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37th PARLIAMENT, 3rd SESSION
Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs
EVIDENCE
CONTENTS
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
| ¹ | 1535 |
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The Chair (Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.)) |
| ¹ | 1550 |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler (Ambassador and Director, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces) |
| ¹ | 1555 |
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The Chair |
| º | 1610 |
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His Excellency Anton Thalmann (Ambassador, Embassy of Switzerland in Ottawa) |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George—Peace River, CPC) |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| º | 1615 |
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Mr. Jay Hill |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| º | 1620 |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ) |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| º | 1625 |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Janko Peric (Cambridge, Lib.) |
| º | 1630 |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| º | 1635 |
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Mr. Janko Peric |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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The Chair |
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Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC) |
| º | 1640 |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mrs. Elsie Wayne |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.) |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| º | 1645 |
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Mr. Bob Wood |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Bob Wood |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Bob Wood |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| º | 1650 |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| º | 1655 |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, Lib.) |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Murray Calder |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| » | 1700 |
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Mr. Murray Calder |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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The Chair |
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Hon. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.) |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Hon. David Price |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| » | 1705 |
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Hon. David Price |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
| » | 1710 |
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Hon. David Price |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Claude Bachand |
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The Chair |
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Hon. David Price |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Hon. David Price |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Hon. David Price |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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The Chair |
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Hon. David Price |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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Hon. David Price |
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The Chair |
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His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler |
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The Chair |
CANADA
Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs |
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EVIDENCE
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
¹ 
(1535)
[English]
The Chair (Mr. Pat O'Brien (London—Fanshawe, Lib.)): We'll come to order in public session now and reconvene the tenth meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs.
We thank our witnesses for joining us. We've just discussed in camera some committee future business, and now we'll go to the main purpose of today's meeting.
I'm pleased to welcome Ambassador Theodor Winkler, who is director of the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, and also His Excellency Ambassador Anton Thalmann, the Swiss ambassador.
Welcome, gentlemen. We're pleased to have you with us.
I know you wanted to meet with me and other members of the committee. I thought when we had an opportunity it would be ideal to meet. Now you have government members, you have the official opposition, you have another opposition party—the Bloc Québécois—in Monsieur Bachand, so you have a good representation of the different parties here.
Can I welcome you to make any opening comments you'd like to make, sir?
¹ 
(1550)
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler (Ambassador and Director, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces): That is most kind of you, sir.
Thank you so much for spending some time with us. I'm delighted you can receive us. We have had the great pleasure of Canada joining the foundation council of our centre, the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, last November. You are represented on our council by your ambassador to Geneva, Ambassador Paul Meyer. This is my formal trip presenting myself to the Canadian government and institutions in this country, but I'm honoured and pleased that I can also spend some time with you.
I have brought along some information dossiers. I don't know how best I can leave them with you. All of these materials you will find also on our website: www.dcaf.ch. If anybody would like paper copies, we are more than glad to forward you any amount you would like.
Perhaps it would be useful for you, ladies and gentlemen, if I were to briefly outline what our centre is doing and what we would expect from the partnership with Canada.
We were founded in October 2000 as a foundation under Swiss laws. Legally speaking, we are a non-governmental organization, yet we are a non-governmental organization whose members happen to be exclusively governments.
We have 45 member countries, from the United States and Canada through the Euro-Atlantic region to Russia, and including Russia. We have the entire NATO except Belgium, which has made clear that it wants to join, and Iceland, and all the new member countries of NATO. We have the entire European Union except Belgium, obviously, which will join, and from the candidate countries everybody except Malta and Cyprus. We have the whole former Soviet Union except central Asia, and we have the former Warsaw Pact, plus three African members: South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria.
The objective of our centre is to assist countries in transition toward democracy in reforming their security sector and their security sector governance structures, and in building up parliamentary and civilian oversight over the security sector.
Why is this a problem? Many countries today still face violence—actually, more violence than during the Cold War. The source is not so often any longer interstate conflicts. We do have certain regions in the world where this is a possibility—South Asia and the Koreas, to name two—but very much, the enemy from without has been replaced by the enemy from within. There is organized crime; there are the 9/11 problematics. There's much unruliness in this world.
There is in particular the problem that an increasing number of countries have difficulties in defending the state monopoly of legitimate force. This state monopoly of legitimate force, which is a precondition for rule of law, for democracy, for stability, can be questioned when you have situations such as, in the former Yugoslavia, the Milosevic problem: you have a young, fragile democracy that inherits the security apparatus created and shaped by a dictator.
This is something that's totally un-transparent. Even if there is not a coup, even if Djindjic-type assassinations are not the result, or situations like the coup against Gorbachev do not take place, there is undue influence on the political proceedings if such a security apparatus is not reformed, not put under civilian control, and not put under parliamentary oversight.
There are other situations, such as Somalia, where the government has disappeared and the only things that remain are warlords; or you have warlords who have become entrepreneurs, as in Colombia or in West Africa, selling human beings, small arms, drugs, cigarettes, ivory, or whatever else is saleable on the market; or eternalized war, where the conflict itself has become the sole objective. Or you have situations like Afghanistan, where we are confronted by a pre-Westphalian unit that is confronting the world with post-Westphalianproblems: drugs, terrorists, etc.
Wherever you look from Kabul to Kosovo, from Bosnia to Baghdad, you are confronted with the problem of maintaining security as a precondition for development and prosperity and democracy.
¹ (1555)
Our foundation exists in these countries through two ways.
On the one hand, we have an analytical department that is looking at the lessons learned and the experience gained by countries having embarked on this road and progressed on it. The countries of Eastern Europe, Poland, the Balkan republics, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Spain, Greece, and others have emerged from military dictatorships.
We not only bring knowledge to analyze it, distribute it, and identify the best practices that might be helpful for governments and parliaments in such transition countries, but we actually have operational programs on the ground to assist them. We publish some 20 books and 100 studies per year, but we also have, at any given moment, roughly 100 projects on the ground. These projects break down into several categories.
