Foreign Affairs committee  I did not study Canada's foreign policy. I examined democracy-building processes in general and made a general comparison of several strategies to promote democracy: control, conditionality and incentive. My only Canadian experience was the work I did with CIDA, but that was a long time ago, between 1992 and 1995.

Foreign Affairs committee  That is an interesting and important question, but I cannot answer it, because that is a project I have just begun working on. It deals with experiences of democracy building under foreign control. There have been a number of such instances throughout history. I want to compare past cases of democracy building, in such underdeveloped countries as Afghanistan, and see whether they were successful or not.

Foreign Affairs committee  You are right. I think it would be preferable for CIDA not to evaluate its own programs. What does USAID do? The American legislation requires that it hire outside experts, people who do not work for USAID. The evaluations are done by academics, members of various foundations, but they are nevertheless paid by USAID.

Foreign Affairs committee  I was referring to the lack of evaluation of CIDA's democratic development programs. I looked at the democratic development programs in the 90s: from 1992 to 2002. I got in touch with senior officials at CIDA and asked if there were public evaluations of all these programs. The answer was no.

Foreign Affairs committee  I do not understand why Canada or other countries absolutely insist that every country on the planet be democratic in 2006. I gave the example of Malaysia and Singapore, which are not, strictly speaking, democracies: they are hybrid regimes. In other words, they are countries whose political system has many democratic features, but also some authoritarian features as well.

Foreign Affairs committee  That was the tied aid policy the World Bank introduced in the early 90s, in 1992, if memory serves me well. The idea was to do everything simultaneously: promote economic development, fight poverty, promote environmental protection, improve good governance and develop democracy.

Foreign Affairs committee  As I've already said, we should learn from what the British did in a number of their colonies. It is really very interesting to see how they managed to create conditions favourable to democracy before these countries became independent. It is not by chance that democracies that were once British colonies have proved stable and lasting—indeed a number have made considerable progress—while it is altogether another kettle of fish for former French, Spanish and Portuguese colonies.

Foreign Affairs committee  That is a very interesting question. Great Britain did not treat all of its colonies in the same manner. At that time—not to put too fine a point on it—Great Britain was extremely racist towards Africa and Central Asia. As a result, British policy in Southeast Asia was different to that in Africa or Central Asia.

Foreign Affairs committee  As I said, conditionality is virtually exclusively used by the European Union, as, for two reasons, it is the only entity that can use it. The first reason for this is that the European Union offers candidate countries an incredible reward—accession to the EU—in return. Such a reward is of crucial, unrivalled importance to candidate countries—they could wish for no better outcome than EU membership.

Foreign Affairs committee  I would study the situation in Haiti before. For the time being, I don't have a good understanding of Haiti, so I don't want to—

Foreign Affairs committee  You're asking for my opinion on local governance and local democracy programs. In an article I published in 2003 in Democratization magazine, I examined CIDA's programs in Southeast Asia and the Philippines, where local democracy programs had been established on a few occasions.

Foreign Affairs committee  Two seconds.

Foreign Affairs committee  I can stop here if you want.

Foreign Affairs committee  To conclude, the results of democracy promotion strategies tend to confirm the basic point of democratization theory for over 50 years. Democracy is a domestic affair par excellence. Although the more forcible strategies, like control and conditionality, are more effective than incentives, their success depends either on favourable economic, social, political and cultural conditions in the target countries or on the creation of those conditions through massive investment and judicious and targeted intervention over a long or very long period of time.

Foreign Affairs committee  I am not very familiar with Haiti. I remember when I was a CIDA consultant from 1992 to 1995, people were already asking what we could do in Haiti. Back then, I was already quite familiar with the democratization process, so I told people at CIDA that whatever type of intervention Canada made in Haiti, I would not be too confident about the results.