Mr. Chairman, I should like to thank the honourable member for his kind words. I'm touched by them, because I know that some of the meetings were not always much of a love-in. As a matter of fact, the thought ran through my mind that I should have left more often.
With respect to that fine balance between state responsibility and individual responsibility, I happen to be a fervent believer that the answer to that lies in Parliament and the statutes that Parliament passed. It's not in the hands of Elections Canada. What Elections Canada has an obligation to do is tell the committee this is going to be the consequence of this, or this is going to be the consequence of that, or here's how we think you can handle this situation.
I've always stayed away from making the basic judgment about whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. I think that in this country--it's an incredibly strong democracy--the answer lies in your hands. And I've always said that when I've appeared before the committee. It's the committee that recommends changes to the statute through bills that are presented, and Parliament passes that. To me, that was supreme, and that's been my orientation.
So how do we handle that balance? I've given advice on some of the problems that are going to be raised. You're going to see through the documents that my successor will be providing that Parliament will make that balance through the statute that it will pass. The Chief Electoral Officer will simply salute and say yes, we'll implement that--once you have all that advice.
With respect to the international scene, I did appear before the committee dealing with international affairs, chaired by Mr. Sorenson. In terms of democracy development, not only electoral democracy development, but other facets as well.... And there's a movement afoot now with the Department of Foreign Affairs and with CIDA to create what we call a democracy council, inviting Elections Canada to participate. In all the years I've been there, when we started to see the Iron Curtain tumble and countries--not only the Iron Curtain countries, but the others that were in Africa, for example--hiding behind that curtain saying we have to get on with the new way of thinking here, I've often felt that there was more that we could do.
But it wasn't Elections Canada's mandate to staff up to do the promotional stuff. It was our responsibility to respond, and our responsibility to respond was...not severely hampered, but I always took into consideration the question: Where are we in Canada? Can we afford to do this type of thing? My priority was always Canada, and I never accepted an international assignment unless I felt we could do it without hampering in any way what we had to deliver for Canadians. We always knew where the bread was buttered; it's buttered in Canada.
But this thrust.... I gave similar remarks the other evening when there was a session organized with these people and the Georgian delegation was here. What I said was that there should be within the envelopes of financing in those organizations something that relates directly to democracy development, rather than having it face all of the challenges that come within organizations for funding for other ongoing projects. It's the nature of a bureaucracy to do this. What you have to do is set up a structure that allows a specific amount to be allocated. It's not a large amount, in my books, that would be required to do that. Initially, I felt $1 million a year for Elections Canada would have produced three to four times the results that we're able to produce.
So that's a long answer to your question, sir.