One category, a large one, is that we offer advice to governments, presidents, prime ministers, cabinets, defence forums, and interior justice ministers on how to deal with the issue. Practically speaking, the area where we have the largest activity is Southeastern Europe and Eastern Europe. This takes the form of high-ranking government officials. State presidents will meet with their counterparts from other countries.
We have organized an international security advisory board for the region in order to exchange information on how, for example, Bulgaria or Romania have done this when in negotiations for admission to NATO and the European Union. When NATO and the European Union asked for different things, how did they reconcile conflicting advice? How were they to best behave? How did they gain time? These countries have lost so much time on Milosevic and Sarajevo, they do not need to lose very much more.
The origin of this first type of mandate was that as soon as we had been founded in October 2000, we got a mandate from President Kostunica and the late Prime Minister Djindjic asking us for advice on what to do with the security practices left behind by Milosevic. We brought together 130 experts from 35 countries and did 100 studies with several hundred recommendations. I'm glad to say that several of them, many of them, have actually have been accepted.
A second area of work is that we support parliaments, and this brings me to this room. We have a large parliamentary support program that takes several forms.
We have been doing handbooks with the Interparliamentary Union, in particular, for newly elected members of Parliament, on what a security sector is, the issues that a parliamentarian is confronted with, what one can do, and the relevant texts, tools, and methods in this context. I have distributed some copies here.
This book exists not only in English and French but, by now, is in 19 languages. Several additional language additions are being planned, from Mongol to Farsi, from Arab to Ukrainian, from Russian to Serbo-Croat and Macedonian, and other languages.
We find we not only do the books—we have another one, by the way, that we did with NATO's parliamentary assembly—but we introduce these books to parliaments in the regions of Eastern Europe where our main activities are. For the parliaments and security committees on the ground, we go through the values and procedures in a seminar over several days.
We do finance parliamentary staff on all defence committees in Southeastern Europe, except Moldova and Greece, and also in Bulgaria and Romania, not only in the former Yugoslav and Albania.
We not only finance the staff so the committee work—which was something these countries didn't know about in the past or didn't know how to truly use—gets a stronger backbone, but we provide them with computers. We give them English classes. We bring them together regionally so these people can meet each other at the regional level and have the opportunity to exchange views and establish ties and relationships.
Together with several institutions, the UN, the European Union, and SIPRI in London, we produced a handbook on security sector reform in Southeastern Europe. We also bring the staff to Brussels and to any other place for joint seminars and information.
We assist committees from the Duma and throughout Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus, on legislative work, in the sense that we are willing to organize international hearings for them, bringing experts on subjects of their choosing, particularly on legislation.
º (1600)
The front-runners are laws on civil-military relations. We have been working successfully in this area in the Ukraine, less successfully in the sense that it is still a draft in Russia. We are working on it in Belgrade. We have been doing intelligence oversight legislation--or assisting in that, obviously--in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia-Montenegro. There are laws currently on the tablefor a crisis management centre and crisis management legislation in Macedonia.
We organized, together with NATO's parliamentary assembly and other partner institutions, seminars for staffers for newly elected parliamentarians.
I could ramble on. You can see what we are aiming at.
Another major series of objectives or planning and programs is assisting in reforms. We assist several countries in the reform of their defence ministries and some other ministerial structures occasionally.
We have a large program on border guarding. We are the only institution currently with a regional border guard program in Southeastern Europe, offering more than 100 seminars, from the top brass to the station chiefs, in setting up a civilian-run border guard system in this region, which is still infested not only with the legacy from the past but also nationalist paramilitary groups, organized international crime, and more recently, terrorist activities.
We have a mandate within this context from the European Union, NATO, the OSCE, and the Stability Pact, who invited us to be a member of the Ohrid process in strengthening border guards in this region.
We have a demobilization program and reintegration program, again in Southeastern Europe. We have police reform programs and civil society programs, and we work also, if ever possible, with the media in order to bring up that level.
More recently, our centre has now started to have an African contingent in our membership, to be present also in West Africa--Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoirebeing our members there. We foresee essentially bringing the lessons we have been able learn in Eastern Europe and Southeastern Europe to bear in that region. That would be essentially, first, a code of conduct for armed forces tailored on the OSCE code of conduct--we are working with the UN and the African Union in that context--and then parliamentary support.
We have the intention of publishing a regional edition of this handbook for parliamentarians, including more material of direct relevance for the region of West Africa. We are working with ECOWAS and its parliamentary assembly in that context. We are looking at the possibility of staff training and seminars for parliamentarians in that region, and we are doing analytical work on top of that.
You can also imagine that ECOWAS, to put it that way, has shown a strong interest in our expertise in the area of border guards being brought to that region, because in that region, again, there is the same sort of illicit trafficking of all sorts of things and human beings going on as in the western Balkans.
The resources we can bring to bear for these activities are, first of all, obviously the support we have from our council, from our members. We are, in everything but name, an international organization, but we combine this mobilization capability, hopefully, with the flexibility of an NGO. So far, it's a cross between an IO and an NGO.
We have an international advisory board next to the council, composed of some 75 personalities, such as Clare Short, Lord Robertson, the former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, high representatives from the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the Stability Pact, and many research institutions around the world, serving on that board. They are not only nominally providing us with their name and therefore their political support, but also physically spending a week, in two installments per year, in Geneva. The next such meeting is next week in Geneva.
We have the centre itself, with a staff of some 60, coming from 30 nations. We have former defence ministers, former ambassadors, arms controllers, deputy foreign ministers or defence ministers, secretaries of state, political scientists, economists, lawyers, sociologists, journalists, and all sorts of bright people. Among the staff also, by the way, are two Canadians.
º (1605)
We do mobilize, for specific purposes, hopefully tailor-made coalitions. We have close relationships and strategic partnerships with many institutions in the world. There is no need for us to reinvent the wheel if somebody else has done so already very well. We then try to bring together the coalition of the right tools and perspectives.
The purpose of my visit to Canada was not only to put us on the map, so to speak, in Ottawa and in your beautiful country but also to explore ways and means of how we could possibly find joint ventures where we could hopefully work with each other. In talks yesterday and this morning with the defence ministry at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, with NGOs being rather successfully initiated, we have agreed in principle to work together inside Eastern Europe in a whole variety of programs, some of which I have mentioned.
