[Recorded by Electronic Evidence]
Wednesday, December 6, 1995
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[English]
The Chair: Order. We begin this session of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
I apologize for the fact that there are only two of us here, but as you can see, it's mass confusion in Ottawa...should I say ``today''?
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Mr. Miller, welcome.
Mr. Robert Miller (Deputy Director, Parliamentary Centre): Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here.
The Chair: It's been awhile.
Today Bob Miller is our guest from the Parliamentary Centre. Also here, from the South House Exchange, is Magda Seydegart. We also have Professor Cranford Pratt, a professor of political science and co-author of Human Rights in Canadian Foreign Policy.
Welcome, all of you.
We usually start our meetings with a presentation from each of our guests and then we go into question period. Is that satisfactory? Is everyone prepared for that format?
Mr. Miller: Yes.
The Chair: Okay. Shall we start with Professor Pratt?
Professor Cranford Pratt (Individual Presentation): I appreciate the opportunity to join this discussion of the place of human rights considerations in Canadian foreign policy and the possible roles of this committee in that regard. You were gracious enough not to mention it, but that I'm here as a somewhat last-minute substitute for my good friend and occasional collaborator Dr. Rhoda Howard only adds a further dimension to my appreciation.
You might welcome just a word or two on my own credentials for being here. I'm a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, although I still teach my graduate course on Canada and the Third World. My research in recent years has focused on Canadian foreign policy, in particular on two related issues, human rights and development assistance. As you mentioned, I co-edited and contributed to a book, Human Rights in Canadian Foreign Policy, a few years ago and have more recently brought out a book on Canadian aid.
I'm going to ask you to permit me, in my brief words, to play the role that comes most naturally to me, and that is of an academic. I want to distil out five major observations from what I feel I have learned as a long-time student of human rights and Canadian foreign policy.
First, and by far most important, is this proposition. Since 1945 there has emerged a widespread conviction that certain human rights are so fundamental and universal that the international community should seek to ensure that no state systematically and grossly abuses them. Respect for the sovereignty of other states, which of course runs counter in its implications to this conviction, because if you're really concerned with basic human rights, you're concerned to try to find some way to influence and intervene, is still an important international principle, but it's now widely accepted that it's a matter of legitimate international concern whenever a state grossly and systematically abuses such basic human rights as freedom from torture, from extra-judicial imprisonment or execution, from deliberate starvation.
Many other rights we and other western societies affirm are clearly either heavily influenced by our own culture or are just unobtainable in very poor countries. However, torture, extension of detentions, executions without trial, starvation, are not elements of a different culture that are cherished by the members of that culture, they are features of oppressive rule. By focusing on them, I suggest you shield yourself from accusations that what you're involved in is a form of neo-colonial cultural imperialism, trying to project western values on other societies.
What is emerging is an international code of behaviour that sets minimal conditions states should respect in their treatment of their citizens. In the literature this emergence is usually explained by two factors.
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The first is the fact that the knowledge of the Holocaust after 1945 generated a profound commitment that the international community must never again allow any sovereign power to perpetrate such gross acts of inhumanity against its own citizens. That was reinforced as a result of the new media technologies, which have made us all immediately aware whenever there are gross sustained acts of oppression. The result is a major advance in global ethics, with a potential to make our world significantly more civilized. But it's still very fragile and easily set aside. That's my first observation.
My second observation is that most states, Canada included, have in fact been erratic and ambivalent in conceding an important place to human rights considerations as they've shaped their foreign policies. Certainly this is the judgment of most independent observers of Canadian foreign policy. It is, for example, the conclusion of Terence Keenleyside, who in my view has long been the most assiduous and fair-minded of these observers.
Until 1989 Canada was a forthright critic of gross abuses of human rights in countries within the Soviet orbit and in countries of negligible commercial importance to us. However, when the offending state either was a Cold War ally of the United States or was of potential or actual interest of some significance to Canadian exporters and investors, Canadian policies have been at best timid and ambivalent. This is in the pre-1989 period.
Thus, Canada took a strong stand toward human rights abuses in Afghanistan, Poland, Uganda, and Equatorial Guinea, but was vastly more cautious toward similar abuses in El Salvador, Honduras, Indonesia, or Chile during long periods when they were gross violators of human rights.
The end of the Cold War, which might have led to a change in this, has in fact not led - yet, at least - to any significant increase in Canadian responsiveness to human rights abuses. Trade preoccupations now dominate our foreign policy even more, and ambivalences still abound in our policies toward human rights violators, as, in many peoples' judgment, our recent policies towards Burma, China, and Nigeria illustrate.
This leads to my third observation. Because trade and geopolitical considerations very frequently override human rights considerations in the determination of Canadian foreign policies, observers have frequently stressed the importance of transparency and accountability in these matters in order to lessen this risk. If there is transparency and accountability, then there may be a greater hesitation in full overriding of human rights considerations. To that end, commentators and observers have always seen as being very important a strong parliamentary watchdog that would keep Canadian policies towards gross violators under close review.
I'm sure I don't need to remind you of the Winegard committee, which in 1987 reviewed this matter most thoroughly and proposed a number of highly valuable mechanisms to ensure a well-informed parliamentary scrutiny. These recommendations were substantially ignored by the previous government and have not yet been resuscitated by the present government.
Some of these it may still be possible to secure; for example, the submission to this subcommittee of an annual overseas development assistance human rights review, to be tabled in Parliament and referred to this committee. This was one of the recommendations of Winegard, and there is something not dissimilar to it in the joint standing committee of a year ago.
My fourth observation is that effective policy in these matters requires nuanced judgment. Human rights can't be the sole determinant of foreign policy towards any country. Inevitably, there are also in play other legitimate foreign policy objectives, and difficult trade-offs become necessary.
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As well, what ought to be done depends on the likely consequences of the various policy alternatives. Thus, for example, I feel that strong trade sanctions are an appropriate policy in regard to Nigeria, but I do not believe it's reasonable to press for them against China. That would be an attempt to apply consistency in different situations, which leads, in fact, to fundamental inconsistencies.
But the implication of this for your subcommittee, I think, is that, if everything depends upon a careful judgment about what's likely to work and not work, what's going to be effective and what's not going to be effective, you have the challenge of ensuring you're adequately knowledgeable about situations on which you wish to make recommendations. Concern, therefore, about access to research staff and enough funding to be able to bring to your meetings for briefings the genuine experts in these areas so that you can get yourself briefed becomes very important if you're going to do the job that it is enormously important you should do.
A final observation is this. My sense is that the subcommittee should concentrate, perhaps not totally but in particular, on Canadian policies towards the most severe offenders.
