When you're thinking about Canadian interests, I think it is important to cast them at the proper level. Canada depends a great deal on global peace, security, stability, and prosperity. If we can align our development co-operation activities in that way, then I would say yes, we should be thinking about those interests. However, they are also interests that apply equally to our partnered developing countries.
If we want to get a bit more specific about that, and you mentioned trade terms, I don't think that's appropriate. There are other vehicles in place and being considered that can support Canada's international trade objectives and that are much more appropriate for those purposes.
As we look at the issue of Canadian interests, perhaps we should think about Alexis de Tocqueville's comments back in 1838 when he talked about self-interest properly understood. That is where you think at a global level about how our interests are best served by contributing.
Mr. Côté spoke about global public goods. We think about how we contribute to the promotion of those global public goods because they are in our interests as well as being in the interests of partnered developing countries. If you pushed me a little further on it, that would be the route that I would go. We have other tools at our disposal in Canada to advance our trade interests and our other economic interests. In respect of these global public goods, these macro-level interests properly understood, a development co-operation program has to think much more globally and, dare I say it, much more altruistically, than in a rather narrow sense.
I hope I am not misrepresenting his position, but Mr. Côté used a term that I wish I had spoken about as well, and that is policy coherence for development. That means making sure that our national policies take into consideration the concerns and interests of developing countries. When we develop our trade policies, when we go into these mammoth multi-stakeholder trade negotiations like the TPP, when we look at our international investment policies, when we look at our international migration policies, we must always hold them up to the light and examine them carefully with respect to what kind of impact they are going to have on developing countries.
It doesn't make sense for us on the one hand to channel funds through our development co-operation program, and on the other hand adopt national policies and implement programs that in effect cancel the value of those development co-operation investments. It's a very rigorous exercise. It's not at all a comfortable exercise, particularly at the political level, because it can involve some very difficult choices.
In my experience at the OECD, when I did a peer review of Sweden in 2006, the Swedish government in the previous year had implemented what it called a policy for global development. This was a program of policy coherence for development. It meant that every ministry as they brought macro-level policy proposals to the cabinet had to show that they had properly screened them for their potential impact on developing countries, as well as their impact on domestic issues in Sweden.
The Swedes admitted that doing this was both politically brave and practically difficult, but not something that they would back away from. They were committed to moving it through because they saw this as being in Sweden's interests. They wanted to ensure that Sweden's efforts in international development co-operation, which take into account development assistance as well as other measures, didn't bounce off one another and end in no real positive meaningful result.
It's a very significant thing, and I hope, Mr. Chairman, that your committee will at some point be able to engage with that because I think there are many of us in Canada who would appreciate very much the opportunity to take part in such a discussion about policy coherence for development.
I apologize to the member because he asked a fairly simple and innocuous question, and he got a rather longer answer than perhaps he expected.