In West Africa, there seems to be much scope for work, but also on some issues, one of which I have also brought a copy...we are doing a study on women in an insecure world. That will be followed by a companion study on children in an insecure world. This is a rather huge project that we have. It should bring together for the first time all the aspects of violence and all the facts in one volume. It is under the patronage of the Swiss foreign minister, Ms. Calmy-Rey, and was presented to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva in March. The book itself should be out for the UN General Assembly in the fall in New York.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Ambassador Thalmann, do you have anything to add at all?
º (1610)
His Excellency Anton Thalmann (Ambassador, Embassy of Switzerland in Ottawa): I can only support what my colleague Ambassador Winkler has said.
I had the pleasure of working with him at the defence ministry a long time ago. Then I left to become ambassador to Belgium and to NATO, but I was still supplying him some of his clients from Brussels. So this is a very well-versed team that you see in front of you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Now we'll have an exchange. We'll start with our colleagues. Please feel free, though, to ask any questions you have about how our defence committee works or our Canadian Forces, and so on.
We'll start with Mr. Hill, for seven minutes.
Mr. Jay Hill (Prince George—Peace River, CPC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome, ambassadors.
Holy smokes! You did all that in three and a half years. It's astounding.
Congratulations on being able to rattle all that off with no notes. It's pretty impressive. Obviously you know your file very well.
I'm interested in knowing, when the centre identifies what I would call a problem country--you referred to the former Yugoslavia and some of the countries that used to make up that nation, which obviously has seen a lot of strife and a lot of problems--when you identify specific problems with them and you put forward recommendations, presumably, what is the next step?
I would think the problem nations of the world are probably going to be the least likely to listen to you and to act upon your recommendations. How does that tie in with the UN's mandate? I'm curious as to why this particular centre was set up, rather than this type of operation that you've undertaken being under the auspices of the UN directly.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: I would like to start by saying I share your view. I just did my latest annual report--a copy of the draft has been circulated--and we do need a lot of things. That implies that there is a demand out there. If you look at the world, there is obviously much in that area of business that requires assistance.
At the ministry of defence, where I worked for 20 years as deputy head, eventually in security and defence policy and thereby in charge of the Swiss soft security programs from the ministry of defence's side, we were thinking of shaping this institution, which was the third we had created. We had first created the Geneva Centre for Security Policy as a training institution. That is still one of the leading ways for diplomats serving office and civil servants to get training in various courses in security policy and related issues. The second one, which Canada is a member of, is the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining.
When you do it a third time, you need to think hard about what the objective is. We felt that this subject area would be very relevant. We needed an operational unit next to the training facilities at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. It is said of GCSP, the security policy institute, that Mohammed comes to the mountain, is enlightened, and goes happily back, but here it's the mountain that goes to Mohammed, and we serve on the ground.
We expected more opposition since an institution like ours would not have been feasible 10 or 15 years ago. It's interference in the internal affairs of another country--article 2 of the UN charter. Yet literally from day one onward, there was no problem in having clients. In certain regions of the world... When we formed it, we obviously looked at Southeastern Europe, which had just gone through this terrible decade, the 1990s. These countries have lost much time. When Milosovic came to power, Yugoslavia had a GDP larger than Hungary's and only marginally smaller than Greece's. There were 250 Yugoslavs at that time living in Switzerland as guest workers. This was a prosperous place. Now you have large unemployment rates. You have millions of internally displaced persons. You have wounds, psychological and physical, that are difficult to overcome. You have also had a decade of international isolation. These people want to come back to Europe as quickly as possible--and they know there is a price tag attached to that.
To have membership and partnership for peace in the European Union and NATO is seen as the only way forward, not only to overcome the divisions left behind by Milosovic's wars, but also to fulfill the aspirations of a population that is fed up with being where they are. That is a powerful move. Once the possibility exists that society wants to move forward, you have a chance. That is not a guarantee that it will be easy.
When we did our report for President Kostunica and the late Prime Minister Djindjic, we had several hundred recommendations in it. The chief of the Yugoslav army had it translated into Serbian and it was discussed with the general staff--all the generals were assembled to do it. At least, they read the study; they didn't like it. One of the recommendations was that the chief of staff should be fired and extradited to The Hague, and he possibly took that a bit personally. On the other hand, I think we would still stand by that recommendation.
Over time, while the army refused to work with us, the Ministry of the Interior did decide to work with us. We were asked immediately by Djindjic and the Montenegrins and the federal Ministry of the Interior to work with them in the area of border guards.
º (1615)
Mr. Jay Hill: I'm going to interrupt because time is short, and I'm probably only going to get in one more question.
Perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough. You're explaining how you're trying to democratize the control of the armed forces in the former Yugoslavia--in Bosnia, Serbia, Herzegovina, and the others. That to me is reactive. The problem is already there. I understand that the carrot you're holding out to them to get them to adhere to some of your recommendations is that if you want to be an economic power again in the European Union, these are the things you're going to have to do. That's good.
One of the stains on the more recent history of the UN is, of course, Rwanda. Certainly, we're well aware of it in Canada because of our peacekeepers' involvement there. How do we prevent that type of thing? I would think that the thrust of your centre would be to try to identify countries where there's going to be a future problem. That's what I was trying to get at. How do you force a dictator or an undemocratic administration to become democratic?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: You can't. North Korea is a hopeless case for an institution like ours. But you can work with the government if there is a will for change. You can work with the parliament and civil society. We have Belarus as a member. We got from Belarus, as the price for becoming a member of our foundation, that we can work with NGOs. There's not much point in working with the government, but we do work with the parliament, and we have been working with NGOs.
As far as the preventive side is concerned. I believe it's fundamentally true that sustained development cannot be seen only as bringing the ecology and the economy into balance. Security is also a part of that. We are involved in a close dialogue with the United Nations, which you mentioned, the UNDP, the international financial institutions, DPKO, and Disarmament Affairs. I feel that because of the Rwandas of this world and the Santo Domingos that are looming around the corner or others that we may lose out to, every development program needs to have a security sector dimension to it. There's no point in digging wells if somebody is poisoning them immediately afterwards.