Now, that recommendation by implication, I think, as I read the documents, does not parallel the emphasis that CIDA and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade are now giving when they discuss efforts to help countries improve their human rights record. The recent CIDA statement on good governance, human rights and democratic participation is an excellent statement. There are very good ideas in it, and already there are imaginative measures being implemented that encourage and help countries that are interested in being more effective in these matters. These include help with running elections and training judges and advice on how to establish an ombudsman's office, a whole range of activities of that nature.
Initiatives such as these are certainly to be encouraged, but they are possible only in a limited number of countries where the regime wants to be more democratic, wants to have a freer society, and needs guidance as to how best to accomplish this.
It's not these government policies that above all require parliamentary review. There are not many tricky issues there. Your concentration, I think, is rather required in regard to government policies towards the gross offenders, policies that the record shows are frequently too heavily influenced by political and trade considerations. So it's Canadian policies towards these offenders that above all require your attention.
Thank you.
The Chair: Ms Seydegart.
Ms Magda Seydegart (Co-principal, South House Exchange): Sunday, December 10, is International Human Rights Day. I was thinking back to an important December 10 in 1983 when we had a major national conference in Canada to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the universal declaration. We had a vigil here on Parliament Hill on that day, and there was a soft snowfall. We celebrated the end of the junta in Argentina and the crisis in Poland where Solidarity was in a dire fight with the government.
Every December 10 before and after that I think of what country has come out of something terrible and what country is in the midst of something terrible. Today, I was thinking about Burma being the tragic country and South Africa being a sign of hope.
In a way I feel those kinds of extremities are why I'm going to now tell you my little piece of the human rights initiative we're all involved in, and that is around human rights education. I hope by the end of my little talk I'll have a formulated thought about how your committee can be relating to that.
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In my family I'm in the middle of four generations of people who have worked for human rights. My grandfather was a lawyer in Poland and worked for civil rights, and he and his family fled as refugees at beginning of the Holocaust. Both my mother's and my father's families all perished in the Holocaust in Poland.
I think it's their example, not so much by words but by action, that has made me a person of hope rather than a person of despair coming out of an experience like that. That is what I believe one must do in this field we're in: continue to draw on the hope that we can find ways of making people respect each other's dignity. Education, I believe, is one of those ways, so that's what I tend to dedicate myself to, although I am active in lots of different human rights work.
You've had so many wonderful speakers and will continue to, so I'll focus my comments, if you don't mind.
There are many strategies for addressing human rights problems: preventive diplomacy, emergency response, ethical business practice, NGO and grassroots programming and advocacy, accountability before a court of law, democratic governance and institutional stabilization. That just names a few, and they're all important.
Alongside these and other options for action must be the work of educating for human rights so that knowledge about rights can lead to action and action can lead to reflection, and so you build the cycle. I have found it's never enough to just transmit the knowledge; you have to give people the skills and the tools to apply the knowledge to change behaviours, environment and customs if necessary so that people's lives are more secure.
I don't think there are too many people in Canada who know that we have been leaders in the field of human rights education worldwide and that we've developed a number of programs here in Canada that attract people from all over the world.
I was involved in one of these programs this past year, over the course of 1994-95. It's an intensive training course, a three-week-long residential program held by the Canadian Human Rights Foundation. It attracts 130 people from all over the world for a three-week learning program.
The course covers a wide range of issues, from impunity to sustainable development, from economic rights to governance issues, from gross violations to preventive action. It offers an integrated view of the promotion of human rights, integrated in that human rights go hand in hand with the goal of building democratic civil societies and states with respect for the environment and with strategies for seeking and maintaining peace and for equality between women and men. This course revolves around the notion that we must work toward a sustainable future and that human rights is one of the pillars of that future.
The people who attended the course didn't just get a traditional human rights program of international law, standards and remedies. They got that, but they also got how to build an effective human rights organization, how to deal with power issues in your own organization, how to relate to governments when they're favourable and when they're antipathetic, and how to protect and defend human rights defenders. They really learned a lot of skills, or at least the door was open to them to learn a lot of skills, not just to have knowledge.
As an aside, I would like you to know it was really difficult for some people who had been exposed to a fairly traditional form of learning to actually apply the learning to their own experience, but by the time the three weeks were up, they were doing it - sometimes a little bit reluctantly, but they were doing it - and they were understanding what was the point of applying their learning.
These were activists and judges, teachers and lawyers, freedom fighters and government employees. There was a hereditary chief from southern Africa. They were an unbelievable group. They met and sort of swirled around for three weeks. They were exposed to each other, and it was extraordinary learning. They've gone away rating the course very highly, saying it was an experience that changed their lives.
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This is just an example. I think Canada has done some very excellent work, and both of the people here today have been involved in very interesting training programs for judges and lawyers, university officials, employees of national institutions, human rights commissions, ombudsman offices, trade unions, trade union officials, workers, and women. It goes on and on.
It's not that we're everywhere, we're doing a wonderful job all the time, and it's permeating the world. It's that we have expertise, and we're good at it. It is something we can offer.
That is one of my points to you. We have some skills in this field, and I think we could use them even more effectively.
How do we know that human rights education is an effective strategy for reducing the incidence of abuse, for building a permeating ethic of respect for the inherent dignity of the human being, and for anchoring a healthy civil society?
First, every great religion and belief system in the world is rooted in the notions of tolerance and respect. It is not the particular perspective of one value structure or world view.
Second, individuals, organizations, governments and movements that incorporate human rights principles in their actions tend to deliver not only more honest, equitable and fairer institutions and societies but also those that are more secure and sustainable.
The third reason why I believe human rights education is an effective strategy is because it is impossible to break the cycle of violence and oppression unless people comprehend that there are options based on universal standards and principles and that they themselves deserve to be treated fairly and safely.
I think the sorrow of this message is that it is often forgotten in the race to gain advantage, maintain privilege, or dominate others. Human rights education must therefore be made available to both the oppressor and the oppressed, and the victimizer and the victim. As well, it must be available to the innocent bystander who, by refusing to get involved, contributes to the perpetuation of the injustice or the exploitation.
Certainly the private initiatives and deep convictions of the staff and boards of the organizations offering education around human rights have been central to their success, but the financial support of the Canadian government, through the Department of Foreign Affairs, CIDA and the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, has also made an important contribution.
The UN has declared 1995 to 2004 as the decade for human rights education. The Government of Canada could, at little cost, document Canada's leadership in this field and convey the ongoing achievement of Canadians to Canadian citizens and to the world. It could also direct its agencies to evaluate the impact of past and present programs to improve its future activities. The Canadian government could signal its ongoing commitment to human rights by supporting the growing movement for human rights education.
