some countries have sent ambassadors to Silicon Valley to work with them. We have a Silicon Valley program. We have an office there because I consider this an absolutely essential component of getting democracy right. What these social media platforms are doing to seep in and undermine the sinews of democracy, to alienate, isolate and divide people, and enabling others from the outside—and inside—to push disinformation and undermine facts, which are the foundation of democracy.... We have to get their assistance, and we're doing what we can to try to do that.

NDI has 50-plus offices around the world, so we feel as if we have a unique opportunity to take what we know of context on the ground, then feed what's going on there back through Washington or right back to Silicon Valley to get them to respond quickly, both to the initial issue of the moment, as well as the bigger issues that their platforms create. We're also creating networks of folks who are themselves on the ground, who are organizing themselves, who are their own tech geniuses, who are countering disinformation, to network them between countries to develop best practices.

We're doing our best, given the facts of these platforms, to try to counter the worst effects of it, as well as trying to figure out how we harness it for a positive agenda, because they will exist for the foreseeable future. More technologies are coming down the road, and we all have to understand the best way of harnessing them.

[Leona Alleslev]

That's excellent.

To change themes a bit, could we talk about security and stability and what you would argue is the role or opportunity for what we would have called peacekeeping, but peacekeeping in a modern context toward the promotion of democratic structures?

[Dr. Daniel Twining]

Peacekeeping is a means to an end. Peacekeeping cannot be a permanent thing that we do. Fundamentally, the reason there is a need for peacekeeping operations is some kind of political failure in a society like the Balkans, ethnic conflict in parts of Africa, all forms of struggle, civil war. Again, coming back to my argument, let's attack the problem at the source. Peacekeeping is a valuable tool, but at the end of the day, we need to create societies that work so our peacekeepers can come home.

[Leona Alleslev]

Yes, but do we need more peacekeeping? In many of those countries that are facing those kinds of challenges, is it more difficult to build institutions when there is insecurity and instability as a foundational element?

[Dr. Daniel Twining]

Yes.

[Leona Alleslev]

It would appear from the outside that what we were doing in the late 1980s and 1990s was significantly greater as a world than what we're doing today.

[Dr. Daniel Twining]

Yes, if peacekeeping can buy time, as it can, for a political settlement, or a cooling of political conflict, military conflict, absolutely, yes.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

We are now going to move to MP Vandenbeld, please.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

Actually, it's very refreshing to see the bipartisan support for this kind of democracy promotion that we see with the republican institute and the democratic institute. How much of that do you think is because of the larger funding mechanism, the National Endowment for Democracy, which is under Congress, as opposed to being part of the administration? Of course, that has created funding—you mentioned 35 years—which then has created space for the emergence of these wide networks. Really, I'd say that the NDI and the IRI are primarily networks of democracy promotion.

How much of that was allowed to flourish because of the fact that you had an endowment fund under Congress that was long term and allowed for the building of the resiliency and that kind of consistency and constant presence?

I'll start with Mr. Mitchell and then go to Mr. Twining.

[Derek Mitchell]

Thank you very much for that question.

I do think the fact that it has been under Congress has been a benefit to us. I think the fact of bipartisanship.... We get that question a lot, even from those in Congress. Why is there a republican institute and why is there a democratic institute? We were patterned after the German stiftungs, which divided their work according to ideology, but the NDI decided not to do its work based only on ideology. It was based on small-d democracy, on democrats, whatever their ideology, going forward. I think it helps that we have two institutes when it comes to Congress, because it switches back and forth between different partisan or party leadership.

I suppose it can be a double-edged sword in a way, but it has worked out well for us overall. We have had consistent support because of Congress, which traditionally has been the repository of national norms and values in the country. The executive can get overwhelmed by big picture policy, realism and how to get along with other countries, and values can get lost or downgraded in the list of important interests, but the legislature is always the one that says, “No, we have a certain meaning behind our country that the American people want to maintain.”

If we didn't have Congress in the past few years...this administration was cutting us drastically, by 30% to 40%. It would go up to the Hill and the Hill would say, “Thank you for your interest in national security, and we do the budget, so we're putting back all this money and in fact increasing it a little bit.”

