Foreign Affairs Committee on April 9th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Good morning, everyone, on this surprisingly snowy day in Ottawa.

We are beginning our study into threats to liberal democracy in Europe. We're pleased to welcome our guests for the first hour.

From the Atlantic Council, we have former ambassador Daniel Fried, distinguished follow at the Atlantic Council and also former special assistant and NSC senior director for presidents Clinton and Bush, ambassador to Poland and assistant to the secretary of state for Europe. Welcome, Ambassador Fried.

We also have Mr. Benjamin Haddad, Director, Future Europe Initiative. He's an expert in European politics and transatlantic relations. He has notably advocated for transatlantic unity in the face of Russian aggression, greater European responsibility and investment on strategic matters.

We also have Dr. Staffan Lindberg, Professor in the Political Science Department and Director of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg.

I would like to start with our guests from the Atlantic Council, who can take 10 to 12 minutes for some introductory remarks.

Dr. Lindberg, we'll then move to you.

Then of course we'll open it up to members because I'm sure they're going to have many questions for all of you.

With that, our guests from the Atlantic Council, please proceed.

[Daniel Fried, Distinguished Fellow, Atlantic Council]

Thank you for this opportunity.

I wish we were able to meet under more auspicious circumstances, but the fact is that the west, that is, the core of the world's democracies, comprising North America and Europe, is suffering a period of what I would call a democratic sag in self-confidence at the same time that authoritarians around the world—Russia, and in a different way, China—are finding themselves emboldened. This is a period of testing for the west and for our values. Since 1945, and again since 1989, we believed that our values and our interests would advance together or not at all. We built institutions reflecting the lessons we had learned in the first half of the 20th century.

The result was spectacular. It was the longest period of general peace in the west in recorded history, with world prosperity. Despite gaps, mistakes, blunders, hypocrisies and other mistakes made by the U.S. government and all governments, this period was a good one. From 1945 to 1989 we advanced a vision of a democratic world order within the space we had at our disposal. From 1989 we expanded that space and achieved a vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace.

That vision is under assault from both authoritarians without and doubts within. The problems that have weakened us have also been of our own making. Economic stresses, massive income disparities in the United States, a prolonged period of economic stagnation in Europe, and enormously high youth unemployment, plus issues of national identity in the face of massive immigration, Latino immigration mainly in the United States, and north African and Middle Eastern immigration in Europe have led to stresses on both sides of the Atlantic and a nativist counter-reaction.

We face a narrative in which the authoritarians, including especially the Chinese, may believe that their time has come and that the authoritarian model is actually more effective. This, in fact, is not new. This is a remake of an old movie we saw in the 1930s. I like remakes no better than the original, and in this case certainly not, but the challenge is not to be laughed at. I suppose the proof that the United States and Europe are part of the same civilization is that we are suffering—I won't speak of Canada, but certainly my country and Europe are suffering—the same kind of political and economic stresses at the same time. Whatever you think of Brexit or President Trump or the Italian government or whatever it is that we call what is happening in some countries in central Europe, we face common challenges.

Now, in the view of the Atlantic Council, at least, and in my own view, it won't do to wring our hands and complain or, being an American, to simply be mad at some of the narratives coming out of the Trump White House about nationalism or the unilateral nature of American foreign policy interests. Instead, the Atlantic Council, along with Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation, launched an effort to, as it were, plant the flag of values and what we stand for. Madeleine Albright, a former secretary of state; Steve Hadley, a former national security adviser; Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister; and Yoriko Kawaguchi, a former Japanese foreign minister, were leaders and co-chairs of an effort to write and then present a declaration of principles—what it is we stand for. Frankly, we were inspired by the Atlantic Charter, which set out the first set of foundational principles for the post-World War II world. This was not an official effort but an unofficial effort to set out principles for the 21st century.

It has seven statements about democracy, economic freedom and responsibility, about the right to protect and about human rights. I commend it to you. It was a joint U.S.-Canadian production. That is, CIGI and the Atlantic Council worked together on this. At the rollout at the Munich Security Conference in February, the Canadian foreign minister took part of the town hall meeting to explain the document. The purpose of this is to rally the forces of—if I may use the phrase—the free world, rally ourselves and then, when we have consolidated our thinking, find ways to reach out to others.

This isn't a western-only product. Former officials from India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia, Israel and South Korea have all signed this, as well as a number of Europeans. We want to reach out to countries, democracies around the world, and then reach out to see whether we can develop common ground with countries like China, because we do want China involved in the making of a 21st century system. We just don't want to have to compromise our basic values to bring it on board.