I am involved with a newly formed international group called the International Independent Commission for Human Rights Education. Our commission is preparing a Brundtland-style report based on a worldwide consultation about the merits, methods and potential impact of human rights education. It is expected to be a considerable contribution to the UN decade, but more importantly, hopefully, it will further stimulate activities in the area. I think the Government of Canada could consider supporting this and other positive initiatives.
Here at home I think we're faced with new challenges, too. The economic restructuring of our society and radical cutbacks on social spending are further polarizing our society into rich and poor, with a shrinking and insecure middle.
The first round of recent cuts in Ontario were direct attacks on women and the less privileged. Gains for the equality of women were slashed in one stroke of the pen. Few governments or markets offer much hope to the unemployed or the insecurely employed. With the reduction in infrastructure, protection, and services to the disadvantaged and the emerging poor, we can count on escalating costs in terms of community tensions, increased violence in the family and on the street, and growing racial intolerance and hatred.
This is not that different from the root causes of the distress in so many other places in the world. Of course, the extreme is obvious. But respect for human rights, tolerance for diversity, and efforts at promoting equal opportunity are all directed at ultimately achieving one goal: social peace. The absence of social peace, as we see in other societies, is dangerous, expensive and bad for us all. It is particularly bad for business, trade and job creation.
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As we celebrate International Human Rights Day this December 10, we should be proud of our international work in human rights education and rededicate ourselves to this work. But we should also reflect soberly on conditions in our own communities here at home. There is much work ahead for human rights educators in Canada. Perhaps some of what we've learned internationally will help us get through the tough times ahead.
Those are my comments for now.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Miller.
Mr. Miller: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for the invitation to be part of this round-table meeting.
I'm pleased, personally, to see the subcommittee up and running. As you know, I've had something to do with the establishment of a subcommittee similar to this in the last Parliament. It played a useful role at that time, and with the government's foreign policy centred on economic issues I think it's important to have a place in Parliament in which other concerns find expression. So I wish you the very best with this work. I think it's extremely important, and I wish you good luck with it.
I'm sorry I couldn't have a prepared statement distributed in time for translation so you can see the points as I'm going along. I was away for some time, so that wasn't possible.
What I'd like to do very briefly is touch on three points. I'd like to say a word or two about the international work of the Parliamentary Centre, which is the organization I'm with. Second, I'd like to say a word about where that work, and work like it, fits in the spectrum of human rights policy. Finally, I'll offer a suggestion for the work of the subcommittee.
First of all, on the Parliamentary Centre, as you know, it was founded over 25 years ago to support the Parliament of Canada. Over the years, our staff worked closely with the foreign affairs and defence committees of the House and the Senate, as well as with interparliamentary associations. To some degree, this work continues. An associate of the centre has been working on the trade study being undertaken by the foreign affairs committee of the House.
In the course of doing this work, the centre developed considerable knowledge and expertise on the workings of Parliament and on ways of strengthening parliamentary institutions. Throughout our history we undertook research on Canadian parliamentary democracy. For example, four years ago we published a major study called ``Anger at the System'', which explored the roots of political alienation in Canada. For more than twenty years, we published a magazine called Parliamentary Government.
Like many other Canadian institutions, we have now discovered that there is considerable international interest in the kind of expertise and knowledge the centre has acquired here in Canada.
So we've gone global. Funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, CIDA, IDRC, and the prospect of international funding, the centre now has parliamentary cooperation programs in southern and South Africa, Russia, and three countries of southeast Asia - Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Our activities include technical assistance, training, workshops, seminars, exchange visits, and research.
Let me give you a concrete example or idea of the kind of work we do. I've just returned from a three-week trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. In Vietnam, I was part of a mission with two other organizations, a large Canadian law firm and a civil engineering company, to launch PAIP, the policy assistance implementation project.
Simply described, it's a CIDA-funded project to share Canadian experience with three institutions in the Vietnam government: the prime minister's consultative group, which is a kind of informal think-tank attached to the prime minister's office; an environmental project with the department of transport; and the National Assembly of Vietnam.
The Parliamentary Centre is the lead organization in developing the program for the National Assembly. The basic idea is to create a Canada-Vietnam channel of information between the legislative systems of the two countries. As Vietnam carries out a sweeping liberalization of its economy, many of the laws of the country have to change. While this process remains under the firm control of the communist party, the 1992 constitution empowers state institutions, including the National Assembly, to play a significantly greater role in the development and implementation of the laws. PAIP, the program of which we're part, is one international resource to strengthen this work of the national assembly.
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You may well ask what this has to do with human rights. The short answer is that it is part of an approach to human rights that was first articulated in the June 1986 report of the Special Joint Committee on Canada's International Relations. In the chapter on human rights the committee supported the traditional approach to what it called ``human rights protection'', using such instruments as diplomatic censure, aid and trade conditionality, sanctions, and so on, particularly where there were gross and systematic violations of human rights.
But - and I stress ``but'' - the committee went on to say something more was called for. I quote from the report:
- ...Canada should move forward and create a positive human rights development program as
well. Through cooperative programs of financial support, exchange, research and technical
assistance, Canada should contribute to the long-term development of political, civil and
cultural rights as it now contributes to long-term economic and social development through the
aid program.
Now a suggestion for the committee. From this description of the centre's work and its genesis arises my suggestion for the work of the subcommittee. Pay attention to human rights development as well as human rights protection. By all means put the spotlight on gross and systematic violations of human rights. The recent events in Nigeria illustrate the continuing compelling need for your vigilance. But human rights policy cannot be reduced to something as simple as identifying the bad guys, the thugs, and bringing them to justice, even assuming governments are prepared to do so.
The problem of human rights is an integral part of the wider problem of governance and development. How do you steer the ship of state without doing great harm to groups or individuals? How do you create national unity without generating national conflict? How do you reduce the size and power of government without hurting those who are most vulnerable? These are among the great questions of human rights that are being debated worldwide, just as they are being debated here at home in our own country.
In Vietnam, powerful elements within the government are deeply concerned that as you liberalize the economy, sharp disparities of wealth are bound to grow. It's part of PAIP's responsibility, part of its mandate, to address that issue by drawing on Canadian experience. In this area of human rights policy, engagement and dialogue become the policy instruments of choice.
In its work the subcommittee should pay close attention to this kind of activity. Is it genuinely guided by values or is it simply opportunistic, a new market for old skills?