You can be safe and well fed and be killed by a mud slide from the ecology group greenhouse side. You can be living on a flat plain where there is no mud whatsoever and be perfectly secure, but you can die of hunger. You can also be perfectly happy and well fed and be blown to pieces, as in the Madrid railway station, by a terrorist group.
I believe strongly that these three elements belong together. We work with the Council of Europe, the United Nations, and the Partnership for Peace to get the idea of security sector governance better embedded in the international approach. We have just received a mandate from the Council of Europe to do a report on whether it should broaden its scope of activities. Switzerland has tabled a proposal to add security sector reform as a separate chapter of the partnership work program. We have noted with great pleasure that Javier Solana has included this in the EU strategy concept as a key element.
We need to integrate the concept in our activities that are already on the ground and systematize them and see the things as programs rather than projects. I believe one needs to look holistically at the issue. If you go only for one element, you will miss it.
º (1620)
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Hill.
Mr. Bachand, for seven minutes.
[Translation]
Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ): It's a pleasure for us to have you here. I wasn't familiar with your organization. And yet, I've been to Geneva a number of times. By the way, I'd like to congratulate you on the quality of your excellent wine. I love Fendant and I still have a few bottles of it at home. If I run out, I'm sure that there will always be a few bottles left at the embassy.
I didn't have time to look at the whole information kit. I started looking at it, and perhaps you could answer some of my questions.
First of all, it's a foundation. There were 23 founding countries, including Canada. I'd like to know how the foundation is funded. Is it pro-rated by country size? How is the foundation funded and where does the money come from? I'd also like to know if the participating countries supply employees. First describe the foundation to me, and then I will ask you some other questions.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: First of all, you are cordially invited to come and see us the next time you are in Geneva. The centre even has its own bottles of wine.
As for the centre's funding, it's a foundation that doesn't have annual dues. So there are no automatic financial implications when a country joins the centre.
Our funding of 14 million Swiss francs, which is roughly equivalent to $14 million Canadian, is paid by Switzerland. We get $5 million from the Defence Department, 4 million from the Swiss Foreign Affairs department, plus project funding, which brings the total that Switzerland puts on the table to 11 million. We get about 3 million from other members. These are always voluntary contributions for specific projects. So there are no annual dues. If I had to set annual dues for Albania or Macedonia to pay, it wouldn't be enough to bother depositing.
As for staff, we have ten people who have been made available to the centre by member States. Among them, there's a Spanish three-star general, a two-star general from France, a Polish diplomat, a Romanian diplomat, a Czech political scientist, etc. The staff has technical attaché status, a lesser diplomatic status in Switzerland. We provide a local living allowance because it's more expensive to live in Geneva. Their salaries are paid by the countries that they come from. We have 50 employees who are paid out of our own funds and around ten employees who are seconded to us.
º (1625)
Mr. Claude Bachand: Given that this foundation is a Swiss initiative, Switzerland provides the lion's share of the funding, if I understand correctly.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Absolutely.
Mr. Claude Bachand: Who is the permanent representative of Canada? In the library document, it says that the permanent representative for disarmament in Geneva also sits on the foundation. Could we have his name?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: It's Ambassador Paul Meyer.
Mr. Claude Bachand: I visited your website this morning, and there was something that picked my curiosity: the handbook for parliamentarians. That appears to be an interesting project that you've done there, but I couldn't find it on the site. Would it be possible for me to have a copy? Is it in the kit that you brought here?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: It's the French version.
Mr. Claude Bachand: Where can I get one?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: From us. Just send us an e-mail and you can have as many copies as you want.
Mr. Claude Bachand: I also see that, included in future events, there will be a workshop for parliamentarians on the participation of parliamentarians in the security sector, which will take place in Belgrade on May 12 and 13. How were parliamentarians from the different member countries of the foundation informed of this workshop? Within NATO, you realize that there is often a world of difference between Europe and America. For instance, do you call on people to attend? Are invitations sent out? Who receives these invitations in Canada? Is there adequate follow-up?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: That's a good question. The workshop you referred to has basically been designed for the Parliament of Serbia and Montenegro. We have invited a certain number of parliamentarians and experts. Of course, we choose to invite people from countries with whom we have a privileged relationship, but all these events are posted on our website, and, of course, we also send out the information to members through our foundation. If a person was interested in attending a certain workshop, if you were interested in joining us, we would be pleased, because it would surely be to our benefit. For this particular workshop, all you basically need to do is register. But we normally have a certain target audience in mind.
We also have a parliamentary group called the PCAF, the Working Group on Parliamentary Control of Armed Forces, and I will make sure that the man in charge sends you the documentation on those projects. We also have a newsletter in that regard and I will make sure that you get it.
We sometimes add parliaments that have invited us to work with them. For example, the Norwegian Parliament invited us to work with it on a model law on intelligence oversight. We did that last year, in September, in Oslo. We had invited the chairs of practically every intelligence service monitoring commission of western Europe to that meeting. Therefore, we are perfectly willing to help a parliament understand how to tackle a certain problem if we have the necessary expertise to address a particular circumstance.
[English]
The Chair: Monsieur Bachand.
[Translation]
Mr. Claude Bachand: So you are not inviting our representative, Mr. Meyer. You have not informed him that there will be a workshop and you have not asked him to send members of Parliament. It's a more specialized situation, if I understand correctly.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Yes, it's more specialized.
Mr. Claude Bachand: But if a member of Parliament such as myself says they are interested, will you begin sending out invitations?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Yes, of course.
Mr. Claude Bachand: Very well.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bachand.
Now, Mr. Peric for seven minutes, please.
Mr. Janko Peric (Cambridge, Lib.): Thank you.
Ambassadors, I was just going through this publication. It's very interesting.
If we go back and refresh our memories, and I believe you will agree with me, we'll see the whole reform started in Gdansk or Danzig in Poland with Solidarnosc. Later on there was perestroika; perestroika spilled out over the former Warsaw Pact countries, and then it came to the former Yugoslavia.
You probably know that James Baker went to Milosevic and asked him to use whatever force was needed to hold Yugoslavia together, and he gave him 30 days. Milosevic said no thank you, I won't need 30 days; 15 days is enough; I'll use the armed forces.
