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EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, June 15, 1995

.0910

[English]

The Chairman: Order.

Before I turn to Mr. Broadbent, who, with his colleagues from the centre, is here this morning to talk about the centre, I want to say to colleagues that I appreciated the cooperation we had from everyone by uniting our meeting last night in the Senate with the Minister of Financial Institutions. Quite frankly, what we did was a rather unusual procedure, but when much emphasis is being put around here on saving money and being efficient, I think that was the most efficient way in which we could have allocated our time. If any members have any problems with our doing that, then I wish they'd let me know. Otherwise, from time to time - I'm not saying it would be a regular procedure - that appears to be the best way to go about it. I'll assume that I have your authorization to do that.

Secondly, for members who might be interested, in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen there was a long editorial entitled ``Out of Bretton Woods'' that really takes our report as its take-off point. The editorialist is good enough to say in one paragraph that:

My respect for The Ottawa Citizen has increased exponentially since this editorial was prepared. We have a copy of the editorial here, so anyone who'd like to get a copy of it can do so after the meeting.

Mr. Broadbent has said that he has a short 15-minute presentation, which is in written form and will be distributed to the members. He could perhaps take us through it, and then we'll be free to ask questions.

Mr. Broadbent.

Mr. Ed Broadbent (President, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to begin by saying how much I appreciate being back before this committee and simply reiterating what you have just noted. I think all members have been given the text. It consists of, in straightforward terms, a report roughly on what we have done, trying to highlight certain things in the past year, talking about what we plan to do, with a very brief comment on administrative matters.

If at any point members feel that I should stop this reading and go into questions, I will well understand.

At the outset I want to indicate to members of the committee that the chairperson of our board, Madame Côté-Harper, sends her apologies. When we last appeared as a centre before the committee, she was, of course, there. Regrettably, because of the timing of the date for this appearance, which was established recently, she had already made commitments for two important meetings to be in Europe, and she could not change those dates.

That having been said, with me today is Norma Walmsley, a very distinguished Canadian and a member of the Order of Canada, who has been on our board since the inception of the centre. She will be happy to answer any questions from a board perspective that members of the committee might have. Also with me are Carole Theauvette, the executive vice-president of the centre; Marie-France Cloutier, the comptroller; and Iris Almeida, who's in charge of programs. If members have questions about specific countries that we work on, she will be happy to deal with any matters you might raise.

Let me get into the substance of the report.

[Translation]

During the past year, the Centre has been active in global campaigns to end the genocide in Rwanda, restore democracy in Burma, defend women's rights, and integrate human rights into international trade agreements. Let us briefly examine each of these areas.

Rwanda: The tragedy in Rwanda could have been avoided if the international community had reacted earlier to the many warning signs leading up to the drama.

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As you know, early in 1993, an international commission of inquiry on Rwanda, mandated by the Centre, concluded that the Tutsi minority and government opponents were victims of systematic human rights violations.

[English]

This warning, more than a year before the massive onslaught started, referred specifically in its wording to genocidal acts. The centre was active on the question of Rwanda throughout this past year. We strongly condemned the atrocities, of course, urged international action, and specifically called for an international tribunal.

I met with Prime Minister Faustin Twagiramungu when he visited the country during the past year. We sent a mission of inquiry to look at the state of the judiciary, and we are now working with other agencies to rebuild civil society and the judicial system.

As a case in point, today and tomorrow in Kigali our special policy adviser and an expert from the l'Union interafricaine des droits de l'homme are giving a course to Rwandan lawyers and judges on legal action relative to the crimes of genocide.

[Translation]

Haiti has been a priority for the Centre for over four years. With the return to power of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the crisis in Haiti following the coup d'état ended on a positive note. The Centre has undertaken two important activities in Haiti: the Popular International Tribunal of Rights and the Truth Commission.

[English]

I'll say more about that in activities in the future. Maybe I'll just leave the text on the question of Haïti for you to look at.

I would simply say with reference to both Rwanda and Haïti that they were extensively discussed at an expert meeting we held in February on the question of humanitarian intervention and state sovereignty. Practical recommendations were prepared by this workshop, and they have been forwarded to the relative UN agencies. They will soon be widely distributed.

[Translation]

In Burma, the Centre has been active for the past four years. Last year, we highlighted the fifth anniversary of Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest. In newspapers around the world, the Centre published a letter addressed to the military rulers of Burma - a letter signed by 14 Nobel Peace laureates. A petition, signed by over 2,000 parliamentarians from 32 countries, was delivered to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the return of democracy and civilian rule in Burma.

Democratic development studies have been conducted on Kenya, El Salvador, Thailand and Tanzania. Other studies are under way in Guatemala, Peru and Rwanda. These studies use a framework based on international human rights instruments and enable the Centre to determine a country's national priorities for democratic development. The studies and subsequent workshops are useful tools for governments and civil society groups, and they also guide the Centre's actions.

[English]

These studies are also used to influence larger entities with greater financial clout than the centre - I'm thinking of CIDA and other donors as well - as they design projects on human rights, democratic development and good governance.

[Translation]

I would like to make a few comments on free and fair elections. The Centre organized an international mission to observe the August 1994 elections in Mexico. A delegation of Canadian Members of Parliament were sent to Chiapas to observe the election, paying particular attention to the participation of indigenous people. Many irregularities were observed, prompting the Centre to request that the Mexican Government investigate the allegations of electoral fraud.

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Let me now go to the issue of commerce and conscience. As you know, the Centre has publicly advocated the need for a link between international trade and human rights. The Centre participated in a round table discussion organized by this Standing Committee, and stressed that the new World Trade Organization must establish minimum rules concerning respect for human rights, by which all member countries must abide. While this did not happen by the time the WTO was launched in January, the Centre intends to continue pressing for these provisions.

I would like to take this opportunity to stress, once again, the fact that we are supporting a multilateral approach on this issue, an approach which includes trade and rights. In this respect, our policy is consistent with that of the Government of Canada, as explained in the document Canada in the World tabled in February.

Women's rights: In the past few years, pressure from women's groups has led the international community to recognize that rape, domestic violence and discrimination against women are not private matters, but in fact very much human rights issues.

Last July, the Centre held an expert meeting to discuss the legal framework and work methods to be used by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. The Centre also contributed $30,000 to help the Rapporteur fulfil her mandate.

The Centre also provided funding for a video on the Tribunal on the Violations of Women's Rights in Vienna, as well as a photography exhibit on women's rights, scheduled to open this September at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa.

As to our other activities,

I'll just leave that section and go on to the coming priorities for the present fiscal year.

[English]

With regard to women's rights, I would like to say at the outset that I'm enthusiastic about the activities we will be undertaking in the coming year. Just last week our board fully endorsed the recommended course of action we have proposed. In this work in particular, we will be expanding on the strengths we've developed over the past year in our advocacy work at the national, regional and international levels. Let me speak to you about just a few of those projects.

In Beijing in September, at the Fourth World Conference on Women, we have facilitated the organization of a meeting of the special rapporteur on violence against women with other human rights rapporteurs and the High Commissioner for Human Rights. We hope to build upon the successes of the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights 1993, and the meeting we sponsored last summer with NGOs and experts on the mandate of the special rapporteur.

This meeting in Beijing will illustrate our belief that women's rights are human rights, and all human rights agencies at the UN should see them as such. We have been active, and will continue to remain so, on the question of access for women to the Beijing forum. On this matter I would like to commend the Canadian government, and in particular the work of the Canadian delegation, in attempting to ensure that the conference does not represent a backwards step for international women's rights.

It is well known internationally that the Government of Canada is amongst the leaders of the world in this particular struggle. I can testify from recent conversations in New York that those who are concerned about women's rights, as particulars were discussed in Vienna, have looked very favourably on the action taken by our government.

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We will also remain active on the question of trade and human rights. As I have explained before to this committee, we favour a multilateral approach to this issue, and believe that both trade and rights must be pursued in Canada's foreign policy.

In particular, I would be happy to discuss in more detail the option of protecting a limited set of human rights for workers in the World Trade Organization regulations.

I have written to the Hon. Roy MacLaren and the Hon. Lucienne Robillard as well as provincial premiers on the importance of the link between trade and human rights. I've written to the latter, of course, because in terms of Canada being a federal state, if action is taken and there is an input, most labour matters, as members will know, are within provincial jurisdiction.