In the area of parliamentary strengthening, a specific recommendation: the subcommittee should consider the direct role it can play, for example, by building links with similar committees in other parliaments around the world and engaging them directly in the dialogue of which I spoke earlier. In other words, Parliament should become an actor, not just an observer or a commentator on international human rights. I take Cranford Pratt's suggestion that this could be done by concentrating initially in cases of particular concern. But I think there are opportunities for direct engagement by the subcommittee, and indeed by Parliament as a whole, that haven't begun to be realized.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Morrison (Swift Current - Maple Creek - Assiniboia): I will pass for the moment.
The Chair: All right.
There are so many different issues, but as I said at the beginning, it's really important that we don't just use this as a forum to make ourselves feel good about caring about human rights and assuming those who aren't participating don't.
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I have a couple of questions.
Professor Pratt, why Nigeria? Why can we go after Nigeria and not China and not India? We know the violations are as severe there as they are in Nigeria. How can we justify going after the little guys if we're not going to go after the bigger ones?
Prof. Pratt: It's not their comparative size that is the key factor but a judgment about consequences. I suppose the initial intellectual decision that's required is whether concern about consequences has to be central or not. There are people who would deny that and say, stand by your principles. But if foreign policy is unavoidably an arena where one has to weigh consequences - and I think it is - then my suggestion that a different policy is required in regard to Nigeria than is in regard to China hangs on judgments about the likely consequences of a unilateral Canadian decision to have a trade boycott. Let's take this as the gesture that might be done.
In the case of China, one can say - and I'm not an expert, but as I read it - it would have no impact on the Chinese government, except to be treated with disdain. Our place in the Chinese trade market would be immediately replaced by other industrial states, our competitors, and we would not be assisting the internal processes of change within the society that finally have to be primarily responsible for the transformation. It's not going to happen from outside.
In the case of Nigeria, however, we have a situation in which international opinion is, in many ways, ready for strong action. So it would not be a solitary and in fact unimportant gesture, but it would be a strong gesture that would reinforce the initiatives already asked for, say, by Mandela. It would be in a country where, in contrast to China, there is the basis of a civil society that can rule. There's a strong civilian political class that is enormously discontented with the military rule. In China there are awfully courageous individuals, but you can't point to a movement that you think is ready to govern China if they just received external support.
So it's in these sorts of details - and I'm not at all suggesting I have it right in both cases or in either case - in this weighing of judgment that leads, then, to the more nuanced identification of policies that I've suggested.
The Chair: You also spoke of not confusing human rights violations with our cultural differences; you mentioned a few, but I'm wondering where the line comes. For example, we're looking at genital mutilation. Is that a cultural bias on our part? There's argument within these countries, as well. Some people will say that's not part of a religious mandate, that it's something that has been culturally developed more by fundamentalists. How do you determine whether that is our value or if it is in fact a universal value?
Prof. Pratt: I'm not avoiding that - it's a good example - but an easier example would be the right, which in our society everyone accepts, to marry a person of your own choice. That's clearly culturally determined; there are societies where the parents would be neglecting their obligations if they permitted something as foolhardy as allowing their son or daughter, at the age of eighteen or nineteen, to marry whoever they take a fancy to.
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So that's an illustration. In terms of genital mutilation I think the key would be whether in the society you're concerned with you in fact can genuinely feel you're responding to a moral rejection of the practice in that society. If you're not, then however well-meaning the initiative it's not going to succeed, because it will be experienced as ``cultural imperialism'', to use a slogan of the political marketplace.
The Chair: You talked about the need to educate. I agree with you that education is the only thing that will empower people to reach out of their poverty, and to ultimately end violations of human rights within their own country.
But once again, if we have a situation where we feel it's necessary to educate Canadians - and it would be a very public campaign - on the violation of human rights, do you mean just generally or specifically? Because if we went into specifics, would we not run the same risks of offending nations with which we may be doing trade and developing trade by stating publicly that we feel that they are violating?
I am talking about the incident where China cancelled the contract with a Canadian firm because of a parliamentarian speaking out on human rights violations in China. We have a serious problem. We have a country right now that is saying we can't afford social protection for our own people, and yet we're trying to promote social improvements for the world. Do we not end up running the same risk? And how do you overcome that? We'd like this committee to be able to do something useful, not just sit and chat with each other about it.
Ms Seydegart: I think it's a long and complicated exercise to figure out how outspoken parliamentarians need to be in order to defend human rights in other countries and what are the ramifications of them doing that. I think, with all due respect, it could be one of the jobs of this committee to figure out how you monitor the domestic situation and the international situation from the ethical base of human rights, rather than from the basis of what's the best thing to from the perspective of the economic interests of our country.
I'm not saying it's not significant; of course it's significant. But there has to be some kind of foundation upon which one speaks when one speaks about aspiring to stable civil society, both at home and abroad.
I believe that the human rights paradigm is a helpful foundation for talking about stable civil societies, and that it gives you a way of not being ambiguous or ambivalent or being seen to be or accused of being high-handed in one sense and yet doing something totally different at home.
In a way, that's a very challenging job for this committee, but if the gap between what we're doing at home and what we're saying abroad is too broad, then we'll lose all the impact we potentially have abroad to be leaders. Canada has a chance to be a real leader internationally in this area, in the restructuring of societies so that they will be sustainable and equitable.
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I don't think I've answered your question exactly. I would like to say that the work of human rights has to be intrusive, in the sense that Parliament will have to speak out in cases of the most dire and aggressive abuses. Nigeria, China, Burma, and Burundi keep coming to mind. At the same time, there has to be another long track of work that sees the longer view and does the training with parliamentarians and school children and builds relationships, and that is the same for Canada and overseas. So whatever mandate you choose shouldn't be an either/or one, because that would be a faulty one. It has to have the urgency of the crisis and it also has to have the long view.
How are you going to create a cultural peace in societies such as the Middle East, where two generations at least, or three, don't have a flavour, a taste, an understanding of peace? They might have read about it somewhere, but that's about it. That's the long view.
Mr. Miller: Could I add a couple of comments on things that were said earlier?
First, going back to the Nigerian and the Chinese cases, the way I would put it is not that we choose to concentrate on the one case and ignore the other but that they are different cases and they demand different approaches. The distinction I would draw between Nigeria and China is the difference between a system and a regime.
Nigeria is a regime that has, fundamentally, no moral or even systematic foundation. Even by African standards it's now a renegade regime, in power because it controls the weapons - and only because it controls the weapons. That's well understood by the regime itself, and it's certainly well understood by the society.