Now there's much more to say about this effort, and I look forward to the discussion, but I will say that your inquiry, Canada's inquiry into the challenges to the liberal world order, is timely and important and we have work to do together.

I will yield the rest of my time to my colleague from the Atlantic Council.

[Benjamin Haddad, Director, Future Europe Initiative, Atlantic Council]

Thank you for your invitation.

Let me just add a quick couple of words to what Dan just said about the threats to liberal world order. As we have talked about this a lot in the last few years both in the United States and Europe, it's important to define the words that we're talking about because we sometimes talk about democratic backsliding or the rise of the liberalism. I think what we're seeing is the rise of an alternative liberal model that is defined by authoritarianism, assault on the rule of law, a sort of direct connection between the leader and the people circumventing parliamentary power, civil society and NGOs. We see this all over Europe.

I really want to stress one of the points that Ambassador Fried put forward, the idea that a lot of the causes for this are self-inflicted, and it's true that we have maybe not been reactive enough to some of the economic inequalities that have been on the rise, a very high youth unemployment that you see all over Europe, as well as the ripple effect of what is seen by many in Europe as uncontrolled immigration and the effect on the transformation of national identity. To respond to those challenges, it is very important to be able to differentiate the illiberal measures taken by some leaders from maybe legitimate differences in policy, such as the reaction to immigration.

I want to come especially to the question of European politics in the last few years, especially since the refugee crisis of 2015. There maybe has been confusion sometimes between, once again, some measures taken that are antithetical to the values of the European Union and the attachment to the rule of law and what could be seen as constituting legitimate policy disagreements about how to treat the immigration crisis. I think this difference has been exploited by leaders, especially in Poland and Hungary, saying that the voters didn't have a choice but to side with them including when they took measures that were seen as threatening the rule of law.

I think it's really important to make this point because, as you see the European Union, you have countries that come with very different historical cultural traditions, very different relationships to the notion of sovereignty and national identity. These are linked mostly to dramatically different experiences in the 20th century. Western European countries, like France and Germany, joined the European Union—created the European Union—to a large extent as a way not to reproduce the ills of the first part of the 21st century, nationalism and border-strong identity. Countries that are left behind the Iron Curtain to a large extent saw the integration in the European Union and NATO as a way to protect their national identity and sovereignty. From this you can have very different reactions to issues like immigration that need to be understood and not confused with legitimate criticism over the rule of law.

Once again, understanding the concerns of voters on these issues without giving in to illiberalism is a key element, in my view, to respond to what we're talking about today. I'd be happy to expand this in a conversation a little later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to Dr. Lindberg.

Again, perhaps you could take around 10 minutes or so, and then we'll open it up to my colleagues for questions.

[Professor Staffan Lindberg, Professor, Political Science Department and Director of the V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg, As an Individual]

Mr. Chairman and honourable members, thank you for inviting me to be here today.

With your permission, I would like to show some slides when I give my introductory remarks.

I'm going to put what I have to say in a bit of a world context. I represent the V-Dem Institute. That's the headquarters for—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Dr. Lindberg, we have to pause for a second. It's required that all slides be bilingual. Unfortunately, we haven't had an opportunity to view these yet.

Let me ask the members.

Do I have unanimous consent to move forward with this?

Monsieur Caron.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Yes, but I want to mention that we should inform witnesses that their presentations must be sent to us in English and French. This time, I'm willing to say yes, but I would like the matter clarified in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Absolutely, and we do endeavour to contact witnesses to make that clear, with the caveat that we continue to want all materials before this committee to be bilingual.

Dr. Lindberg, thank you, and sorry about that. Obviously, in these committees, we are bilingual, but we have received unanimous consent to show your slides.

Please go ahead and continue your presentation.

[Prof. Staffan Lindberg]

Thank you very much, and apologies if the mistake is mine.

I just want to give you the background, in the sense that I represent what is now the largest-ever social science international collaboration to measure and study democracy, and now, the autocratization [Technical difficulty—Editor].

This represents a collective effort of a total of 3,000 academics and other experts from 180 countries in the world.

What we have been establishing is that this current wave of autocratization affects large portions of the world. We are in a third wave at present. It affects large influential countries. The way things happen, as I'm sure many honourable members are aware, is that media and civil society are often attacked first and then rule of law. But different from what we were used to is that the current wave of autocratization is very incremental. It is very slow and gradual. That makes it hard to detect and hard to react to.