We hope to sponsor workshops on the human rights of workers in the late summer and fall in Mexico, Indonesia and Thailand and present the findings to delegates to the APEC meeting in November in Osaka, Japan. This project was approved just last Friday by our board of directors.

We will also be reaching out to the Canadian business community with specific suggestions about what Canadian companies might do to protect human rights when they invest abroad. We will be underlining the importance of such rights as freedom of association, freedom from discrimination, prohibition of forced labour and child labour. I am hopeful that we can work together with the business community and labour in order to ensure that globalization does not happen at the expense of human rights.

We will be continuing our studies on democratic development in our priority countries. In the process, we are refining our established framework for analyzing democratic development according to a set of human rights indicators.

I frankly believe, members of the committee, that the centre has made a real contribution globally in seeing democracy really being defined in terms of the family of human rights and working with flexibility, but I think with some intellectual imagination in trying to develop a framework for analysing countries, whether they're developed or developing, from within this kind of framework.

I believe it would be useful if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, CIDA and we ourselves could agree on the same framework for analyzing the state of democracy in a given country. Obviously, because of differences in our mandate starting from the same factual conclusions about a given country, if we use the same methodology, we could then draw our own conclusions for action that would correspond to our different kinds of mandates.

The point I'm making here is that it would be good to develop. We're having discussions with both CIDA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to start with the same framework, so when we talk about human rights and democratic development in the federal scene anyway, Foreign Affairs, CIDA and we ourselves will mean the same thing. And when we talk about a given country, we will hopefully reach the same conclusions using the same methodology, if following from that the operational conclusions for a different kind of mandate are different perhaps for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs than they would be for ourselves as a human rights and democratic development centre that has a more narrowly defined mandate.

With respect to Rwanda, two leading international human rights experts, Alison Desforges of Human Rights Watch-Africa and Adama Dieng of the International Commission of Jurists will be doing our democratic development study and a workshop will be held in Rwanda in September.

As you know, the original draft of the national commission for truth and justice in Haïti was done by our centre. We believe a truth commission is necessary to shed light on the crimes of the past and move toward a society where reconciliation can in fact happen. This commission has now been set up and is getting down to work. As I noted earlier in my comments today, I act as an international adviser to the commission, and the centre will continue to monitor and support this process in any way we can.

We will also remain as active as we have been since the founding of the centre on the Burma issue. I was elected a year ago as a member of the International Commission on Burma, which was set up by a very interesting forum of democratic leaders that took place in Korea last year under the leadership, appropriately, of Asians. Some of us non-Asians who were participants in that meeting, as part of the Pacific region, are now members of the governing body.

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It's a very interesting one, and because the major thrust and the leadership is Asian, the one major initiative they are planning to pursue is the issue of restoring rights and democracy to Burma. As many of us have said, when there's a problem in a region, principally those in the region should be taking the action to try to correct it and those of us outside should be facilitating and not taking the lead.

Let me conclude with a comment on administration. The centre has gone through a process of internal reallocation of resources. We have given greater focus to our program section by making democratic development in our core countries its central objective.

We have also created a new unit called public education and advocacy. I believe advocacy work is a central strength of the centre, doing the kind of work that cannot be done by the government and cannot done with the same facility of access by NGOs.

A final administrative point: This year's financial statements, which have just been completed, put our administrative cost at below 10%. The centre's mandate reflects values of great importance to the people of Canada, and I believe that our work on international human rights and democratic development provides good value for the hard-worked-for tax dollars contributed by Canadians.

Members, we were pleased to have our budget renewed without any reduction at $5 million, but I appeal to you once again to consider endorsing our request for multi-year funding, which is clearly preferable for developmental work and also, by the way, strengthens our capacity to act as an agency working at arm's length from the government.

As a final point, Mr. Chairman, I want to congratulate members of the committee on the decision to set up a human rights subcommittee. I think this decision is a positive move in the right direction. The last Parliament, as some members will know here, had a human rights subcommittee that was very vigorous indeed and worked with members of all the parties, the governing party and opposition parties at that time, in close collaboration on human rights issues. Therefore, from the point of view of the centre, I see this initiative as a very positive one.

I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, and would welcome any questions you might have.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Broadbent.

Of course, we wouldn't want the fact that you had multi-year funding to deprive us of the opportunity of your coming to us every year with a certain -

Mr. Broadbent: I'd come here even more often, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: In that case, maybe we could rethink the whole thing.

[Translation]

Mr. Paré.

Mr. Paré (Louis-Hébert): I welcome to the committee Mr. Broadbent and his colleagues. Your visits are always interesting. It would be easy for Canadians and Quebeckers, who are so well off, to become selfish. The International Center opens our eyes to the tragedy happening elsewhere in the world.

I have a few questions. The first one is on ethnic conflicts. With the fall of the Berlin wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union as we knew it up until the end of the 1980s, we thought there would be no more conflicts in the world. We now see that, on the contrary, ethnic conflicts in particular have become increasingly important and violent. How does this new situation impact on the Centre's mission?

Mr. Broadbent: Mr. Paré, let me tell you that in the context of our studies on key countries for the Center, Latin American countries, African countries and Asian countries, the question of minorities has become a very important aspect of our work on democratic development.

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[English]

I would make this point, and it's a risky one, factually risky on my part. If I look at the 13 countries we are working in specifically, in a good number of them there are ethnic conflicts, but not at all, if I were to generalize, on the same scale as a rule with the notable and of course very important exception in this context of Rwanda, as in the former Yugoslavia or the states that made up the former USSR.

One possibility that has emerged from discussions, given the new responsibilities assigned to CIDA for work in central and eastern Europe.... As you may know, Mr. Paré, CIDA has been given responsibility for democratic development work in that part of the world. Previously it had remained with Foreign Affairs.

We have been having some discussions - they've just started - about the possibility of the centre being involved in work in that part of the world. Right now, as you will know, we are technically restricted in terms of the spending of money for projects for the benefit of technically defined developing countries, which excludes virtually all of central and eastern Europe, where a good part of this conflict has become most dramatic and most troubling.

It's my candid hope, frankly, that we can reach a positive conclusion from this discussion. If we take on work there, we would have to deal in a much more basic way with the questions of ethnic conflict. If we do get involved, because we couldn't use funds that have already been allocated or planned to use in developing countries, we would of course have to have access to some source of funding from CIDA that's now been allocated to it for work in that domain.

[Translation]

Mr. Paré: In your presentation, you talked very briefly about two major issues, impunity and sovereignty. How are these two issues, impunity and sovereignty, related to each other? How can we fight against impunity while having to bear the burden of the States' sovereignty?

[English]

Mr. Broadbent: Let me talk briefly about these highly complex issues. Let's take impunity, and then I'll indicate how I see it's directly related to the question of sovereignty.

The major problems of re-establishing democracies in many Latin American countries, up to and including - and I'll put it in this context, even though it is in the Caribbean - Haïti, has been the question of impunity, as it is in the case of Rwanda. The problem is not, if I can put it this way, just an issue of getting individual justice for a family perhaps that has had a member of their family murdered or tortured. That is, of course, important. The question is a deeper one.

I was reading a recent article on El Salvador, and I'll come back to the problem because it wasn't really resolved when there was a truth commission report that wasn't acted upon properly in the case of El Salvador.

The problem is that in order to create a society based on the principle of the rule of law, you have to get respect for law by large numbers of people. In country after country, in Haïti - to take one where we're working now - the law is not respected because it has been seen to be simply the instrument of a dominant minority within the society to keep everyone else in their place, and when anyone in that dominant group has broken the law, nothing has ever happened. There's been no justice. There's been impunity.

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So respect for the principle of law itself is virtually non-existent. That is unfortunately true amongst large numbers of people in many countries because of impunity, because those with power and influence have never seen the law applicable to themselves in serious offences. It is only applicable to large majorities under them. So to get a democratic society where the rule of law is respected you have to deal with the issue of impunity. That's important as a principle.