China is a political system. It's founded in a sophisticated notion of the stage of development in China. There's a powerful tradition behind it, and so on. While we have profound misgivings about the nature of that system, obviously you can't approach it as if it was simply some kind of moral aberration thrown up by a bunch of thugs.
That goes back to my comment that human rights policy has to go beyond simply identifying the world's thugs and trying to get them out of office.
There is an opportunity for Canada to engage in the kind of dialogue and criticism with China that arises from a close relationship, from engagement. I think we have to accept the fact that if we're honest to our own convictions and we speak plainly in these things, then from time to time we will pay a price. If as a society we reach the point at which we say we are literally not going to pay any kind of economic price for the other things about our society out of which we build our social order, then we're bankrupt.
There won't be anything left of our economic system, either. There was a fascinating article by Thomas Friedman in The New York Times a couple of months ago, pointing out that the American business community is now somewhat disenchanted with China. Why is that? It turns out that a regime that is careless about people's human rights is also careless about contracts with foreign corporations and all sorts of things. You as a big company are subject to arbitrary decision-making or the machinations of power within the political structure, and so on. So those issues are being taken somewhat more seriously.
The second point I want to make is a bit of a caution about concentrating only on the worst cases. The risk of it is that it perpetuates a kind of, for want of a better word, ``missionary'' attitude toward the rest of the world that is increasingly inappropriate.
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Asia has a view of us on human rights grounds that is not complimentary. It's not only that they are trying to repudiate our influence; it's because they look at certain characteristics of particularly North American/American society. They find they much it they find revolting on social and moral grounds. The idea that they would deliberately generate or create a society like that, with certain characteristics and so on, is repulsive to them. It is absolutely unacceptable to them.
I say this because we have to become more accustomed than we've been in the past to the fact that our international human rights policy is a dialogue and not a monologue of we, the moral, and they, the people who need to be taught lessons. They don't see it that way. If we approach it that way, there's no chance of any kind of relationship at all and no kind of dialogue.
On the role of the subcommittee, I offered my earlier comment. I would say this. I think what the subcommittee has to think about is not so much the particular subject it picks out there, because there are many useful things you can do. I think what you want to stop and think about is what our niche is in the political system of Canada, where we can make a contribution and make a difference.
For example, because you're a committee of Parliament you can summon witnesses from the government, you can compel - compel is too strong a word - you can produce certain kinds of testimony, certain kinds of information, that can be very difficult for other people to get. You can create a forum where people come together from the wider society and put views before the Parliament of Canada. You can try, much more deliberately than committees have done in the past, to have influence with your colleagues.
So what I would say is put a fair bit of thought not just into the particular subjects you could choose, because there's a never-ending range of subjects, but stop and ask yourself, given the level of commitment you have, given the political composition of the committee and so on, how we can use this as an instrument of influence, however modest, within the Canadian political system. I think if you can do that, if you can sharpen it as an instrument of that kind, then whatever subjects you touch will be better for your having gotten involved.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Morrison: Dr. Pratt, you touched on something, and again it's been raised or mentioned by all of you on the panel, and that is that as a world trading power trying to exert influence on nations with bad human rights records, we really are a little bit on the impotent side. Most of our trade is conducted within the G-7, almost all of it. This doesn't give us clout, particularly in the case of China. They don't care if we trade with them or not.
Prof. Pratt: That's right.
Mr. Morrison: Nigeria might be a case in point because we do buy an enormous amount of oil from them. If we didn't buy it maybe someone else would. I don't know; I'm not well versed in that particular aspect of trade.
But I would like your opinion, Dr. Pratt, and perhaps that of the other panel members as well, on my pet hobby horse, which is that one thing we could do as a country, as a government, is not to give foreign aid to countries with bad human rights records.
We are giving foreign aid to China. In the first place, I don't think they really need our aid. They have a bigger economy than we do. In the second place, I think it is wrong to support these people with aid, but we do it to bribe them to trade with us. That's basically what we're doing, not just in China but in several other countries as well.
How do you feel about this? Theoretically, the aid is to go to help people. I'm not too sure how much of it does go to help people, but one makes the assumption that it is the ultimate benefit, that we give foreign aid and it does help with public health and so on. Which is more important, that we continue this largesse or that we show our displeasure for these countries by not continuing to write the cheques?
Prof. Pratt: I take a position quite similar to what I perceive to be your own. The interesting thing is that the specific question you asked was very clearly diagnosed and I thought effectively responded to by the Winegard committee.
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It said in the case of serious human rights offenders there should be no government-to-government assistance, because government-to-government assistance inevitably is a reinforcement or a gesture of acceptance to the regime, but if there are ways to reach citizen's groups, needy peasant communities, whatever it might be, through the NGO community.... If the NGO community, as is quite likely the case, has a greater freedom of action in an oppressive country than a Canadian official aid agency would have, then concentrate your aid in that way, but stop your bilateral aid.
That was a principle that was strongly, unanimously, supported by the Winegard committee. It's widely endorsed in the literature and yet it's never been endorsed by the government for the very reason you've said, that some of these serious offenders - Indonesia, with the genocide in East Timor - are potentially important trading partners. In not only China but in other parts of Asia as well the aid program has become in many ways primarily, I'd even say, an instrument of penetration for trade purposes. So that's the explanation for that.
Could I just say, there's a very interesting disagreement, as I don't need to remind you - you've got it nicely put before you - between where I would put the emphasis and where Bob Miller would. We are both saying - you said it, and by implication I would certainly say it - these are not either/ors for government actions. The issue is, what are you four people going to do? As soon as one sees the limitations you have to face if you're going to make a contribution, then you're going to have to take some hard decisions and say ``Somebody else will have to be sensitive to that, but if we're going to make an impact we've got to choose.''
I see so much imagination and skill going into the type of activities that you're talking about, Bob, and that you are engaged in so effectively, that I don't see much of a need for that to have a watchdog. But I see a major need - as there always has been - to have a parliamentary watchdog for those much more difficult decisions where the sorts of factors Mr. Morrison points out come into play and result in a serious dilution of any serious sensitivity to the human rights dimensions, where you're dealing with gross offenders.
That's why I would put the emphasis in terms of what the four of you should do. But if I was talking to CIDA, I would be saying do more of the things Bob is talking about.
Mr. Miller: Let me explain why I don't think... I don't disagree fundamentally with what Cranford has said because, like him, I think it is extremely important that those extreme situations be addressed. You have the ability - going back to my comment about your niche - to function as a spotlight. Take advantage of that fact.
