Mr. Chair and members, thank you for the opportunity to address the committee.
CANADEM has been doing democratic promotion for two decades. I've been doing democratic promotion for three decades, starting with my diplomatic posting to the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, England, in 1989—a long way back.
I've circulated a short brief on just one aspect of CANADEM's two decades of democracy promotion work, specifically our election observation work. I hope it makes it clear that already, in CANADEM, Canada has at least one strong and very competent platform for international democracy promotion, and I would suggest that there are others.
We have proven ourselves adept at scaling up and performing well in difficult situations, as we did in Afghanistan as early as 2002. When we were suddenly asked to deploy police and legal reform teams, we did. Then again, in 2008, with just a month's notice, we were asked to set up a free-standing, permanent team of governance capacity-building experts in Kabul, including with the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan. In both instances, not only did we have the right experts, but we were also robust enough to find our own compound, provide our own security, vehicles, food services, admin and logistics, in a rather challenging environment.
You, in Canada, already have at least one strong democracy promotion agency, CANADEM, and we are capable of much more. We have over 48,000 people on our roster, and 8,000 of them have democracy credentials.
You've posed three questions. The first was how the field of democratic development has changed since 2007. As you've been hearing, it has changed substantially. Various agencies outside of Canada have become very much stronger, including various NGOs based in countries outside of Canada. This is very positive for democracy promotion worldwide, but it has also narrowed the scope for Canada to easily re-enter direct hands-on democracy promotion and capacity building.
Your second question was about Canada's role and effectiveness within that landscape. Over the past decade, Canada has cut back its direct hands-on involvement in international democracy promotion. For example, as you know, Rights and Democracy in Montreal was wound up. Funding for democracy work by Canadian NGOs, like the Parliamentary Centre or CANADEM, was reduced to almost zero. Election observation involvement was curtailed and then cancelled completely in 2016. It has only come back partially with regard to Ukraine. At the same time, Canada's indirect involvement, the funding of non-Canadian NGOs and other non-Canadian agencies, has continued but seemingly at a reduced level. I say “seemingly” because the lack of transparency as to how Global Affairs Canada spends its money has only increased.
I would urge the committee to press Global Affairs to make it clear to all of us what it funds and whom it funds. All indications are that Canadian NGOs are receiving less and less funding while non-Canadian NGOs still receive some funding, and UN and other multilateral agencies receive substantial non-accountable and unexamined funding, for which they are not audited as to how well they make use of Canadian funds. Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of the UN.
The third question that you've posed was forward looking, how Canada can best support democratic development internationally. This, of course, is a much harder question. Your deliberations will shed light on why Canada, since the late 1990s, has been so limited in its direct hands-on democracy capacity development work, and why, over the past decade, Canada has even reduced its direct hands-on democracy promotion. Clarity on that stepping back will help shed light on if and how Canada might move forward.
As my final point, do we need to create a new Canadian democracy promotion agency or is the first step to fund and scale up existing Canadian NGOs, followed by an assessment as to which ones are succeeding and can be even further scaled up to become Canadian democracy champions internationally? Are existing Canadian NGOs not capable of scaling up to that extent, and does Canada need to pursue the costly and time-consuming option of creating a new Canadian democracy promotion agency? I'm really not too sure which way to go on this.
Thank you. I'm pleased to respond to any questions you may have.