How does it bear on the issue of sovereignty? It bears directly on two major categories of rights: crimes against humanity and a very specific form of those - genocidal acts. In those cases states that are party to international agreements, for example, are obligated and can take action themselves against citizens of another country where these crimes are involved. So sovereignty of the state, say, in Rwanda or in the case of Haïti right now....

The terms of reference we put in the truth commission on Haïti has crimes against humanity as one of the categories of crimes being looked at. There are specific international obligations on other states: to intervene, to see that justice is brought to bear in such cases and in cases of genocidal acts, equally. There are international obligations for states to intervene and to ensure that justice is done if the so-called sovereign state takes no action.

These are interesting and important instances where there can be no doubt about the application of international law and its having precedence over domestic political considerations. It deals with very important matters of impunity in the most serious kinds of violations of rights.

The Chairman: Mr. Lastewka.

Mr. Lastewka (St. Catharines): I noticed the absence of any comment on the former Yugoslavia in your report. I'm not sure...is it your intent to stay out of comment on it? I'd be very interested, since so much has been said about what will happen if Canada pulls out and so forth.

Mr. Broadbent: I was dealing with an aspect of this question when I said it's not strictly within our mandate for our activities. For our spending according to the act, we have to spend money - and the wording is almost exactly this - for the benefit of developing countries. That's technically defined. Therefore the states of former Yugoslavia are not within that category.

If we had other money, if a contributor, a company, or some individuals made a contribution to the centre apart from taxpayers' money, or if there were other sources of taxpayers' money than are allocated specifically in the legislation creating the centre, we could get involved. But at this point we have no such sum of money and no such mandate.

So it's not because it's an unimportant area, to say the least, but because it's outside our bailiwick at this moment.

The Chairman: Mr. Flis.

Mr. Flis (Parkdale - High Park): I would like to touch on an area we very seldom touch on, the petitions we've been getting from the Tamils over the last dozen years. I have a letter here from the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils. They are saying a second mass demonstration and rally will be staged by the federation to draw the attention of the Canadian government, the provincial Government of Ontario, and the Canadian people to the human rights violations perpetrated by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil people. They appeal for the recognition of their homeland and their right to self-determination, etc.

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They go on to say how the new president made a lot of election promises and the international community is actually fooled by these. The reality, they state, is that she has subverted the peace process either by incompetence or by design after securing foreign aid worth $850 million U.S. from the Paris aid consortium, which includes Canada:

What is your organization doing in this area? Are we hearing just one side? Is there another side to this? We talk about getting in early, preventing, while apparently this has been going on for over a dozen years.

Mr. Broadbent: Mr. Flis, I'll give you an answer that in some ways corresponds to the last one.

We have our core countries that we work in and I am very happy to respond both to the committee and publicly on issues that are pertinent to those countries. Given the responsibility of our mandate, I try not to comment, certainly not off the cuff, on countries that are not a core country where we haven't done our homework because we haven't worked in it, and this is a particular instance of that.

What we have done in the past for certain members of Parliament.... Even if a particular country and problem are not within our purview for work, we can do work on the issue. For example, you mentioned that you've got letters on this issue. Rather than respond to the substantive points that are raised in the letter here, I and the centre would be very happy to take into account certain allegations or claims that are made in such a letter, even if it isn't one of our core countries, and to get an answer for you.

Mr. Flis: In view of the large demonstration that will be taking place on the 17th, Saturday, I would like to table this with the committee. I can give a copy to our presenters. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Flis. I also received a copy of that letter. It's a good idea that you brought it up.

Mr. English.

Mr. English (Kitchener): Recently there has been some controversy over trade and human rights. You've made some comments, and indeed the minister has made some comments. But there are broader controversies in this question, which is clearly a very difficult one. In the news this morning there's discussion about Sherritt operating in Cuba, to which Senator Helms has objected. I believe that yesterday Mr. MacLaren defended Sherritt's participation in the Cuban economy and its future investments there.

On the other hand, there is the case of Burma, where sanctions have been applied for some time. It now seems as if some Asian countries are trading with Burma and arguing that this is a way of encouraging democratic development and human rights within that country.

In the case of those two countries, how does one establish what you talked about before, some kind of common principles? On the one hand for Cuba and on the other for Burma, how does one sort this out?

Mr. Broadbent: As my son used to say, being of a different generation, ``With great difficulty at times''.

I appreciate the complexity that the government has in dealing with such matters. Having said that, I think one does begin and ought to begin with certain principles. Then you try to apply them in a coherent way.

Let me try to do precisely that.

We have argued as a centre in full sympathy with the government's concern about the promotion of trade. I've said in different contexts that I believe it's a moral obligation for politicians to work for jobs for citizens of their country; it's part of what they're elected to do. So we have said that, yes, trade is one matter, except in the most extreme cases. Then you get into judgments, as there were in the case of apartheid in South Africa: a clear, abominable, universally understood and despised principle of segregating human beings on the basis of race and having a differentiated set of rights that was constitutionalized in the regime.

Sometimes, therefore, you may say that even trade should not go to a country in certain special circumstances. But the general proposition we have taken is that if there's trade, then there should be a multilateral approach in trying to make some linkages with general principles of trade that would be pertinent to rights.

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That's why in the new World Trade Organization we've advocated that for those who want to participate, whether it's Burma or Cuba or China or Canada, certain minimal rights should be applied as conditions of membership. I have listed four minimal rights that seem to be pertinent and that other countries have talked about. We as a country should work multilaterally with other countries to try to get these put in as the rules of the game that would affect everyone.

You're dealing with rights, but you're still trading, and if there are violations I think a series of sanctions should be developed analogous to the kinds of sanctions and principle that would apply if there were violations of intellectual property rights. In this context I believe that if human rights of a certain kind are violated in trade agreements, there ought to be follow-up sanction mechanisms of some kind that are applied just as would be in serious violations of what are normally seen to be narrowly defined trade matters now.

Having said that, it seems to me that any policy that is being applied, whether it's in Cuba or Burma, should take into account the present reality of that country too and whether it is moving towards improvement or not. If one country is, then it seems to me that does justify a greater latitude in commercial policy or other attitudes by our government or any other towards it. If it's not, then all the more reason for putting on or maintaining previously existing pressures of a commercial nature or other kinds.

We can take as an example the case of Burma, where the previous policy, not only by our government but by the United States government and by many other democratic governments, has been to actively discourage involvement. I think that if you take what the people who are working towards democratic change in that given country tell us, then a shift in that policy would aid those who don't want to provide more rights and freedom. In this case the SLORC regime doesn't want to release Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader, and doesn't want to provide a number of rights for the citizens of their country.

As I said, I think an existing policy, which has been to discourage commercial activity, ought to be maintained in that case. It could be misread, and the way the people we work with in that case see it is that if you change an existing policy towards one of more opening of trade, then the regime may see that as a sign that their existing destructive policies in terms of human rights are being rewarded.

So I think there has to be some flexibility within general principles, but general principles should be tried.

Mr. English: When multilateralism breaks down, as in the case of Burma now with Japan and other Asian countries - Japan's a democratic country - how does that change the situation? Should we unilaterally or with some other countries, say some European countries and perhaps the United States, try to have a more limited kind of multilateralism in applying commercial sanctions?

Mr. Broadbent: If you're asking for my practical judgment, which you clearly are in that case, I would say yes. Even if some of our traditional allies - and Japan is that; it's been a democracy for 50 years, after all - start shifting themselves, I think we should do our best to stay with a policy that we think can be more effective even if some begin to shift. But I also believe, and you've implied, that we should have serious diplomatic initiatives with the United States and with a number of our western European friends and with the Australians to try to maintain the policy and to try to talk to our Japanese friends about what they are doing and to try to persuade them to withdraw from it.

.0955

The Chairman: Mrs. Beaumier.

Ms Beaumier (Brampton): Mr. Broadbent, you were referring to what your son said. I'm going to take you back to when your son was 4 or 5 years old and I'm going to ask a lot of ``hows'' and ``whys''.

Let's take the case in Sri Lanka that Jesse was talking about. You're not involved there, but let's assume you're getting involved there and you recognize that the charges that are being sent out...as we all generally do. This situation is horrendous. What does your centre do to help change that? When you go into South American countries, what do you do? How do you begin to effect a change?