I'm always reminded of a visit years ago a parliamentary committee made to Ecuador, I think; I can't remember. I don't think it was Ecuador; it hasn't had severe human rights abuses. Several members of the committee visited a person in prison, and the person said how important it was to them that the visit took place; that the spotlight power of members of Parliament was focused on them and this would be noticed by the government and perhaps they would be somewhat safer than they would otherwise have been, because parliamentarians were conscious that they were there and were suffering. So I think that is very important.
However, I don't think it's quite that simple for the reason raised by Mr. Morrison. I'm of the view that it is extremely important in the case of China - and Vietnam is another very similar example - that we have the kind of bilateral dialogue that comes with governance programming, because I think it is in fact our best chance both to educate ourselves about what's going on in major important parts of the world and to influence the way in which policy evolves in those countries.
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I don't think an approach, a method, that is founded on our right to pass blanket judgments about their systems has any chance of influence at all, because they don't accept the premise. But they do accept the fact that they have a lot to learn from us about how you manage complex public policies, including how to manage the balancing of economic growth and the distribution of growth in their society, which is a major human rights issue in our country and in countries throughout the world. I think there is an important emerging role for Canada to provide that kind of assistance in those kinds of cases.
For that reason I think it is important that there be some monitoring of that activity, because it should genuinely be a vehicle for honest exchange and not, as I said earlier, simply exploiting skills that perhaps the market has disappeared for in Canada so that we, like the cigarette companies, go around the Third World now, marketing our wares somewhere else.
I think there is a need and an opportunity for this kind of work, but I think you should pay some attention to it because I think it's bound up with the answer to the question Mr. Morrison has raised: under what circumstances should you be engaging with countries whose systems are fundamentally different from our own?
I am saying this is one valuable way to do it, if it's genuine.
The Chair: Thank you.
You keep talking about us looking for Canada's niche. You obviously all have ideas on it. We must be good at something in the lines of international human rights. Do you have any suggestions where we can look for this?
Professor Pratt?
Prof. Pratt: I am so traditionally a critic that you're asking a difficult question. I say that light-heartedly.
I guess I'll stay consistent with my dominant point of view. We are, in global terms, comparatively secure and a comparatively rich country, so we have a greater capacity to provide leadership in the mobilization of international opinion against the gross offenders.
I think that's our greatest asset. Let me underline again the emergence through the United Nations, whose institutions we haven't talked much about, of this very widespread acceptance that there are basic human rights that are fundamental.
My contacts were more in Africa than in Asia, and you don't find in Africa the argument coming back to you, ``Don't come here talking to us about basic human rights. We have a different culture.'' You'll find the leaders will sometimes use that language, but the leaders of the civil societies certainly do not.
They see more strongly than we do how important these basic human rights are, because we individually don't suffer, but they individually do. I think our circumstances have put us in a position where we can help to check what will otherwise be a serious erosion. We may find historically we've reached our plateau internationally in securing this basic floor below which the conduct of states towards their subjects just will not be permitted, so preoccupied are we with trade issues. We must not lose sight that there has been a major accomplishment internationally. We have to consolidate that and stay focused on it.
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Ms Seydegart: One of the things we do in our work, especially in the work Bob and I do, is offer our experience in the democratic system to other organizations in other countries around the world. We're not selling our system - that's an error - but we're offering our experience; the strengths and weaknesses of it. I think the pillars of our democratic process are public participation, transparency, accountability, and consistency.
In considering your mandate, you need to consider the subject area or content area of the job and you need to consider the process area. You've already said that. If you're going to offer partnerships bilaterally with other members of Parliament or multilaterally through Liberal International or some of the big political internationals or through other fora, then we have to be able to refer continually to our best efforts at participation, transparency, accountability, and consistency. I think that is part of the role you need to consider for yourselves: in your own operation, how do you maintain those principles of having people participate, but also, how do you bring to the attention of your government and your party when things are not in line with those principles of democratic behaviour? Otherwise we cannot have a niche internationally. Our niche will be ridiculed.
That's a big order, I know, but it's worth trying. We are strong in institution-building, but I think it would be a fault if we over-emphasized institution-building at the expense of strengthening civil society in the grass roots and community organizations and so on. If and when you choose a route where you might be communicating with your partners in other countries, the lesson is a comprehensive experience of building civil society.
I'm saying this a bit out of an experience I recently had. I'm evaluating the CIDA training course on human rights. I know CIDA is moving increasingly towards the orientation of strengthening institutions for a strong democratic society and strong governance systems, but I was disturbed to see in the exercises the participants were doing there was very little emphasis on the importance of the non-governmental institutions in society. If it is overly biased in that direction, I think it will be a dangerous direction, because...your word ``empowerment'', which I didn't use...it diminishes the capacity of the public to be participating in the institutions that we're supposedly creating unless those institutions are also encouraged to involve the public in them.
About specific niches, from my perspective of human rights education and training I think we have some good work in training of activists. I think we've done some very good work with police and training of the military. It's not a very popular topic, so we don't boast about it, but there are some good, experienced people and organizations here doing some of that. This whole area of work around national institutions and strengthening those institutions is valuable.
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Mr. Miller: I would like to add a note to this. This committee and its parent committee, the foreign affairs committee, are among the few committees having a unique responsibility in the Parliament of Canada. This responsibility is to be international in their interest.
To me, one of the most striking features of the last foreign policy review is how thoroughly domestic it was in its orientation. Overwhelmingly, the people it talked to were other Canadians.
The unique responsibility of parliamentary committees in this area is that they are to be bridges between the people of Canada and the rest of the world. They should be continually in contact with the rest of the world and reporting back to Canada, Canadians, their fellow parliamentarians and others on what they're learning. Otherwise, we're in danger of creating a foreign policy that is just an echo of our own voice, a projection of our own notions of what the world is like. And let me tell you, the world is changing fast, much faster than we recognize. If those parliamentary committees charged with responsibility for advising and reporting on what is happening in the world are out of touch, they're going to do a very bad job.
I know there are budgetary concerns and the rest of it, and I respect those. But fundamentally, those things have to be seen in the light of the function of committees. If a foreign affairs committee or an international human rights committee cannot do this, then there is a serious question about whether it can exist at all or should bother to function.
Secondly, new technology makes things possible that weren't possible five or ten years ago. We have a project at the moment to create a virtual conference between the nine provincial legislatures of South Africa and the the ten provincial parliaments in Canada. This is using the Internet. A virtual conference uses the protocol of a conference. There is a moderator and there is a subject and you make comments and exchange views on the subject for a specified period of time. Then you come to some conclusions. We're using it as a bridge between the visits, the workshops and all this sort of thing we do.
