Good morning to both of you. Thank you very much for coming in.
Mr. Greenhill, I'll start with you, because I think you gave voice and eloquence to something that has troubled me over the last few years.
Part of the issue is that right now there has been a vacuum in leadership in the United States. You've seen recently the engagement of eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Poland. The Visegrad nations are becoming more populist, although they are somewhat established democracies. You also have nascent democracies in Africa, where you have an entrenched history of clans and tribes. You have an internal geopolitical issue and you have an external geopolitical issue.
Leaving that aside, of everybody we've spoken to, nobody has yet stated the economic argument. If we're going into a country and developing democracy, side by side I think there should be a development of the economic system also. I don't think you can have one without the other.
If we go back in history and look at Bretton Woods in 1944 and the development of the IMF and the World Bank, part of the reasoning was to stabilize Europe, to make sure there was financial stability so that further complications would not arise because of financial issues. I know there is important work to be done on democratic governance, and I think it's great, but so far, nobody has said that we should also develop the economy side by side.
You've raised some very interesting points, points that are actually very profound, when you talk about deep corruption, crime, lack of security and weak institutions. All of that is pervasive because the economic system is not in alignment. When you have a lack or scarcity, you're going to have economic issues that will further impact and corrode democratic institutions. That's why democracies don't always work for everyone.
Where is Canada going to be aligned with stabilizing societies not only on the democratic side but also on the financial and economic side?