Mr. Broadbent: We begin by listening to the men and women who are there. It may sound pretty banal but that doesn't always happen. In terms of my previous political experience, one often tends to listen only to what you've heard at home and so on.

Establishing close contact with groups in the country and with governments in the country even where on the surface the government is the culprit is something we take very seriously. The centre makes a determined effort.

Our program director is sitting behind me. Before she became director she was responsible for Asia and Africa. We often went to the same country together. I would meet frequently with the head of government or the Minister of Justice or the Minister of Foreign Affairs to raise certain matters that had been brought to our attention. Either with me, or in independent meetings, Ms Almeida would be meeting with a number of NGO activists. We would have had reports from Amnesty International or reports from that country to get a good picture or try to get as honest a picture as we could. We work wherever we can with institutions that are part of the state.

I'll shift now to Guatemala. It's an interesting case. The man who is now president used to be the ombudsman. We've worked with him in both of those capacities. Before his work as an ombudsman, we did activist work on the promotion of a set of rights and on certain projects that he had, and we were openly critical of the government, as was he. We used some of his evidence that he had prepared as the ombudsman in Guatemala in our statements about what the Guatemalan military was doing in this case that was not at all acceptable.

To generalize, there is a constant effort to work with civil society, with representatives of the state where we can, and with our own government. The example of Guatemala is a good one. One of CIDA's interesting human rights and democratic development projects was to fund a major part of the ombudsman's office. This was Canadian government funding - I forget the precise dollar value but it was quite a number of dollars - for his office and his activities. We were using some of the data he provided to support and to provide international cover and protection for NGO activist groups that were making speeches, producing pamphlets and talking about the violations of rights in Guatemala.

Ms Beaumier: When you're dealing with Canada it would be much simpler in economic terms to look at getting the government's cooperation, but when you look at a country like the United States.... I believe right now there are some congressmen who are putting forth a bill saying they are going to withdraw aid from India because of the human rights violations there. And yet they are going to continue to sell arms to India. We end up with a double standard. I see that it's much easier perhaps because we aren't great arms suppliers, and I don't think that's a big part of our economy. At least I haven't discovered that yet.

The Chairman: We're bigger than you think.

.1000

Mr. Broadbent: We are the seventh-largest exporter of arms in the world. I think that is a serious matter, one it might be interesting for your committee to have a look at. As someone put it to me.... I was down at the meeting of the G-7. Before the government leaders came in, as some of you know, a people's forum was organized. Some of us were invited to take part, and someone put that question to me. They got up and on the one hand praised the Government of Canada very sincerely for our peacekeeping activities, and on the other hand they raised this question, to what extent do we undermine what we're doing by being the seventh-largest exporter of arms?

Mr. Volpe (Eglinton - Lawrence): It's a little like saying we're part of the G-7. Number 6 is.... It is because of our economy.

Mr. Broadbent: It would be good to see.... Do you know the figures, Mr. Volpe? I don't know the actual figures.

Mr. Volpe: I don't know the actual figures, but we're so far behind number 6 that we're virtually insignificant.

But yes, it's a substantial number. To rank us as number 7 is a sexy number to give us, but.... It's a big industry for those who are involved in it, but on the world scale we're bit players.

Mr. Broadbent: The issue seems to me whether -

Mr. Volpe: It is validated by the fact that the relevance is there, but I don't think we should focus too much on the number.

Mr. Broadbent: Right.

The Chairman: I realize you have a tag-team operation going on here.

Ms Beaumier: I'm really glad Mr. Volpe did that, because I tend to agree with him.

To get to the original question, sure, we can get bilateral agreements on our efforts to deal with a country, but we've just seen in Britain where arms sales seem to undermine what we're promoting as -

Mr. Broadbent: All I can recommend, Ms Beaumier, is if you look at a presentation made to this committee by former President Oscar Arias a week ago today, for myself, as president of the centre, he brought out some rather alarming statistics about trade. Some 90% of arms are exported by the permanent members of the Security Council. He made very telling criticism of Third World governments too. It's both things. He gave some figures about how much more Third World governments are spending on military equipment than on health and education, for example.

He raised the issue.... Rather than trying to repeat a number of the points he made very well - and that's a particular international agenda he's been pursuing - I just refer that presentation to the committee to you, because he not only documents the problem but talks about some solutions too.

Ms Beaumier: Do you work in cooperation with the ILO? For example, we talk about slave labour in third world countries and we're appalled by it. Do you cooperate with the ILO?

Mr. Broadbent: Yes. We work with them and with various labour federations who are members of the ILO in getting information. As you know, the ILO works on a tripartite basis. I mentioned in my comments on this issue of trade and rights we plan to have some meetings with the Canadian business community. The real objective is to get a code of good behaviour, in a sense. Some companies, such as Levi Strauss, which I happened to mention when I was down in Halifax, have very commendable codes of behaviour they apply to themselves.

That company, by the way, pulled out of Burma. It is pulling out; cancelling. When contracts are running out in China, it is not renewing them. It is maybe the biggest clothing manufacturer in the world, and it has a human rights policy that is not wishy-washy. They make it clear they are not a human rights institution, they are there to make a profit. But they have a policy they have worked out. Their case is that you can make profit, you can do well, and also respect rights.

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What we are trying to do at the centre, as I say, is have some meetings with some Canadian companies to see if we can get some kind of a code of standards or conduct that could be applied to Canadian companies when they're working abroad.

Ms Beaumier: I just have one more question. It's about the UN. I think a lot of us are losing faith in the UN. How effective do you think the UN is in dealing with human rights violations? If your opinion is similar to mine, how can we reform and strengthen the UN in that area?

Mr. Broadbent: That's a difficult one. I think in terms of what was really expected of the UN, no serious observer would say they've lived up to what was really hoped for.

If you look at the amount of resources as a percentage - I won't give it, because I'd be making up the figure, but I could get it for you - of the UN's budget that goes to the human rights activity, which I have seen, it would be sort of looking at the budget of our centre compared to the whole GNP of Canada almost. It's an extraordinarily small amount of UN resources that go for for its human rights mandate.

It's easy for me or for anyone to say that's the problem with the UN. The problem with the UN comes from the nation-states that make it up. So when we say that this is bad, we have to particularly come right back to the permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations. If they would want human rights to be taken more seriously by the UN, then they would make sure it was done.

There have been some good signs. The work that is being done by this new special rapporteur on violence against women was a very important move at the Vienna conference organized by the UN. That was a very important move, and it's going to be followed up at Vienna.

The appointment of Mr. Jose Ayala Lasso as a commissioner for human rights was called for. That was done just in the past year. He has, I think, a staff of two for the world. He was at the centre recently, as he came to us for help. It would be sort of like your committee coming to us. It says something about the scope of the problem. His budget is almost non-existent.

The answer is that the UN is not doing what it really should be doing. But the fault should not be placed, in my view, at the top of the UN, if you like, on the current man who has the responsibility, but with the member states, particularly those that make up the security council. If we want change, they have to make it.

Ms Beaumier: So perhaps trade is dominating their agenda as well.

Mr. Broadbent: I think not. I think trade is not dominating the UN's agenda. The old so-called security concerns that are more traditionally defined in terms of troops crossing borders and more that concept of security has preoccupied the UN.

Again, speaking frankly, no government, whether it's democratic or not, likes dealing with human rights. This is especially so for non-democratic governments, and most governments are non-democratic. We all know that. Human rights often aren't issues that are easy to resolve. Most of the members of the United Nations have serious human rights problems, because most of them are non-democratic.

That, too, may account for the reason why not very much in the way of resources has been allocated to the UN to deal with global human rights issues and why the NGO community internationally, as well as what we have seen in our country in the evolution of concerns about rights and democracies, is so crucial.

[Translation]

Mr. Paré: I would like to get back to the big issue of trade and rights. I have two main concerns.

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A few years ago, when talk of globalization and competitiveness started, the proponents of these theories claimed that this would be the ideal way to help third world countries climb out of their poverty.

But precisely because of competitiveness, I have the feeling that it will be more and more difficult to get developed countries to take multilateral steps to protect human rights, because they are part of a trade that is, as I was going to say, without value. It is the law of the jungle. It will be difficult to convince countries to undertake multilateral actions to fight violations of human rights.