The percentage of GDP allocated to the army in Yugoslavia was among the highest at that time, right? Fortunately, the army wasn't united. The army was controlled by we-know-who, right?
Now, after the whole destruction happened, I believe western forces were aware that even al-Qaeda was training in camps in Bosnia and sending their trained soldiers to Chechnya. Would you agree with that?
You mentioned there should be political will. Do you think that is enough, just political will, or are there different interests, like putting in barbed...and then selling arms underground for high prices and so on? How do you prevent situations like that?
º (1630)
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: No institution in its own right should claim that it's able to prevent people, when they are bent on creating havoc, from doing havoc. The UN couldn't do it, why should DCAF be able to do it? What we can do is modestly contribute. So a modicum of goodwill needs to be around on the government side for triggering government reforms.
If you want to work with a parliament, a modicum of parliamentary structures needs to be around. Very often you don't have, in many of the countries I've worked in, the traditional political parties, mature political parties, you would expect. You have dozens of parties, which in real life are simply oligarchies with their clientele. So very often that takes time.
There you would work with civil society groups, because civil society groups will be found and are occasionally very powerful. Take Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia, Milosevic's regime wasn't brought down by sanctions. It was brought down eventually by the people who went to the street. There is a strong civil society in Belgrade, I had the pleasure to see. These are human rights activists, or these are people like Kostunica, who is a lawyer coming from the law dimension to this area. Or there are people with a different vision for the country, such as Djindjic, who felt, having been in Germany, that Yugoslavia shouldn't go back to the Middle Ages and the battle against the Turks and see that as the centre of its life.
But these people are not military experts. They are perhaps victims of corrupt police forces, but not people who know how to organize police structure. So what our job can be with whoever is our interlocutor--and ideally it's across a stratum--is to provide those people who are willing to listen with the knowledge and insight on how best to act. For instance, for Mr. Kostunica we did not write a study on how to reorganize the Yugoslav armed forces, how many armoured brigades, air defence battalions, or whatever--who cares, actually?--what we wrote for him is why 24 other countries had decided on defence reform. Why is a country like the United States, Switzerland, U.K., France, Poland, Czech Republic, or Slovakia embarking on defence reform in the first instance? What are the expectations? What are the obstacles encountered? What are the lessons they would draw for a country like Yugoslavia?
So we wanted, in other words, to enable Kostunica and Djindjic to better read the mail they receive from the military, because normally in these situations militaries say, we do that ourselves. Yes, sir, if you need defence reform, we do that ourselves. They are not able to do so. They need civilian expertise to come in. They need to open the windows and the doors and let fresh air in; otherwise they will reproduce the same thing as before on a smaller level.
So we can only work if people are following, but there is a will outside that to follow advice. There is a great demand from civil society to governments to move forward. It varies from region to region, but there is a lot of interest out there.
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Mr. Janko Peric: I'm aware that there was a corruption that started in Russia with Yeltsin, and the western countries supported the changes in Russia at that time with billions of dollars. The bodyguard of Yeltsin, Abramovitch, apparently owns about $10 billion, and we know that Yeltsin's daughter put money in Swiss banks, and Abramovitch is buying now parts of London and what not.
Now, we can talk and preach about love and democracy, changes, but people are starving. We can implement and bring in all kinds of organizations and say, I'm going to tell you how you should behave, but we are not in their position. We are not in their shoes. The economy is disastrous. So if you can't feed your family, how can you accept some big words about democracy? Is it possible that instead of selling arms to them, we help them to build an economy, and then they're going to accept democracy and the way that we live much more easily?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: It's a chicken-and-egg problem, sir. If you don't have the minimal amount of security, nobody will invest, and therefore there will be no reduction of the unemployed violence rates. It is obviously clear that you need to create a stable country. Whatever the security sector would look like, if you have half the population without employment and half of the population less than 16 years old, you have an unstable country--Algeria, for instance, to cite just one example. If the economy is to be assisted, you need security. Nobody in his good mind is otherwise going to invest. Nobody will be able to pick up small enterprises if organized crime, the Mafia, and racketeering cuts that down. So the two things are the two sides of the same coin.
We have learned from experience that this is very much understood by most people we work with. Development, security, and ecology form a triangle for sustained development.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Peric.
Now we'll start with five minutes. A number of colleagues still have questions.
Mrs. Wayne, for five minutes, please.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): I was looking at the book and I see there is a section in there about a gender perspective on security and the number of women who play a role in parliamentary defence committees. I think, Your Honour, you'll note that I'm wearing a special pin today; I'm the only female honourary gunner of the 3 Field Artillery Regiment in Canada.
You didn't know that, did you, Patrick?
That comes from my not being in the military but working for the military for the last 12 or 15 years. When we were in St. Petersburg, Russia--we were there for some meetings, and I think 40 countries, or maybe more, were represented--on the screen we had a gentleman who came up from London, England, and he said that all of us who were there at that meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, representing Canada, when we went back to Canada, should tell our people and our government to put more money into our military, because whereas we used to be at the top end of the scale, we were now at the bottom end of the scale.
I wonder how the Geneva Convention sees us, Canada, right now and what we can really do and what role we can really play in bringing peace around the world.
º (1640)
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: It is not for me to judge your military efforts. What clearly is the trademark for which Canada has earned a tremendous amount of respect is the many ways, and useful ways, by which you have been involved in the soft security end, which is my business line, from, obviously, the Ottawa convention, where you have been doing sterling work, to many efforts through CIDA on small arms programs, West African empowerment, capacity-building programs. We are very honoured and proud to be a partner of Canada in this enterprise. You have excellent people in these areas.
There is, on the other hand, a lot of work out there. I have not the slightest doubt that even if we join forces as much as we can, the problems are exploding also at the same time.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne: When it comes to women, I was looking at the list on page 47, and it was saying that in the Czech Republic 3.7% of the total force is female and in Greece it's 3.8%. I think the largest percentage is in Canada. We have 11.4%, or 6,558.