We can't rely on that. We have to be able to explain to the American people why we do what we do and why it's important, and not rely on individual senators or staff members, but it has worked very well so far that it has been in Congress.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Twining.

[Dr. Daniel Twining]

Of course, I agree with all of that. Can I just add one thing? As all of you think about your institutional structures here, one thing that has helped us is that the IRI, NDI and the National Endowment for Democracy, are one and two degrees removed from the government, from the executive branch and from the Congress.

Governments do have to walk a diplomatic fine line with sensitive relationships: Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc. The Congress appropriates money that we compete for through grants and we then go out as non-profit, non-governmental organizations to do that work to empower citizens and leaders around the world. Our government is supporting it, but in a removed way that does not complicate diplomatic relations unduly, so it is worth thinking about that, rather than having it be bureaucratized in a ministry.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

I note that our 2007 report also recommended that something be “under Parliament”.

In terms of the funding, we talked about the costs of democracy promotion, but what are the costs of not promoting democracy? What are the costs in terms of what you mentioned, Mr. Twining, such as migration, refugee flows and conflict? Not having inclusive democracies obviously has great costs for the world, but also in our own countries when those refugee flows are coming in.

I noted, Mr. Mitchell, you mentioned that it's actually a time for democratic stimulus

Mr. Twining, you said—and this is quite significant—that democracy promotion should perhaps “supersede other forms of assistance”, because without democracy, when you have corruption and authoritarianism, a lot of the other assistance isn't as effective. I wonder if you could elaborate a bit for our committee. If we're looking at some sort of a larger investment in democracy, particularly something under Parliament, that costs money. What is the flip side? What is the cost of not investing in this area?

We'll start with Mr. Twining this time and then go to Mr. Mitchell.

[Dr. Daniel Twining]

The cost is horrific. My wife is British, and she's working on Brexit. I would argue that there's a direct line from the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria and the refugee crisis that flowed from that to the pressure on the European Union that has produced some extremist politics in the continent and has helped lead to Brexit. That is the cost. I don't know what the cost of that is, but that is an extraordinary line to trace: two or three million Syrian and Iraqi refugees actually cracking up our core alliance in the west, the European Union.

We know the cost of wars because we help pay for them and participate in them. Democracy assistance looks to me like cents on the dollar. Of course the great thing about democracy assistance is that ultimately countries graduate from it—and they want to graduate from it. They don't want to be conflict-ridden people, and these societies don't want to be dependants. So you are making an investment that yields dividends, which allows those countries over time to graduate, because they succeed.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Mitchell.

[Derek Mitchell]

It's always difficult to prove a negative—the dog that didn't bark, and how much is the opportunity cost there—but as Dan says, you can see the results of places that fail. There is a logic to democracy. It's not simply an ideology. When you don't have accountability of abusive power, lack of transparency leads to corruption, which leads to injustice and tyranny of majorities, which leads to refugee flows and instability that crosses borders. That has monetary impact. It means we have to pay for more in our security services.

I've worked in the Pentagon. Actually I worked at NDI before but went for 20 years to the Pentagon, and I saw it very much connected not because you impose democracy. That goes too far. That's an oxymoron. As Madeleine Albright says, you can't impose democracy. But you don't want to have to spend so much on security. You'd much rather spend on the preventives, and democracy is a preventive. It promotes human dignity. It promotes human rights, which creates then a self-sustaining and self-corrective inside countries, so you don't have the cross-border impacts that affect our national security, that cost billions of dollars rather than the millions that typically go into democracy work.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

And—

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. Sorry, but your time is up.

Next is MP Laverdière.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Mitchell, but the other witnesses can also comment.

Among the threats to democracy, you mentioned economic inequalities. This is a phenomenon we see, not only in Venezuela, Russia and other countries where there is corruption, but also in Canada—although not necessarily at the same level—where it is growing.

Could you tell us more or comment on it?