On the other hand, and this is my second concern, it has been claimed that international trade and globalization would bring about intensive development in third world countries. However, this has absolutely not been proven.

It should be remembered that some years ago, developing countries contributed 7% of exports. It is estimated that by the year 2000, these countries will have slipped to 1%. It is therefore not true that these countries will develop.

What seems even more pernicious, is the fact that not only will this not help develop those countries, but that competitiveness will be used as an excuse to make deep cuts into social programs, and not only in Canada. I do not wish to discredit Canada in this.

Finally, representatives of the International Chamber of Commerce came to tell us: ``Cuts must be made in social programs in order for us to be more competitive.'' It stands to reason that the second round of cuts will be made on the back of workers' economic rights in industrialized countries.

This leaves me in quite a quandary as to solutions for the future. The laws of the market are almost being worshipped as gods. One must never forget that the laws of the market are the laws of the jungle.

Mr. Broadbent: That is a good question, Mr. Paré. Since the end of the cold war, the attitude of all developed countries and some developing countries has evolved on the deficit.

Originally, it was the international institutions who quite frankly imposed conditions on developing countries to force them to change their priorities. I am answering this question because of our responsibilities in matters of social and economic rights and not only political and civil rights.

Because of the World Bank's programs, etc., there was a reduction in programs and in the entitlement to education and health.

[English]

If you consider at the national level now, not only the developed countries but Canada, it cuts across all ideological differences in general, too, of the traditional north Atlantic party categories. Your party, Mr. Paré, ideologically I think is mixed on this one, but I'm thinking now internationally of liberal parties, conservative parties, social democratic parties. There has been an approach that everyone says the deficit has to be dealt with, and therefore, because social programs in terms of government expenditures make up such a large part of financing, if they're going to cut back on financing, social programs are inevitably affected.

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This is not the occasion, in the few minutes remaining, to address this at length, but it is a question from a rights point of view that is of concern to us. You're asking my opinion on this question. I think we have moved too far with it in terms of a priority. I addressed this at the meeting of the G-7 in Halifax the other day, and I will be happy to leave a copy of the text.

There has been too much movement in terms of seeing this as a kind of new god which determines all other priorities. Rather than being one important concern, and it is an important concern I want to underline, it is pushing everything else off the agenda almost; and from a rights point of view, my own view is that the social and economic rights cut-backs that are going on in the developed world as well as elsewhere now also are having the repercussions of causing populations, including our own, to become less tolerant, less open, less willing to defend civil and political rights.

So there is a very important connection, I believe, between social and economic rights foundations on the one hand and political and civil rights behaviour on the other; and right in the middle of it there is a sort of modern focus on dealing with the deficit as almost the exclusive priority of governments as opposed to one priority among others.

I think that's part of the issue you were getting at.

I'd like to go back to a question that was asked - you mentioned it - which is a question that keeps coming back. I really hope that members of the committee and members of the broadly defined Canadian leadership community can get their act together on this one big issue. That question is to what extent does promoting economic development have a direct correlation with rights - trade is another variant.

What's the connection there? Is there a direct positive correlation? I think the evidence is overwhelmingly that there is no direct positive correlation. There is a direct positive correlation with the development of market-based economies for pressure for rights. There really is empirical evidence whether in the development of a north Atlantic world over a long period of time, or in other parts of the world now, that market economies generate - and I won't go into all the reasons for this, but there's well-documented evidence - pressure for rights, but the rights are not automatically granted.

I've used two interesting cases; one is Romania back in the Cold War days. Before I became leader of my party, as a backbencher I went to Romania in the old Cold War days. They were trading with the west more than any other Communist Bloc country. But they had the most oppressive Stalinist regime perhaps in the Soviet Bloc.

Similarly, China today has had a dynamically growing market economy, but rather than the political leadership responding to the demands for democratic reform, they've held them in check. So they've moved backwards in terms of rights, not because the pressure wasn't there for rights but because the political leadership wasn't going to be open to the pressure.

So I hope that when all of us talk about these things we can say, yes, economic development can put pressure on to create the social circumstances leading for rights but we should not make the mistake of saying that this in itself, by promoting commerce and trade, is either the best way of promoting rights or that it will inevitably lead to rights.

[Translation]

Mr. Paré: Now I'd like to get on to something else. An agency such as yours, that depends, almost exclusively, on government subsidies, is surely more vulnerable when there are budgetary constraints and economic difficulties. You may have a secret weapon to fight this: your dialogue with Canadians and Quebeckers.

I'd like you to give us an idea of how you publicize the Centre's actions and what you are doing to make Canadians and Quebeckers proud of the Centre. I feel this is even more important now that CIDA has cut back drastically on funds to NGOs who were working at educating and informing the Canadian public.

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Mr. Broadbent: We are trying to find answers very quickly to questions such as the correlation between trade and rights. As far as we're concerned, it is the Centre's responsibility to discuss this question. The Committee wants to know and Canadians want to know.

Therefore, when a matter of rights arises, we have the responsibility to publish our opinions, not only in the form of a paper, but in articles published in Le Devoir, La Presse, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the Western papers.

[English]

It is to try to respond to questions that are on the public agenda on which, whether we're right or wrong, we think we have some serious views, and then to get them out to the public and through the NGO network. As well, it is to send communication, as we do from time to time on these issues, to members of Parliament. That is on certain thematic issues, as I just mentioned, trade and rights.

Other things like Rwanda happen. That's an interesting problem of communication, though.

We were among the very first institutions in the world to underline that genocide was coming on a massive scale in Rwanda. We had a press conference in Montreal - I'll always remember this - because there was zip-all news coverage coming out. This was a very serious documented report on what was happening, a full year before the massacre was launched. We had documented proof of genocidal acts, and we used our language with care. But I repeat, there was zip-all news coverage. We had a major press conference here, our French partners had one on Paris, and I believe there was one in Brussels and in Africa as well.

So even when you make the effort to get something out - I just say in passing, it is not directly connected to your question - there is a problem when you have evidence of very serious wrongdoing, as you know as politicians, that it doesn't always mean that the news media, which is our access to the people of Canada, would pick it up.

Madame Theauvette would like to add something to this.

[Translation]

Mrs. Carole Theauvette (Vice-President, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development): The members of our board are also very aware of this aspect that you raised. At our November meeting, they asked us to focus our activities to a greater extent towards what we call in English advocacy. I must admit that I'm not too sure how you say that in French. Do you speak of promotion, of defence?

I don't know the exact term, but following our board's request, some activities within the Centre were refocused. We created an advocacy unit and we will now launch more world-wide campaigns on certain themes. One of these, as Mr. Broadbent mentioned, is the link between trade and human rights.

The Chairman: Thank you, Madam.

[English]

Perhaps I could ask a question that comes out of what you were speaking on, Mr. Broadbent, and then we'll turn to other members who have questions as well.

I have two questions. One arises out of your last comment about the relationship between social policy within developed countries and the attempts with which we're trying to create an evolving atmosphere in developing countries, and how can we on the one hand cut back in our own jurisdictions and be urging others to move up in their jurisdictions? I can see a link there.

I have received some representations from international lawyers arguing that some of the changes in the present Canadian situation may be in violation of the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to which Canada is a signatory. Has your centre actually looked at that question in any way or has that come to your attention?

Mr. Broadbent: It has come to our attention via the news media. We are going to be looking at it and I want to say why, because we do not as a rule deal with Canadian human rights issues. There are other institutions. As a rule, if we got involved in that we would have no time for anything else. As soon as it became known that we would be looking at Canadian human rights issues, as I think members will understand, we would have all kinds of pressures put on us.

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I'll tell you why we are looking and are interested in getting some answers to that. When I go abroad, one of the important things we have to make clear is that we don't want to appear like the self-righteous people who don't have any problems. Sometimes our problems are raised with us when we go abroad. The one I normally talk about, especially when I'm talking to heads of government or senior ministers and we're talking about problems in their country, is our classic historical problem with the treatment of aboriginal people, which we haven't yet completely resolved. I'm quite up front about that in saying that we've made progress, yes, but a big part...

The other issue now, if we're talking about social and economic rights problems of other countries and the impacts of certain IMF policies or World Bank policies or indeed of certain Third World country government policies, is these accusations that have been made about Canada, not just with reference to aboriginal issues but also as a signator to the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. To what extent are we guilty?