I honestly believe that women can play a major role and that we need to have more women there, although they also have a major role when it comes to families and looking after them as well, so you have to try to balance it. But I feel it is a role, perhaps even here in Canada, where women have been really neglected for some time, and now things are turning around here. I'm wondering if you're seeing that possibly happening in other countries around the world.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: I brought along also a copy of this book we do, Women in an Insecure World.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Is it this one? Is there another one?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Yes, there is another one.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Well, I'm the only woman, so I'd better get that.
Thank you.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: There is a CD-ROM in it and a policy paper on the role of women in this whole issue. This book has been launched under the auspices of Mrs. Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister, and will be published in its final 600-page form in time for the UN General Assembly in New York.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Before you leave today, Ambassador, I would like both of you to sign these books for me, if you would, please.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: With the greatest pleasure.
Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: Mr. Wood, please, you'll have five minutes.
Mr. Bob Wood (Nipissing, Lib.): Ambassador Winkler, speaking of the books, I guess I'm curious about some of the books your organization publishes. Tell me about the contents of some of them, particularly relating to the armed forces or terrorism.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: What we are doing, to speak of a book that is about to come out that is exactly along the lines of your question, is planning together in the framework of the PfP Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes' annual conference in Bucharest, mid-June, where we head the security sector tract, which is composed of two working works, one headed by West Point on combating terrorism and the the other one headed by DCAF on security sector reform. The seminar panel title is “Combating Terrorism: Implications for the Security Sector”. We are going to do a grand total of 10 studies that we have commissioned.
West Point will provide a study on combating terrorism, the necessity for inter-agency cooperation, and a second one on implications for international cooperation.
From our side, we do four studies on the impact or implications for armed forces; the U.K. Defence Academy does one on the implications for the British armed forces, a very modern, professional one; the Swiss army does one on the impact on the Swiss Army—it's a controlled country with a citizen army and a very small professional content; the Polish and Romanian defence ministries do a study on their respective armed forces. Parallel to that, we have the French Gendarmerie Nationale doing a study on gendarmerie-type heavy policy forces. There is a study on intelligence agencies, on parliamentary control, on police work, and on border guards. The whole will come out as a book before the end of the year.
º (1645)
Mr. Bob Wood: Who can get hold of these books? Who can buy these books—anybody?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Anybody. If you let me know, I will get you some.
Mr. Bob Wood: But doesn't this create a problem? If the books are available to countries, would they not be just as available to groups like terrorists? They can obviously get their hands on them too and find out exactly what you're doing, isn't that right?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: I don't think there is any useful information necessarily for terrorists in there. You know, it's much more difficult to fight terrorists than to be one.
Mr. Bob Wood: Absolutely.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: If it were a fair war, saying that military hard targets would be the objectives and we defend ourselves this way and we penetrate that way... If the whole objective is to blow up human beings, there is no way in the world you can prevent it except by shaping instruments in a flexible modern form, increasing international cooperation, and working together—creating a security sector that actually is a set of communicating vessels.
Post-communist states have not only a state within a state, they have a Polynesia of states within the state. Every one of these ministries has been set up according to the idea of “divide and rule”. There are more armed personnel in a country than there are in the armed forces—five million in Russia, out of which 1.3 million are in the armed forces of the country.
These power ministries do not communicate with each other. They don't share information. They don't fuse that information. They are not interlinking border guards, police, and other intelligence activities. That leads to chinks in the armour that permits the World Trade fiasco in spite of the fact that the information was there.
What we argue in our publications is to create a system where the security sector becomes a set of vessels that are linked to each other, where there is a flow of information, where the ability to put points of gravity or foci is there. I believe this is tooling that we do, and not a secret strategy or battle plans. That is up to the institutions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Wood.
M. Bachand, for five minutes.
[Translation]
Mr. Claude Bachand: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I've made a count and I believe that the foundation has about 45 members. Is that correct?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: That's right.
Mr. Claude Bachand: What have you done to attract more members? I imagine that, to become a member, certain conditions must be fulfilled. Can you tell us about that process for a few moments?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: With pleasure. To become a member of the foundation, the foundation first has to extend an invitation to you In most cases, we have invited countries to become members. Until now, every country we have invited, with the exception of Egypt, has accepted. Since we have now established our reputation, some countries have asked to join, such as Jordan, for instance, which contacted us to see whether it could not become a member. The response will certainly be positive. So far, countries have been invited to join, and every country which was invited accepted, except for Egypt.
Mr. Claude Bachand: Are there any conditions to join?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Of course, you have to support the political goals of our foundation. For instance, we would not necessarily agree to North Korea joining our organization today.
Mr. Claude Bachand: Is there a process to be followed? Within NATO, there is a process. In particular, I'm thinking of the peace plans and so on. Is there also a process to be followed within your organization?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: There basically is not a strict process to follow, but Canada has chosen to do so nevertheless. We invited your government to join our foundation, and your Department of Foreign Affairs, ever cautious, decided to be an observer for one year. The Canadian Ambassador in Geneva and his team followed our deliberations and our work for one year. Only then did Canada decide to join.
Conditions which must be met are: political support for our activities; that the government of a country, and not only an institution from within that country, inform us of its intention to become a member in good standing; a representative from the Department of Foreign Affairs or from the Department of Defence must be appointed to sit on one of our committees; and of course the country must also have a sustained interest in our activities. When that is established, I conduct a formal visit, during which time we try to establish a working relationship and contacts, and to define how the country can contribute to our program.
º (1650)
Mr. Claude Bachand: Let's take a look at a list of the activities now. I myself am a member of the Canada-NATO Parliamentary Association. It's a bit like the list of the parliamentary association. I've looked at the page listing future events and I see that absolutely nothing will be held in America. Within NATO as well, a lot of events take place in Europe, but we are separated by an ocean.
Before you answer that question, I would like you to tell us little more about the Maison de la Paix. It sounds important and I want to know what it's for. Is this going to be your new headquarters? I know that the architectural design competition will soon close and that you plan on being operational by 2007. If you don't mind, I'd like to hear more about this project.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: With pleasure.
As regards the North American events, the two first conferences will take place in February in Washington, at Johns Hopkins University and at the RAND Corporation. It is our intention to be more present on this continent. It would give me great pleasure to organize meetings in Canada. I visited the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre before coming here. I believe Canada has first-class institutions and I would be pleased to organize events here as well.
