Foreign Affairs committee  I pay tribute to your years of experience in the Balkans. As you know, it's a frozen conflict. As you know, the phenomenon of this consolidation into a single party state is very advanced in Serbia. It's not great in lots of other parts. These are countries that have not made a t

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  It's very slow. Europe proceeds by kind of an elephantine consensus formation because it's 27 people. Canada will recognize how this is because we're a federation. Everything happens slowly in Canada in that way for good reasons, but I think we're coming to a crunch point. For ex

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Caron, still with all due respect, I've never understood what “interculturalism” means exactly. It's a little beyond me. I know that a big discussion is being held across Canada, and not only in Quebec, on the right way to integrate newcomers to Canada. I think that a number

Foreign Affairs committee  I hope so. To turn the page here in Hungary, there needs to be an internal opposition. This depends on the Hungarians and the opposition forces in the current government. I don't have any lessons to share with them, since I'm not involved in politics in Canada and Hungary. Obvi

Foreign Affairs committee  This the story of what has happened to the European transition from communism to liberal democracy in general. Orbán's story is the story, in a way, of the whole region. He begins, as you quite rightly say, as an anti-communist insurgent, and has—all credit to him—a very courage

Foreign Affairs committee  That's the key issue.

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Caron, with all due respect, I think that Europeans have very little awareness or knowledge of Canada's domestic policies. They still hold a very positive view of Canada as both a host country and a bilingual country, where two languages are spoken. Despite all the internal

Foreign Affairs committee  Some people say I'm going from the frying pan into the fire. I hope not. We've had very good co-operation from the coalition government, but you're quite right to indicate that there is a far right party. Let's understand that it is a constitutional party. There are parties that

Foreign Affairs committee  Eighty per cent of the media in Hungary is controlled by the government. The space for independent political debate is shrinking all the time. The capacity of the constitutional court and the courts to oversee and guarantee election integrity is diminishing. Yes, there was an el

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you.

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, I certainly don't mean Liberal, with a capital “L”, and I hope that everybody around the table is liberal democrat in the sense that they believe in majority rule balanced by minority rights. That's a key part of liberal democracy. The rule of law, the separation and indepe

Foreign Affairs committee  The Orbán regime has won three or four mandates. Once it wins an election, it then sets about to increasingly control the media, to put independent media out of business, and then to begin to change the constitution and suppress the independence of the courts. It then imposes inc

Foreign Affairs committee  I think you're putting your finger on some important points. I think it would be grotesque to denounce the people who want to leave the European Union and are campaigning for Brexit as hostile to liberal democratic views. A lot of what they're saying is, “We want to restore Briti

Foreign Affairs committee  Good morning.