I think there is a case. We have not followed it up and we want to do that, but on the surface the criteria, broadly defined, is that our government is doing sufficiently in terms of resources to meet their obligations under this. As the lawyers say, there's a prima facie case that we haven't seen. We have not examined that yet, but I think it's a serious matter, particularly in the rights of the child, which has come up again recently, and we will be having a look at it.

The Chairman: Let me follow with a different question, but relating to representations that I personally have received. Really this is a question on behalf of Mr. Mills, because he has raised this issue with me.

He has received a great deal of representation from certain people in this country in relation to the position of the Canadian delegation to the Beijing conference. I gather from what you said in your introductory comments that you're in contact with that delegation.

The allegations that are being made are that our Canadian delegation and the people behind it are extremists, that they are pushing the agenda far beyond anything that was done at the Cairo conference. In fact, the language that is being used in correspondence to me raises issues of great improprieties in the sense that these people are off on an agenda that is far beyond anything that normal Canadians would approve of or that in fact we even espoused in Cairo.

I personally have inquired of other people in the legal community, and they have assured me that's not at all true, that our delegation is one of the more respected delegations and that in fact many other countries come to our delegation for leadership and we are perceived as being right in the mainstream of where human rights in respect of women's development issues are going.

I wonder if you could comment for us. As I say, I'm sorry Mr. Mills is not here, because I think this is a serious matter and something that we as a committee should be able to deal with when we receive these representations.

Mr. Broadbent: I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. It is a serious matter, and in general I'm going to agree with what you said in the last part of your comments.

If there's one area, and there are certainly more than one, where we at the centre have worked very positively in association with the Government of Canada, it's been in this domain. I would say the Government of Canada's position has been a leadership position without being extremist. But from my political experience, and I dare say that of everyone around this table, one person's progressive, reasonable agenda to get equality - in this case, for women - and to get certain women's rights recognized as human rights may be extreme for certain other people. Well, for me it's not.

If you're trying to deal with a broadly defined cultural tradition that in all societies in varying degrees has favoured men over women in terms of effective rights and you're trying not to give women the preferred position but to achieve a degree of equality, I believe that agenda is laudable and supportable.

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More specifically, in the case - and we follow this very closely, because we have one person on our staff who is responsible for women's rights internationally and who works very closely with the Canadian delegation at the UN - the overwhelming view we're getting back is that going into Beijing, the struggle is going to be to maintain what has already been established. In some ways that's regrettable; i.e., not pushing the agenda further ahead. But what has been established - and that means by all the governments in Vienna, who finally came on, some kicking and screaming, to be frank...but the large majority of governments finally took some progressive steps at Vienna, leading to the special rapporteur on violence against women.

The struggle right now, going into Beijing, is simply to hold the gains that have been won at Vienna, which I repeat were not extremist gains; were long overdue in terms of the rights of women. The Canadian delegation that's been working in New York, preparing for Beijing, has been totally on the right side of this, being in a sensible position on the rights of women globally, and has not at all been, in any serious sense of the word that I would use, extremist.

The Chairman: That's very helpful. Thank you very much.

Mr. Volpe: That was a most interesting reaction and it's food for thought. I wonder how much of that represents an ideological position and how much of it is a reflection of the balance the organization you head would garner from all the information available.

Mr. Broadbent: I could deal with that if you want me to.

Mr. Volpe: It's somewhat of a rhetorical observation.

What I was interested in is a couple of things you mentioned earlier on. We've been colleagues in the past, and I've always enjoyed your interventions even though we were on opposite sides of the House, but there is really one issue I'd like you to elaborate on, and perhaps in two phases.

First, you gave a fairly lucid indication that you thought trade and the expansion thereof didn't necessarily contribute to the expansion of human rights but you thought expansion of trade might increase the pressures for the expansion of human rights. I think I'm paraphrasing you more or less accurately.

Mr. Broadbent: Could I make an distinction there? It's important. Commercial development of market economies creates the pressure - often creates new working and middle classes. It causes greater urbanization, moving away from the countryside, bringing people together where they communicate, where they have new experience. Because of pressure in these circumstances - we saw it in the history of Europe, we've seen it elsewhere, and we're seeing it in Asia - they start making demands.

So it is market economy development, broadly speaking. That's not the only way of doing it, but market economy development really does create the pressures.

With trade I think it's much less clear. I mentioned Romania before. You can have a lot of trade going back and forth, but maybe no pressure for rights at all coming from that trade in and of itself. In China, for example, I think you have the two coming together. You have the commercial, where the communists have introduced market mechanisms. They're creating pressure. But they're also expanding trade, certainly, at the same time.

My own view would be - and I think the evidence supports this - it is more the development of a market economy and the transformation this means in populations that lead to the pressure for rights.

Mr. Volpe: I thank you for the explanation. Perhaps I've committed the faux pas of equating the expansion of trade with the increase in commercialization and interchanged the two terms. I make that admission.

Before I ask my question, regarding the massive urbanization in some countries that until recently were, or still currently are, identified as Third World countries - places such as Mexico City and others, in Asia, in Africa, places which are bursting at the seams - I wonder whether in fact they do increase the pressures for rights or whether they exacerbate the problems.

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With the expansion of NAFTA and the inclusion of Mexico, particularly over the course of the last two years, I wonder whether your organization has looked at the impact of NAFTA. Has the increase in industrialization in parts of Mexico, the increase in commercialization, and the increase in the size and wealth of the middle class had any positive impacts on the permeation of human rights and human rights issues throughout all spectrums of that society?

Mr. Broadbent: Mexico is a good example of what I would argue is the general condition. I think the development over the past decade in Mexico toward more market mechanisms and more overall industrial and commercial development has created both an expanded working class in urban areas and an expanded middle class. After all, it's the working class you're talking about when you talk about democracy - that's the majority - when it gets the franchise or effective rights.

Historically, the coming together of middle-class interests - part of the middle class traditionally - and working-class interests creates the demands. I think that's what has happened in Mexico. There has been a flourishing in the last few years. The process has been going on for some time, but since we've been a centre we've been there frequently - my staff and I less frequently. You can see the emergence of a civil society, of groups demanding the parti pris itself. Part of this is the outgrowth of this economic development, I believe. It is not dissimilar in principle to whatMr. Gorbachev said about the transformation coming in the USSR, of pressure from within for economic reasons. If you start opening up, more pressure will come.

At the same time, if you look at Chiapas, you see the clash of rights that also comes with economic transformation. You see the traditional land rights of the indigenous people being challenged by the new commercial rights. The change that was put in the Mexican constitution in preparation for NAFTA in part was to radically change historically the traditional land rights of the indigenous people that were, by analogy, closer to our medieval experience. The history in western Europe of land before it became commercialized was not dissimilar to the Chiapas, or what you find in many parts of the world. The indigenous people's concept of land, including ours, was originally that land was not a marketable commodity.

In Mexico you could see, in the rise of the cities, part of this democratization process. You see in Chiapas the clash of rights, if you like, a new form of rights that are coming with market economies, but at the cost - some would argue, and how do you weigh those trade-offs? - of the traditional land rights of the indigenous people.

Mr. Volpe: I suppose I would have a view of how to handle that or trade it off, having a little bit of a perspective in some medieval land rights. Some of those medieval land rights were still very current in Europe as recently as the pre-World War II period. I suppose we have a question about which rights we're arguing about now and which ones we'd like to promote. It seems to me if we're going to be promoting the rights we think we enjoy and others should enjoy with the same kind of opportunity, perhaps we would have a proactive policy.

On the issue of proactive policy, I'd like to refer back to something you said earlier when you used the example of Levi Strauss. I'm wondering whether it is a practical avenue for us, from a proactive point of view, to deal with companies that want to do business in countries we have identified as having generally widespread human rights violations. I think you used the two examples of Cuba and China.

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Rather than take a position that we have to make a decision between trade and commercialization and human rights, is it possible for an institution like your own to deal with companies that are going into places like Cuba and China and to ask them if it is at all practicable to employ some of the policies that Levi Strauss is employing? This is assuming that those policies are healthy for them from a bottom-line perspective. That would be my first question.