This is a visual of what has happened since 1972. To the left, you see the regular sort of country averages of the level of democracy in the world, liberal democracy, and you can see there is some backsliding, according to this measure, in the last five to 10 years.

If we—on the right-hand side panel—weigh this by population size in these countries, then these trends are much more pronounced. The top line there is North America and western Europe. Then you have the green line, which is Latin America, and the black line is the world average.

We established last year that 2.5 billion people, or a third of the world's population, live in countries that are undergoing autocratization rather than the opposite, democratization.

Here is entirely new data. This was ready two days ago. It covers up to the end of 2018 and is comparing things to those in 2008. If a country is below the line, things have gotten worse. If you're above the line, things have gotten better. We put names on the countries in which we can establish that there has been a statistically significant change. Only those countries are marked. But you can see some of the countries that are there: the United States, and the Czech Republic, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, and Serbia in Europe. Then there are other big countries like Brazil and India with its 1.3 billion people. And, of course, down there is Turkey. That's an electoral autocracy today, or electoral dictatorship if you want.

If we look at the last couple of years, for Europe it's even worse. Of the four countries that have backslid the most, three are in Europe: Romania, Poland and Bulgaria. When they are backsliding, these are the areas that are affected the most. Again, below the line over the last 10 years, more countries have become worse in that aspect, and above the line, things have gotten better.

You'll see that it's freedom of expression, in which you also have freedom of the media, that is the worst affected, along with freedom of association and rule of law to some extent.

If we look at that liberal democracy index in Europe, you have the Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine that have gotten worse. Here it's from 2009 to 2018, so it's a perfect 10 years. Also, in these countries, it's largely freedom of association that is the most negatively affected.

I just want to give you one visual of that. One of the indicators we have that have to do with freedom of the media is government censorship efforts when it comes to the media. Here, again, even on these specific indicators, you see there are many of the same countries again, but also, in some of the countries, this aspect of democracy—a very precise, specific indicator—has gotten worse, although in the aggregate, when we look at liberal democracy as a whole, the changes are not yet so big that we can say that democracy has slid back as a whole.

This is one of the, so to speak, early warning signals in the battery of indicators of liberal democracy that tend to move early. This is, for us, a very worrying picture, if nothing else, because of this. I'm sure you've seen similar pictures online at certain points. First they came for the journalists and then we don't know what happened.

On that note, let me just say thank you. I'll be happy to answer any questions that the honourable members may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We'll move straight to questions.

We're going to begin with MP Alleslev, please.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

Obviously, it's not the most positive; it doesn't look like we're moving in the right direction. Are we at a stage where we need to define the problem, or do we already have a good understanding of the problem and, as a result, need to move into the concrete defining of pragmatic, executable solutions?

That question is for both, so whoever wants to jump in first....

[Daniel Fried]

Well, I already tried to give the answer to that when I referred to the declaration of principles. The Atlantic Council and Canada's CIGI decided that bemoaning the state of democratic deterioration in Europe, in the United States and around the world simply was a hand-wringing and ineffective exercise.

Our thought is that we need to decide what we stand for and rally forces, the better to push back against these trends. We need to decide how to push back against the authoritarian trends. We think that we could best do that by defining who we are, by extolling the virtues of the democratic order and by honestly evaluating the problems that have brought us to this point.

I also don't think that simply describing the democratic sag as a problem in central Europe or in the former communist countries post-1989 Europe is going to do. I think that what is happening in Poland and Hungary is simply their version of what is happening throughout Europe and, indeed, in the United States.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

There's no question then we've defined the problem. You've identified the declaration of principles as being an overarching guide of what we stand for, so that would be the “what” that we're trying to achieve.

As a parliamentarian, I'm looking for concrete recommendations of what I can propose to a government and to my citizens in terms of the pragmatic deliverables around how we achieve that. What specific policy actions do we need to be taking in our countries to stop the autocratization and to adhere to the declaration of principles?

[Daniel Fried]

Oh my, there's a long list.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Where do we find it? Where's the list?

[Daniel Fried]

With respect to Ukraine, the only disagreement I have with the professor's chart is that I don't think Ukraine has deteriorated since 2008. I think Ukrainians are struggling with many of the same issues that we all face, but they are doing so under far worse conditions and under actual military assault by Russia. One thing we could do is back Ukraine—not simply its resistance against Russian aggression, but also its efforts to reform itself and try to Europeanize itself.

I think that the notion of inevitable deterioration of democracy, if this idea gains currency, can be self-perpetuating. I think we can break that cycle. I think Ukrainians are trying, and I think we ought to back them.