[Derek Mitchell]

You're exactly right. I'm not suggesting that we're any different. In fact, I would use us as an example of how economic inequality can lead to people's frustrations and lead to extreme measures when it comes to their voting or in terms of their politics. So we're not excluded from the dynamics that we've been seeing over the past generation, which means we have to be alert to not just the political components of democracy but to how democracy has to be ingrained into how we think about economic policy, how we do economic policy, how we think about corruption issues as well, which also feed into the inequality questions and injustice that people feel and get angry about.

One of the lessons learned is not just that if the economy goes up, then democracy is more likely sustained. The economy writ large can go up, but if some people move ahead or if there is a high level of corruption or there is inequality and people feel that it's not working for them and that there are elites, a rural-urban divide, an alienation from the system, a sense that politicians are not there for them, then a demagogue can come in and say, “I represent you; I'm a populist; I speak for you”. They denigrate the institutions, and once the institutions are gone and the norms are gone, then it's a free-for-all. Then it's rule by an individual.

If you don't get people's daily life at the heart of these questions, that people don't just have to vote but they have to eat and have to feel that they are recognized and that minorities have rights, then you're not going to get at the real big picture of democratic development. That's just a lesson we've learned. It's not enough to have institutions and processes; there has to be this culture and there has to be an economic component as well.

[Dr. Daniel Twining]

I would add that in many developing countries, people go into government to get rich. You don't do that in Canada. This is still the pathway to material prosperity, because of corruption, kleptocracy, etc. Tackling those at the source, making it clear that taxpayer stewardship is not a means to personal enrichment.... Only open politics can do that. Only politics that are transparent and accountable, and involve alternation in power and a degree of accountability between institutions and with courts, etc., can do that. Otherwise, you just have this open wound of public money going into private purses.

Open politics should be a leveller, because by definition, they crack up any kind of closed, elite structure in which one tribe, or one family or one party monopolizes political control and steers the economy accordingly.

In Malaysia, one reason you had this extraordinary democratic transition last year is that one party had been in power for 61 years. Every big businessman in Malaysia needed to be quite intimate with that ruling party in order for his prosperity, his business, to thrive. You've had an alternation in power there, and that has trickled down into the private sector and into the economy.

I will close with one thought. The populist wave in the west right now may fail, because populists arguably cannot deliver on their promises. They are too expensive. I would include populism of the left and of the right in this. There are lots of promises being thrown around in America now, as we look towards our 2020 presidential election, about new benefits for people. I'm not sure how we're going to pay for those. I would say the same things about the populism on the right that you see in places like Italy. At the end of the day, it's budget busting, and it's not sustainable.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much.

You also mentioned inclusiveness. With regard to the representation of women, I am proud to belong to a political party where 40% of the members of Parliament are women, which beats all the other parties. Forgive me for that little partisan comment. You also mentioned young people. This is an issue that concerns me very much.

What can be done to encourage political participation among young people?

[Dr. Daniel Twining]

Derek, go ahead.

[Derek Mitchell]

It's interesting to note up front that many of the reports that have come out.... Freedom House came out today with its democracy index, but The Economist issued their democracy index a few weeks ago. They said that faith in democratic institutions is down, but actually political participation is up, particularly among women, and also, to some degree, youth. A lot of the participation is taking to the streets or in frustration. They're not confident about political parties. They think they're exclusive and dominated by the older generation. These are cultural as well as political issues.

In fact, participation is up, and there is a thirst to participate in a way that works for them. This idea that young people—even in the United States we hear these facts, and overseas—are not interested in democracy.... I think you disaggregate democracy, and say, “Would you like to participate in your public affairs? Would you like to have accountability? Do you want to have freedom to associate, free speech, transparency and the ability to represent your communities?” “Yes, yes, yes and yes.” “Then that means you want democracy.” They don't have the way to participate. They don't feel confident that the rules and institutions now work for them, which is a huge challenge. It's not something necessarily that an NDI or an IRI can fix.

We have to think about how we provide different guidance or assistance, or learn lessons where young people can productively engage.

If you look at Africa, there is a youth explosion, and a youth network out of Nigeria that is extremely exciting and very interesting. The future of democracy will be based on these young people. Investing in them now and trying to find a way for them to engage and get some of the establishment to allow them to engage in the interest of broader national development will be very important.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much.

I will move to MP Saini.