The second question is whether we have or should have any kind of role in discouraging or inhibiting entrepreneurs of any variety from taking advantage of circumstances that are tolerated in the environment in which they do business.

Mr. Broadbent: As you will recognize, they're both related. On the first point, that's what I was alluding to in my opening comments when I said we are now planning with a very determined agenda to have meetings over the course of the summer with members of the Canadian business community. The latest one is in September. This is to see from a practical point of view if we can come up with some kind of workable code of conduct for companies abroad along the line of Levi Strauss, and there are a number of others. We're looking very seriously at exactly that.

It's related to the second question. One way of approaching the rights circumstance in a bad country is to do this multilateral thing that some of us have talked about, of linking into the WTO a certain kind of rights conditionality as a condition for membership.

Another kind of consideration could be, if you've got a significant number of companies to sign on to it, that when multinationals go abroad, they apply the standards to themselves. This is notwithstanding the level of acceptance of bad practices of the government in x region, or whatever.

For example, if child labour is accepted in such a country, they themselves should insist while they're functioning there that they won't employ child labour. If working totally in standards of health and safety that violate all international norms is accepted, they themselves must not accept it. If discrimination in pay is accepted between men and women doing the same job, they themselves should not accept it.

I'm not sure how realistic this is, but it's the sort of thing that we want to have discussions on with some of the people in the business community, to see if they would be prepared to take that up. I think it's a very big issue, frankly, in terms of where the world is going, to risk another generalization.

We've seen in the post-war period a continuation in the world scene some form of massive state ownership as being a viable alternative for global development to some form of markets. If that's now gone and what everyone is on to is some form of market economy, then it seems to me that we should get rid of some of the old debates and forget them. I believe a market economy is the way of the future, and then you can have left-right divisions within that. We should then talk about how we build the accepting of some form of market economy as the desirable norm as far as we can see in the future.

How then do we make it compatible to have a global functioning economy that has profit-making as part of the given? How do we combine in a serious way that orientation with the whole family of rights? That to me is the interesting debate and discussion, not the old one, and this is a good example of it.

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Mr. Volpe: Since your organization is raising those questions, I am wondering whether they're coming up with some of the recommended solutions.

Mr. Broadbent: We have in the regulation. We try to argue the case for solutions in terms of the World Trade Organization. We've given some answers, but I don't know whether one agrees or disagrees with them. We are just starting to look at the issue from companies themselves adopting codes of proper behaviour. Maybe when we come back next year or earlier we'll have answers on that. I hope it will be earlier than that.

The Chairman: There is quite an extensive experience in literature with codes of conduct that many companies have adapted over years. When we were teaching public international law, we would use them as sort of examples of what we would call soft law or law in development.

I think that would be a worthwhile area. You can see where human behaviour modifies itself and over time it actually becomes a legal standard that arises out of the conduct as it grows.

If you can encourage the business community to do that, I think you might be doing something very useful because this is going to be a very big problem to deal with. I think it's a very helpful suggestion.

Mr. English and then I have Mr. Flis.

Mr. English: Yesterday we met with some British parliamentarians who were members of their foreign affairs committee, and they were studying the Commonwealth. On asking questions about the future of the Commonwealth, they ranked very highly the promotion of human rights and democratic development.

I notice that you've worked in Kenya and Tanzania, that are Commonwealth members. Have you noticed the Commonwealth as a factor in countries like that working for democratic development and human rights? I suppose Kenya is an obvious case. Do you think the Commonwealth has a future in this particular area?

Mr. Broadbent: Those are two questions, so I will give two answers.

By and large it's not a presence, and again it's because of budgetary concerns. I think where the Commonwealth has been useful is in election observing. They've got delegations of MPs from different countries, and that has been a very positive contribution. Other than that, I don't think very much at all.

It gets back to the fact that it's analogous to the UN. I don't know who is there now, but I remember that the fellow used to be a Canadian and had the responsibility for the human rights agenda in the Commonwealth. They had one person for the whole Commonwealth. How much can they really be doing if they have one person? We think we have a small enough budget for the whole developing world and we have a staff of 22 anyway, but they had one person for the whole Commonwealth. It doesn't surprise me that they haven't done much.

The second thing is whether they could have a future in this area. I believe very much that they could, precisely because it's evolved out of the colonial relationship. Countries like Kenya and Tanzania could do a lot of what we call south-south work, not just so-called northerners coming down there and sharing their experience. They could do it within their own context of bringing MPs from countries that have been working well in their own regions to share that experience with other members in the Commonwealth, like Tanzania.

Tanzania is one of the success stories so far. We'll keep our fingers crossed. We don't see it in the news.

We do a lot of work in Tanzania. I was just there recently, and they seem to be very successfully evolving towards a multi-party system. It seems to me that if the Commonwealth put more resources into their work, they could play a much bigger role than they have up to now on democratic development.

Mr. English: Someone suggested I ask this question so we can send the transcript to the U.K. committee to use for their report. We'll send the second answer, not the first.

Mr. Broadbent: You could send both.

Could I just add, the obvious point is not only the Commonwealth, but the Francophonie is another institution that could be doing much more. I dare say they have more problems to deal with too.

Mr. English: Just on the same kind of note of levity, if you like, I note there have been no questions, not simply in the absence of the Reform Party, about lavish offices and things of that type. It is in part because I believe Mr. Paré went with you to observe the election in Mexico, along with the member from Waterloo, who has announced in my local newspaper that he had to share a room with you and a cockroach.

Mr. Broadbent: Well, at least he made a distinction anyway.

Mr. English: He said it was a social democratic cockroach.

Mr. Broadbent: He took pictures as well.

Mr. English: Did he take pictures of the cockroach or you?

Mr. Broadbent: I won't get too personal. Go ahead.

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Mr. English: In any event, I'd like to congratulate you on the fact that your financial administration is obviously being conducted frugally in the spirit of the times, and also that those kinds of questions have disappeared.

Mr. Broadbent: Thank you.

Mr. Flis: I have two things. First, the president touched on Chiapas. Can you briefly give us an update on where we're at there now? Did we learn anything from our intervention with Chiapas?

My other more pertinent question was following along Mr. English's compliments. You mentioned to us that this year's financial statement puts your administration costs at below 10%. We congratulate you for that. You thanked the committee for renewing the $5 million dollars, etc. How seriously are you looking for funding from other governments, international bodies, or non-government sources?

I'm looking at other models. IDRC seems to have a great success. Along with government funding, they're getting a lot of private funding. I see the demands for financial and human resources are going to grow because of the kind of work you're doing.

What is the centre doing in exploring other sources of funding?

Mr. Broadbent: We're working with other organizations similar to ours, such as the Westminster Foundation. Although they're not as close, we're also working with some of the American equivalents, such as the NDI, some of their organizations and joint projects. We're trying to also get major donors.

We're now concentrating on longer-range projects in our countries, say a three-year project for Tanzania or Kenya back to back. We're approaching other foundations, such as the German foundations, and other donor countries, such as the Dutch, the Swedes, the Germans and others who get involved in democratic development work. We're trying now to get them as joint participants in some of these projects.

It's not that they would be making a direct financial contribution to us, but that they would be contributing. We'd try to bring them in to contribute to a project that we think is very worth while. There has been some ongoing success. In fact, as Iris Almeida knows in the case of Kenya, we're having some success in getting some other international partners to contribute to it.

I can't make out Madame Theauvette's note on this, but she can speak to the point here.

Ms Theauvette: Pursuant to our democratic development study in El Salvador, and subsequently the workshop that was held there to establish priorities for good governance, human rights and democratic development, the centre has been asked to participate in an advisory committee of a private sector company, Sogema, which has been awarded a $25 million contract by CIDA over five years. We can then use some of our influence in helping them design projects pertaining to human rights and democratic development. Because we might be able to invest ourselves close to $100,000 in that country with some of our partners, this again permits us with a very small amount of money to influence a bigger player with a bigger amount.

Hopefully we can do the same with UNDP, which has a $9 million fund for human rights and democratic development in El Salvador. That's one other example of how we can use our limited funds but influence other players also.

[Translation]

Mr. Paré: Given the nature of the Centre's mission, what would the average duration of a project or initiative be? Does the Centre's annual funding cycle not hinder its activities?