As for the Maison de la Paix, it is a project which begins with real estate. We have three youth centres: security policy, de-mining and democratic control. They need to be housed. Beyond the obvious, since we have already started reorganizing our properties, we thought it might be a good idea to house under one roof a good many of the institutions doing similar work. This way, the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. We invited about 15 other institutions to relocate in one building. They include the Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales, which is a university institution, the War-torn Society project; a subsidiary of the École polytechnique fédérale of Zurich, which is a leader in the field of information technology development and which has provided the centre with a great deal of extremely sophisticated software; we have invited the United Nations University for Peace to open a branch; we have also invited the International Institute for Strategic Studies of London to open shop in Geneva, and so on. Therefore, if all goes well, approximately 15 institutions will be housed in the same building, each institution being specialized in one area of the subject at hand: small arms, de-mining, democratic control, training challenges, and so on.
The idea would be to foster alliances and coalitions for projects. We could find our partners in the building and make it easier for people to talk to each other and to be each other's feedback within the networks they've created inside this condominium for peace.
We also have a vision, which is greatly dependent upon our future financial situation—it is rather bleak—and which is not to limit ourselves by saying that all we need to do is create a condominium or building which will house the various governmental and non-governmental actors, as well as academics and experts. We should also all have the ability to influence outside events. We are all very good at planning for war, but we must also plan for peace.
In this day and age, between the time a peacekeeping mission is deployed in a country and the moment civilian experts are sent in by international society, there is inevitably a certain delay. The first weeks very often set the tone for what comes next. In the de-mining field, and in my field as well, we have two centres with people who can be deployed in war zones and who, as stipulated in their contract, can be deployed on short notice.
The idea is for us to expand the number of institutions capable of putting at our disposal a peacekeeping operation commander, a specialized civilian team to support the operation, to help and to prepare the ground for the first UN or European Union deployment, or any deployment for another organization.
What stage is the project at? The Swiss Federal Council, or the Government of Switzerland, voted once more in support of this project last December. We have found a site and the architectural design competition is closed. At the end of May or at the beginning of June, the Swiss Federal Council will once again study the issue of financing. Solutions have been found. However, it's no secret that the financial situation of the Swiss government is not as good as it would like it to be.
º (1655)
So we will see what will happen. I cannot speak on behalf of the Federal Council, but I'm very optimistic. I think it will be an important step forward for us.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you.
Merci, monsieur Bachand.
Now Mr. Wood and then Mr. Price. Sorry, Mr. Calder, I should say. Mr. Wood had to leave. Mr. Calder and Mr. Price.
Mr. Murray Calder (Dufferin—Peel—Wellington—Grey, Lib.): I could take that as an insult, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: A slip of the tongue, Murray, sorry.
Mr. Murray Calder: Gentlemen, welcome for being here. Your conversation so far has been very interesting.
I want to go back to Central and Eastern Europe. When I came in you were talking about Yugoslavia. Of course, it all started back in 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and it's been back and forth all the way along.
The issue, as I see it, is that you have blond, blue-eyed Muslims over there and you have the Islamic faith right now, so that it is very hard to separate church from state. And I'd like your knowledge on how we go after a democratic situation when in fact what you're always going to be running up against is how you separate church from state. How do we get past that? Because if we're successful in Central and Eastern Europe on that issue, then we can use that as a template to go into the Middle East. The Iraqi issue, for instance, is the same thing. So how do we get that separation?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: On the ground, you had actually a multicultural state in Yugoslavia. Under Tito, religion didn't play much of a role. It did play a major role in World War II, through the slaughtering...Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Muslims were all sitting on different sides of the fences and had their own militias. But Tito's iron grip basically kept religion out of politics. Therefore, it's a double disaster that religion crept back or that nationalist aspirations were used, misused also, to fan religious hatred.
Today, religion is still not very much of an issue in real life. You see it in one aspect: organized crime doesn't know any religious difficulties. The Mafia is working with whatever religion they have; they work perfectly with each other. There are no problems there.
But there has been a movement of religious revival. It is now a factor to a larger extent than it was in the past. But there is also an effort to make it stay as a factor. Some Arab countries pay money to families so their daughters go in chador and you see mosques being rebuilt, but you see also that when Kosovo flared up again the first thing to burn were churches. So this thing is now back to ground.
How can we cope with it? I believe essentially by strengthening the building of the modern secular state. If we can solve the problems, which are essentially three--one, to give them a perspective to join international organizations and to overcome the isolation these places have been in; two, by that token, to improve the economic perspectives and gradually reduce the unemployment; and three, as a precondition in parallel for that to strengthen public security--if we can do these three things, then religion will ebb out as a problem. If you are not able to do so, it will become ever more important as the ethnic divides are torn upon.
But, you see, we need also not to give ourselves to the illusion of how difficult it is to overcome these things. Forty-five years of Tito--that's two generations. So they went back at each other's throats for the sake of the grandfathers or whatever.
And if you look at the United States and the Civil War, it took a century until it was over. When Martin Luther King was around, it was still very much an issue. It's no longer now, I believe. But it takes an awful lot of time to overcome the wounds of history.
» (1700)
Mr. Murray Calder: It's something that we really have to find an answer to, because the Islamic faith and the number of Muslims are definitely increasing worldwide. And I believe one of the solutions to this is obviously education. It's a fact that the higher level of education that they have, at that point, they know that there's no real point of getting into this sort of thing and it's better to work with democracy. So I suppose the education factor is one that is going to be difficult, but it's obviously one of the answers.
And I agree with you on Tito, because basically Tito picked up the German SS philosophy in the occupation of Yugoslavia. It was a fact of, you shoot him, I shoot you, problem solved. And that's basically the way Tito did it. When it gets back to their own control, then the religious aspect of it comes up and therefore they embark upon revenge again, for exactly what you said. I hope we find a solution to that.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: So do I.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Calder.
Mr. Price.
Hon. David Price (Compton—Stanstead, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ambassador, for being here. I apologize for having to leave for a couple of minutes, and I hope I don't ask you a question that's already been asked. I'll probably be going along the same line as Mr. Bachand. I'll try to keep them nice and short.
