Mr. Speaker, one of the greatest success stories of our foreign diplomacy has been Canada's role in encouraging human rights and the rule of law.
As president of the Canada-Mexico Parliamentary Friendship Group, I saw this first-hand last weekend as I accompanied our Governor General and our Minister of State for Foreign Affairs to attend the inauguration of Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto.
The president devoted one-fifth of his inaugural address to the rule of law, and this is an area where Canadians, with quiet cost-effective work, have contributed to an astonishing turnaround.
Mexicans have supported sweeping changes to move from a closed system of criminal justice to an open adversarial system where witnesses will, for the first time, be open to cross-examination.
Welcomed enthusiastically by Mexico, Canadians are having a powerful impact. The Department of Foreign Affairs, Canadian judges, lawyers and police are working with Mexican counterparts to promote fairness and integrity in the Mexican system.
In the words of our Governor General, “It's very important to Canada and the world that Mexico succeed”.
In the area of human rights and the rule of law, we Canadians are doing more than our part.