Mr. Broadbent: Generally speaking, I would say it's about three years. I think it's extremely important that the Centre have about a five-year commitment. For this type of project, long-term guarantees are clearly advisable.

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[English]

Maybe members aren't in the position to comment on this issue. I don't know if there's any disposition on the part of the committee at all to look at this five-year guaranteed funding. Some new members of Parliament may not know that when the centre was originally created as the result of an all-party committee, it was recommended by all parties to put us on five-year locked-in funding, in part to be able to deal with this, and in part to be able to speak candidly and have greater assurance, I guess, that the centre can speak autonomously from the government of Canada on certain issues. I think it's a desirable principle.

In my previous role, before I got this job, I strongly supported the principle, and support it, for obvious reasons, even more now.

The Chairman: Speaking of funding and your collaborative efforts, as I understand it,Mr. Broadbent, rather than going out and seeking a Ford Foundation grant, for example, to finance a particular project - because you could go that route, if I understand it, and many other organizations do - you have chosen instead to say that you can get a bigger bang for a your buck if you joint-venture with other countries where you're operating. You are now going to start more joint-venturing and, therefore, provide either a leadership role in some projects or a secondary role in others and gradually expand the scope of your activities that way. Is that it?

Mr. Broadbent: More of the latter, more of that, Mr. English, as you say. But also, for this photographic exhibition I referred to that is going to Beijing, we are looking for corporate sponsors for that particular project, too.

The Chairman: I see. We had recently before us the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the United Nations. The impression we got was that that operation is seriously underfunded. Is there any way in which the centre intends to support that activity, going back to Madame Beaumier's earlier question?

Mr. Broadbent: Yes, he came to our office and we discussed quite concrete ways of doing that. The obvious ones are in countries that are key to us, what we call core countries where there's UN activity. We are going to be looking at ways that we can cooperate.

To be quite candid, he was looking for us to provide financial support for their activities. So we're looking at it in kind of the sense of joint-ventures, but it's a little bizarre. I don't fault him at all, and I want to be clear on this. Where we can collaborate and work together, we certainly plan to do so. What I was saying was bizarre is that the UN would come to a relatively - in the ultimate scheme of things - small agency like ours, to look for funding for UN activities, but it shows how desperate they are.

He has only two on his staff, for the whole world. He has immense problems, and as I said, our plan is try to work together. Haïti and El Salvador are very good examples where we may develop certain things together.

The Chairman: Let me just ask you one last question, because we're now at 11 o'clock.

Perhaps it would interest the members to hear your perspective on how the centre brings a special value-added to the work you're doing. We hear from CIDA, we've heard from the UN High Commissioner and many people who are struggling with these terribly important questions on human rights.

The centre, of course, is playing a role in that, but are you just doing what others do? One has the impression that the IDRC, for example, is a unique international institution that is doing something that many other countries have told us is almost not available anywhere else, and that Canada really plays a leadership role in this. Can you tell us where the centre would fall in comparison with the IRDC or other institutions?

Mr. Broadbent: Let me address that briefly. It's obviously a very important question.

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The idea when the centre was created was to not duplicate CIDA or Foreign Affairs. Parliamentarians asked if there some way that Canadians, in a parliamentary creation, could work with governments or groups or individuals in developing countries to put in place human rights institutions and practices. This was the kind of mandate they gave us.

How it differs, it seems to me, is in the following. Unlike CIDA and our high commissioners or ambassadors, I, as president of the centre, or the staff can be more outspoken. We try to do it in diplomatic language - clear, minimum rhetoric, maximum substance - but when I go to a country we can talk more openly without being afraid of bilateral reactions or apprehensions, the way the Government of Canada or any nation-state has to be concerned.

We can be more outspoken ourselves about international human rights and principles. We always try to apply that - we're not there as Canadians. We can be more outspoken and we can support more activist groups. All democratic as well as non-democratic governments are harassed, or should be harassed, by activist NGOs - by harassed I mean non-violently, but that's what you mean by an active society. It keeps politicians on their toes.

We can support those kinds of groups both financially and sometimes, because their lives can be threatened, internationally. They'll know by groups we've supported in many countries - activist groups that could be arrested or worse - more readily than the Government of Canada can or CIDA can. So we come back to the advocacy role of the centre and the promotion of rights that MPs originally saw, I believe, as part of the kind of niche that we could have that other government agencies don't have.

On the other hand, unlike NGOs, we do have access, in part because we are a creation of Parliament. I, as the president, appointed by the Government of Canada, have a certain access that NGOs don't have to senior levels of government in other countries, as well as to the NGOs. We are that interesting hybrid that if we do our job well, as we try to do, can do certain things that others just can't do.

Let me conclude by giving you an example. Christine Stewart, the Secretary of State, and I were both recently in Tanzania back to back. I was there for five or six days. We had meetings with senior ministers and NGOs and made a number of public comments about changes that, from our international perspective, we thought should be introduced to ensure that the coming October elections were free and fair. I could be much more clear and unequivocal in a public statement about what those things should be than I believe the minister could be, in terms of bilateral relations, maybe.

She could, and I'm sure she did, in the private meetings she had just after I was there, raise a lot of the same issues, and to a certain extent with greater punch, obviously - she's a direct representative of the Government of Canada. But in terms of the public agenda and public debate within Tanzania, she couldn't be quite as forthcoming as I could as the head of an international human rights and democratic development centre.

The Tanzanian example is a perfect illustration of how we work in a sense, when it's working right, to complement activities and not duplicate.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Broadbent.

[Translation]

Mr. Paré: Could we ask Mrs. Walmsley to say a word or two?

The Chairman: Certainly. Would you like to give us your perspective as a member of the board of directors?

[English]

Ms Norma Walmsley (Member, Board of Directors, International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development): Perhaps I might say, in order to assure all members of this committee, that the centre is running very, very well. I can say that because I have been there since the door opened.

We have a very good board. It has changed many times because, as members will remember, I think, if you've read the act, some of the government appointments at first by the all-party committee were of one-year duration, some of two and some of three. So in the rotation, our board has changed. I was appointed for three years. That meant my term was up in March 1993. I was then reappointed by the government for another term, which will expire in March 1996. I've been at every meeting. I have watched with great interest all the work of the staff, as well as the particular work of our committed president.

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As far as I'm concerned, every one of the staff members is competent, skilled and very committed. Incidentally, they are overworked, although you may not think that.

Mr. Broadbent: I'm glad you asked us these questions.

The Chairman: It inspires us to greater things.

Ms Walmsley: Seriously, they are overworked. It doesn't sound as if they could be when you compare them with the staff of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights, which consists of two for the whole world. We are obviously dealing with a smaller region. The fact is we do have 22 staff members. But they are overworked.

There are far too many human rights violations in the world, as you all know. There are far too many questions we should be tackling that we have to leave aside because we do not have the funds or the staff. The board is very concerned about that.

We're very concerned that the influencing task we have as part of our mandate has not really been done the way it should be done. There are many people in Canada who don't even know that the centre exists, much less the work that it is doing. We have tried very hard to correct that.

One side of the mandate Parliament gave the centre is to influence Canadians and the world. We do sometimes influence the world and we can say that without exaggeration. That's why, as our president has said to you, the board has insisted that side of the mandate be looked at and made operational in the forthcoming years provided we get some long-term commitment of funds. Obviously, if you're dealing on a one-year term or at least with a one-year budget.... Yet we want to deal with partners on a long-term basis.

If we're going to do any real work in any of these countries, we do have to work on a long-term basis, and that means committing some funds for this year, next year and the year after. Therefore, I make a plea for you to seriously study the work that is being done. You may be assured that our president is representing Canada in a wonderful way. There's absolutely no doubt about it. I don't think I've ever voted NDP in my life, so that's not why I'm not saying this. But the fact remains -

Mr. Broadbent: Better to stop now, Norma.

Ms Walmsley: I'll stop now. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Thank you, Madame Walmsley. It gives the committee some comfort to know that although it may not be in our power to offer multi-year funding, we're confident you've got some good multi-year members of your board of directors and your chairman. I'm glad to hear that Madame Walmsley's appointment is for several years. Thank you for coming and joining us. We look forward to seeing you again.

We're adjourned until Tuesday.

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