Foreign Affairs committee  Are there any whips here?

Foreign Affairs committee  Thanks for inviting me.

Foreign Affairs committee  When we look at the literature, one of the older lessons of democracy was that it was the growth of the middle class that leads to demands for democracy. That seems to be empirically valid, but there are many poorer countries—Somalia has just been mentioned—that have made that jump.

Foreign Affairs committee  I wasn't necessarily recommending that parties work at local levels. Local government here of course has been primarily independent. Occasionally there are informal party relationships locally, but it's been primarily locally based. My perception has been, in the countries I have been in and in my study of the literature, that in neighbourhoods....

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  The model that I would like and think would be appropriate for our country would be the multi-party model, based on the Dutch or Westminster models. Whatever divides us in Canadian politics at home on the issues, the men and women who work in our parties and are in Parliament at least believe that democracy is a system worth promoting and they are expert at because they are practitioners in it.

Foreign Affairs committee  In any aspect of foreign policy, but particularly in democracy promotion, it's best to begin with humility. Nobody is arguing that Canada or any of the western democracies are necessarily superb. But what we can point to is that there are practices and traditions that other nations, that dissident groups, might find useful to learn from on a comparative basis.

Foreign Affairs committee  Right. On the first point, there is an issue about elites and elites' behaviour, and their relationship to people below. In a world with limited means, limited aid and limited resources, where CIDA is already cutting down from 150 nations to 25 or so, the world has a variety of measures that it can bring, both on a corruption index and on an abuse index.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll read a brief statement. As you've said, you may have to leave for votes, and then answer questions, but I'll put this on the record. I'll be referring in my statement as well, ladies and gentlemen, to very brief summaries of a series of studies that we have done at our think tank at Queen's University.

Foreign Affairs committee  All I need is their e-mail addresses and I'd be glad to do it.

Foreign Affairs committee  Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, let me begin. The committee is to be applauded for undertaking a study of Canada's role in international democracy promotion. The subject of democracy promotion--its relation to traditional foreign and development policy goals, the push-back by autocrats like President Putin, the recent crackdown on dissent by powerful dictatorships like China, and most of all the anarchy in Afghanistan and Iraq, where democracy-building faces violent opposition--is now one of the core issues in international relations.