That's one thing we could do. Another—

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you. I'd like to make sure I have time for Dr. Lindberg. I apologize.

[Daniel Fried]

That's quite all right.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Dr. Lindberg.

[Prof. Staffan Lindberg]

Thank you.

Have we identified the problem? I think that depends on what you mean by “the problem”. Do we know that there's backsliding going on? Yes. Do we know where it's going on? Yes, and with our data you can see the details of it, but is that the problem? Is it that we see backsliding?

In that sense, yes, we can identify the problem, but along with the problem, do we know why this has happened or is ongoing in so many countries, and not only in Europe? I think we need to have a global perspective here. It's ongoing in very much the same ways and manners in India and in the Philippines. You talked about the United States, and I agree with that.

Do we know why this is happening? Yes, we have hunches, and I think we heard some good hunches from my colleagues at the Atlantic Council. Do we know that those are the drivers? No, we don't. We still need to study that a lot more, unfortunately.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay.

Do we need to be able to answer that in more detail before we can move to the “what we do about it” in terms of the actual solutions? I want you to answer that with two perspectives, if you could, because it sounds like we're talking about “them” rather than talking perhaps about “each of us”. As much as what we should be doing in support of others, what should we be doing in each of our own countries?

[Prof. Staffan Lindberg]

Yes, I share that completely. Let me also say that I think the changes I showed and that we've published are the sorts of the changes that we can say are statistically significant and substantial, but that doesn't mean we.... Also, in my own country, Sweden, we see some of these trends, with growing exclusive nationalism and fear in the wake of large-scale immigration and so on. We see that here too.

Until we have a better solid basis for what the drivers of this are, really, it's hard to say whether we need to know them or not. Let me give you an illustration—

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Dr. Lindberg, I'm going to have to stop you there. I'm sure we can get you to finish off the answer in a future question.

We're going to move now to MP Wrzesnewskyj, please.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen.

Dr. Lindberg, I'd like to begin with you.

You've done a lot of statistical analysis and diving into numbers. I'd like to dive into some numbers in Europe. It's how elections have played out.

There seems to be a pattern, whether it be the AfD, the Five Star Movement or France's National Front. The Five Star Movement received 32% of the vote. The National Front, Le Pen's party, received 34% of the vote. It seems that in Europe the numbers cap at that one-third of the population that it resonates with.

The Pew Research Center did something quite interesting. Last spring, in most of the democratic countries—or some that are slipping—they put a question to the population: Do immigrants make our country stronger? What's fascinating is in countries like France or Germany, 59% of the population agreed with that premise. It seems there's a hard base of about 32%, with perhaps a little room for growth. Then there's something really odd that happens.

I'd like to note, by the way, that Canada ranked the highest in terms of people agreeing that immigrants make our country stronger. Sixty-eight per cent of Canadians agreed with that. That was the highest in the world.

In Hungary, it was only 5%, and it really stands out when we look at what perhaps happens in Hungary that's different from the AfD or the Five Star Movement. Whereas there seems to be a creep of autocratization in many of these countries, in Hungary there's kind of a sneaky way of eroding democracy. Orbán has codified this whole concept of Christian democracy with three clear principles. He propagates that view and you see it translate in very dangerous ways in the numbers. On that point of view, he seems to have the backing of over 90% of the population.

Diving into that data, and looking at it through that particular lens, it would seem there's a base of 32%. Once they are in power, and once they begin this process, if it's codified in a succinct, clean way, as we see in the example of Hungary, what do you believe could happen in some of the other European countries? Of course, Mr. Orbán is spreading this ideology beyond Hungary.

[Prof. Staffan Lindberg]

I don't think it necessarily stays at 30%, or whatever it is. We know this also from history. Once you have this sort of leadership in place, you can change the population's perceptions of, say, immigrants or any other part of the population. That's the worrying part of today's autocratization. Not only in Europe but across Europe we see these uglier forms of nationalism that build on identifying a subpopulation within the country, which they vilify and scapegoat as a step to making the other part of the population scared enough that they can go to emergency powers, such as changing laws regarding civil society, constraining media and so on, in the name of protecting the nation. You see the same thing going on in India with Modi. It's a very worrying trend. It reminds me too much of the 1920s and 1930s for me to be comfortable.

On Orbán and the Christian principles, I want to note that he didn't start there. If you go back to 2010, there was nothing of that there. This is something that, later in his tenure, he has sort of found out can be used.