There is no reason why this committee can't engage in something like this with a counterpart committee in an African country, perhaps Nigeria. I don't know whether it's possible for parliament to even function there. Possibly it is not. But there are other places where it is possible. And if it is not possible with a parliamentary committee - if the parliament is purely a front organization - then perhaps it is with certain organizations in the country. The very act of doing this, as I said before, sends a very powerful signal to the people in the country that there is interest.
But I think we are in danger here of creating an illusory foreign policy based on nothing but talking to each other and then projecting what we hear out into the world and imagining it is an accurate and well-informed picture of what's going on. It isn't.
The Chair: That's interesting.
Mr. Morrison, do you have any more questions?
Mr. Morrison: There's a little bit in Mr. Miller's last comments where perhaps I'm missing the point.
Are you saying we should perhaps be tailoring our foreign policy to fit the world rather than to our own maximum benefit? Isn't foreign policy supposed to be what you do to benefit yourself in the world, to put your own views forward, to get the best you can out of your intercourse with other nations? I don't quite follow what you're telling us here.
Mr. Miller: This is a fair question. The analogy I would use is this. I don't think an individual can define their self-interest in isolation, because we have to work in the surrounding society. Similarly, I don't think a country can define its self-interest realistically and effectively if it isn't well-informed about what's going on in the rest of the world.
For example, if we go out into Asia and we behave in a way based on ideas formed in the 1960s, and in the meantime Asia has changed profoundly, we're going to have a lot of problems.
Traditionally the way we learn about those things is through our diplomacy. We have a foreign affairs department. They report back and all the rest of it. But one of the things that has struck me in my travels is that our Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade is not as skilful in reporting certain kinds of political developments as it might be. And those developments are often critical.
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An example is the formation of parties and what's going on within parties. If you look at the history of Bosnia, for example, it would have been very valuable for the west to have had a better picture of what was going on within certain political parties.
What I'm saying is there is a need for a parliamentary or a political diplomacy to parallel and complement the other traditional diplomacy. There is also a very valuable role for Parliament, specifically and especially for committees such as this one, to help Canadians have a clearer idea of what's out there and, therefore, become more likely to shape their self-interest in a genuinely workable way.
So I'm not disagreeing with you. Our purpose is to define our own self-interest. But I think it would be kind of a delusion to imagine we can do this if we aren't really well informed about what is going on in the rest of the world.
The Chair: Mr. Morrison, I think Mr. Schmitz has a little bit of follow-up on this.
Mr. Gerry Schmitz (Committee Researcher): With the permission of the committee, I thought I'd maybe pursue this a bit more with Bob.
You've mentioned the utility of making contacts with other parliamentary committees, presumably ones focused on human rights. This could be pursued. There are interparliamentary associations and various ways of doing this.
It becomes more complicated when you try to decide whose views you choose to listen to or accredit. The world is a big place and we're having some difficulty here in terms of the emphasis you and Dr. Pratt have placed on what particular country cases should be focused on. Should we focus on the instances of gross abuse where the need for response and protection is the greatest, or should we focus on areas where there is the greatest opportunity for prevention and positive promotion?
Suppose we could get over this and we could choose a focus where there was a region or a specific circumstance. How would we choose the people we would hear from? There are experts out there. There are international organizations, UN bureaucrats and government officials. Even if you talk about dialogue with the civil society in another country, it sounds simple but it can be very, very complicated.
There are some countries in Africa where there are a couple of hundred competing NGOs. Not all of them are necessarily equally bona fide.
It becomes a bit of a complicated process, whether we do it by teleconferencing or Internet or have a fact-finding mission of several members of the subcommittee actually travelling to the country.
Do you have any thoughts about how to do this or any of the other things?
Mr. Miller: Let me begin by just giving a specific suggestion of how one might do this.
First, my strong argument with the committee is what I said in my opening remarks and repeated. Work first of all with your counterparts, with other politicians around the world in parliaments around the world. There is a population of perhaps several thousand or more parliamentarians worldwide. But it is a relatively small number of people throughout the world who are in this particular position. It's an important position everywhere.
You have interparliamentary organizations. But frankly, my own experience has been they've never been used to accomplish important policy objectives, when they should have been. They are, as we all know, a political tool within the Canadian parliamentary system. In choosing people who go on these delegations and so on, nobody has ever made a serious effort to connect them to long-term policy objectives.
Let me give you a specific idea. The Nigerian case has come up and the Commonwealth is a body that is obviously concerned. If you had an Internet link with all parliamentary human rights committees in the Commonwealth, you could send a message saying we'd like to talk seriously for the next week about what can be done about Nigeria. We want to exchange ideas on this. Can we come together? Can we contribute as parliamentarians to the formation of some kind of consensus or to the gathering of ideas?
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You can go through an exercise like that and maybe come up empty - but who knows? Perhaps you won't. Perhaps there are some ideas out there that haven't occurred to us in Canada. It's now much easier to engage in that kind of consultation than it was a few years ago.
When Gerry and I started this kind of work, the only way was to load everybody in a plane and fly them to the other side of the world. That's a very expensive thing to do and it's worth doing from time to time. It's important to do. But there are other devices now. You've used them in terms of nationwide communication with people, with teleconferencing and so on, and the Internet is a very useful device.
I don't know how well it would work, but it's an experiment. It's an example of an experiment that I think would be worth trying. Again it goes back to my point that then the subcommittee becomes a player. To me, one of the great problems with Parliament is that you're either always observing events or commenting and saying, ``Please do this.''
I'm telling you that parliaments are important institutions in the international scheme of things and they haven't even begun to utilize the influence they could if they organized their affairs and focused them from time to time.
For example, the Australians have a very interesting device. They have a parliamentary amnesty group and they investigate issues, particularly those directly involving parliamentarians, but not exclusively. They issue reports and they have some impact, not only on Australia but internationally.
Those are just some thoughts as to a possible way for the committee to engage itself.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms Seydegart: I'm going to address your point about who you choose to hear from outside of the circles of government in a particular country.
There are a lot of partners working with Canadian organizations who have been thoroughly investigated by the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, or the Centre canadien d'études et de coopération internationale, or the church groups. If you really get them involved and you want them to identify their best cooperants or collaborators for you to communicate with on a topic or in a region, you will get extraordinary assistance from those organizations. They would love to have you hear from their partner.
It is very complex and they don't always get it right themselves, but they do a relatively good job and they learn who to trust and how to get on, and this business is all about risks.
Prof. Pratt: Let's consolidate the consensus that's here. Everything in my experience underlines the importance of what Bob has said about trying to hear voices other than our own, where Canada historically has taken a stronger position; for example, in regard to South Africa.
If one is looking for reasons it's because, in fact, South African black voices were being heard in Canada, and not through the Internet, but nevertheless everybody knew who Bishop Tutu was. Bishop Tutu played an extremely important role in 1985-86 in moving Canadian policy. You couldn't keep talking any longer about what seemed to be reasonable ideas once you tried those ideas against people of integrity who were in the front line.
Let me give it quite a specific focus. Suppose you decide that you really should pay close attention to Nigeria as one of your interests. I read the verbatim record of I guess it was your first meeting. You had Mr. Hynes and several others from Foreign Affairs there. There was a record of a variety of initiatives that Canada has taken, such as denying visas to attend athletic events, and invitations to numbers of human rights activists to travel in Canada.
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The interesting thing would be to ask some concerned Nigerians if this is the sort of thing that's really going to make a difference. Chances are, there'd be a real degree of skepticism, and you'd be driven to say, look, once we are considering how these initiatives are actually going to have an impact, then these sorts of measures are just not enough.
The Chair: We met a couple of weeks ago with a couple of human rights workers from Nigeria.
I just want to clarify this. Basically you've said we were able to be leaders in this cause in South Africa because the time was right. Is that also part of it?
The workers from South Africa had gotten their vehicle in gear and really basically, when we decided to take this action on South Africa, it was because the timing was right more than anything else.
Prof. Pratt: In a way, the difference between my emphasis and Bob's emphasis is that Bob's activities, in South African terms, make good sense post-1989 or post-1991, but those sorts of activities would not have worked with the previous regime and would not have been a contribution.
My understanding of the South African situation is that in fact the change in South Africa was accomplished by the South African people themselves. Though the international community was concerned about it, the contribution was really quite minor with one important exception, which was that the regime itself became very concerned with the flight of capital.
The major withdrawal of Canadian, U.S. and western European capital from South Africa meant that the regime recognized that the system they thought they could sustain was being seriously challenged. The most far-sighted of them recognized that they were going to have to come to some arrangement with the African National Congress.
Helping them reach that point would have required stronger policies before 1989. It would have required the sorts of policies I'm talking about, not the sorts of policies you're talking about. Post-1989 the sorts of policies you are not only talking about but are actually engaged in are exactly what's needed.
My terrible concern is that just as we are losing sight of the alleviation of poverty as a central preoccupation for CIDA it would be terribly sad if when we talk about human rights we are now losing sight of the fact that we have some capacity to make a difference in the really gross cases.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Morrison.
Mr. Morrison: Dr. Pratt, you have all referred to the South African situation today. Is there some merit in another of my little hobby horses, that if you're going to be successful in bringing about a human rights revolution in a country there has to be a tradition and an underlying current of democracy in that country, in that culture, something you can build on?
For example, South Africa and Chile are both now being held up as success stories but these are both countries that always have had this underlying democratic tradition even though it was somewhat spottily applied, if you will. Is there anything in that?
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Prof. Pratt: In a sense, I would say no, that this tradition was not there in South Africa.
Mr. Morrison: They were a democratic government. It was restricted to certain people, but they have a democratic tradition.
Prof. Pratt: Yes, but 85% of the people had no political rights whatsoever.
Mr. Morrison: Yes.
Prof. Pratt: There were institutions. When they were genuinely nationalized and blacks ruled through them, then you got a structure that has potential.
We're going to be talking about cases where those structures are just at the very beginning. In those situations, you'll have to build, as these societies do, on the internal, within the movement itself. The internal values of the movement, of the African National Congress.... Clearly it is a popular movement with which we share a great many values. Their structures internally have been totally different, of course, but in fact we have succeeded - Bob himself has succeeded - in working with the previous leaders of ANC, who are now leaders in the South African parliament and South African government, in major accomplishments in this area.
I would have thought that their values, not the chance that the minority uses these institutions, are what have really made it possible.
Mr. Morrison: I guess I was basically thinking that I don't know of any instances of a successful revolution of any kind where the oppressor maintained constant and complete pressure with the foot on the neck. You never get a successful overturning of a social order - in my view, at least - until you start to relieve the pressure. This happened even in Russia in the interim between the end of the monarchy and the rise of the communists. You had a release of pressure for several months in between. Otherwise, I doubt if the revolution could have happened.
Again, I wonder about South Africa. If this had been an absolutely intractable regime, with nobody on the European side, in effect, sympathizing with the underdog, could the thing have happened, with or without our intervention?
Prof. Pratt: Your point is well taken, but again, everything depends on the circumstances. You then have to ask yourself what causes the oppressor who has his foot on the neck to begin to lessen the pressure. In the South African case, more than anything else, in my reading of it, it was the flight of capital and the recognition that the system couldn't continue any longer. So sensible, wise people, like de Klerk, recognized that they couldn't continue in the way it used to be.
Similarly, I would guess that an effective oil embargo and denial by the United States and Canada to Nigeria of its markets here for its oil would suddenly make that leadership face, in a way it otherwise would never face, that it just can't keep its foot there any longer.
Mr. Miller: Again, I agree. I think the acceleration of events in South Africa was directly attributable to the sanctions and the international pressure - a clear example of where that strategy worked. I think there's now a broad consensus that that was the case.
There is now some very interesting evidence that one of the things that contributed to the possibility of negotiations and change was the internal tension within the white community in South Africa, within some of the important institutions; for example, the Reform Church. It was undergoing, itself, initially a tremendous struggle, and eventually a transformation. Secondly, as you know, between particularly the English-speaking and the Afrikaner communities, there were powerful differences as to the sustainability of apartheid.
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My own feeling is that the role of sanctions was to accelerate a process that was beginning to plant seeds and that I think would have grown and strengthened in time, whether or not there had been international sanctions. However, the difference in timing might well have meant that the sanctions would have been replaced by civil war or major conflict within South Africa, because people would have despaired of the possibility, or at least at the slowness, of change.
In reading Mandela's book - this is memoirs from my summer - it comes through that in the movement, it was beginning to feel as though a whole generation was going to die without this change being achieved. Increasingly the young radicals, the next generation, were making a powerful case that it was time to pursue a very different strategy. What finally allowed the Mandelas to prevail was probably the international pressure, the international support and the effectiveness of the sanctions.
The Chair: Thank you. I've certainly enjoyed today's meeting. It's nice that you've come with some positive ideas for us and not just criticism. In fact I heard very little criticism.
A voice: Uh-oh.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Chair: Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it.
The meeting is adjourned.