You talked in the beginning about your involvement with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and seminars for newly elected parliamentarians. We've been asked to finance some of these seminars. Are we talking about the same seminars? Are you giving them for the parliamentary assembly?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: I don't think they do double-dipping. What we do is provide the parliamentary assembly with money; this year it was 196,000 Swiss francs, roughly $200,000 Canadian. We also pay a staff member, who is a Ukrainian national and very much involved in preparing these seminars. The seminars we pay for are four, I believe, this year, with two areas of interest fitted to our programs, but the activities are much broader than what we finance. I wouldn't be aware exactly of the total program, but we know what we pay for.
Hon. David Price: You're definitely a large part of it.
It's interesting that you mentioned Ukraine, because I was there about a year ago talking to their defence committee. They themselves recognize, of course, the problem they have there. Their defence committee is controlled by the military; it's not democratic. You're from the Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces. When we look at NATO, we say one of the main rules for a new country coming into NATO is that it has to be a democracy, and the military has to be under civil control. I'm just wondering if there is a difference there between democratic control of armed forces and....
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: We had a long debate on how the centre should be named. We felt initially that Geneva Centre for Security and Democracy might be a bit closer to what it is, because “democratic control of armed forces” lets you initially feel that we deal only with armed forces, but we do also deal with border guards, police, and all other security sectors. “Democratic” is indeed also a little problematic, as you put it.
What we really do is work at three levels--first, civilian control, so the defence minister's job is not on a career ladder in the army. By the way, it's not so much that the general used to be the minister; it's the presidential structure, which very often has more complex issues than the governmental structures in this context. It's not enough that there is a civilian minister; there needs to be a civilian ministry. For instance, in Ukraine, together with NATO, we continue to look at ways and means to civilize, so to speak, the defence ministry, at what functions could be fulfilled by civilians, real estate, legal advice, finances, just to name a few, things that should be handled by civilians, like security policy.
The second layer is the parliamentary, and I spoke about it earlier. When I make presentations, I say what we do is civilian and parliamentary-enhanced democratic. “Democratic”, I believe is fine, but there is a notion of democratic beyond civilian and parliamentary: a nation profits from the fact that its population is not totally cut off from the security debate. Political parties need to be part of it and have opinions on which direction the country should go. The media must be informed and able to inform the public at large. There are universities, the academic world, from which we can profit. So we have a civil society component to empowering a nation's inhabitants, media and academics to have better participation in such a debate. But it's a precondition that it be civilian and parliamentary.
» (1705)
Hon. David Price: You're talking as if your involvement is actually right in the country. We're talking about Ukraine. Right now we're looking at Canada's interest in the development of Afghanistan and where we're going there. Would your organization be directly in there working with potential parliamentarians? I say potential parliamentarians also, not only the ones that are already elected.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: We haven't been busy so far in Afghanistan. To be very honest, “democratic”, “control”, and “armed forces” provide three difficult notions in one sentence. We are not very busy so far in Central Asia; we are skeptical about how much we can actually contribute. A director of another NGO told me they are now in Kabul with a Land Rover and several local employees, and he asked whether I would have an idea of what he should do there and whether I would be willing to finance that idea afterwards. DCAF is not necessarily interested in just being window dressing; I want to have a serious chance of success. With nation building, it's clear that we should be involved.
Walt Slocombe, who is in Baghdad, has been looking at the security sector as a member of our advisory board, and he has just written for us a study on security sector building. So this is not something that is alien. I've also hired a specialist for the Islamic file.
I believe things we can get into in these areas must be very down to earth. I don't think—
» (1710)
Hon. David Price: More stable.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Yes.
Border guards, for instance, are a good issue. How do you guard these things? How do you do vetting in a state where Saddam Hussein was the head of police? These are simple things, down-to-earth things. We are currently looking at whether we could, even in difficult environmental conditions, make a contribution that would make sense by looking at practical, down-to-earth things. Having a gendarmerie-type police force is another issue. How should legislation be built? How could that fit into a structure that would make sense?
One of the problems the Americans are possibly not totally aware of is that Iraq has the Napoleonic Code as a legal base, so the common law approach the U.S. has is not terribly helpful. That might be another way to look at issues. We are currently carefully exploring how we could move to these more difficult areas in Iraq, certainly not before June 30, because the situation is just too fluid.
The Chair: Elsie is going to get your signature. Be careful she doesn't put a blank cheque under it.
Mr. Bachand, you have no more? We'll let Mr. Price finish it up here in a moment, and then--
Mr. Claude Bachand: I have unanimous consent.
The Chair: You're so generous these days.
Soon we'll be going for a vote, colleagues.
Mrs. Wayne has been a distinguished parliamentarian, and she's not running in the next election, so we're going to miss her very much at this committee, and that's why we're being so nice to her.
Hon. David Price: My last question is quite short. When I came in, Mr. Bachand was talking about the finances of your organization. How much does Canada give towards your organization?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: So far nothing, but I think this is a temporary situation--I hope this is a temporary situation.
Hon. David Price: Are you in town lobbying for that at this point?
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: Absolutely. I'm always lobbying for money. Anybody who tells you he is not looking also for financial resources if he is meeting a government as an institute director is lying through his teeth. Finance is at $40 million Swiss francs, close to $40 million Canadian. We have $11 million of the $40 million offered by the Swiss Ministry of Defence.
Hon. David Price: I did hear that part. I just hadn't heard of....
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: We looked yesterday, at the foreign ministry and the ministry of defence, at areas we could incorporate, and also financially incorporate. We hope that Canada and this Parliament will use our centre, as others do occasionally, as a tool to implement some of your policies. Because Canada is a member, this is your institution as much as anybody else's.
We also hope we will be drawn into activities you plan where you feel we could make a valuable contribution. We hope to identify areas we could jointly put resources into, and as a result get a better outcome, or more bang for the buck, so to speak.
The Chair: Thank you.
Hon. David Price: I have just a brief follow-up. We're being asked right now by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly to help funding exactly for the seminars on elected parliamentarians, so we might be running very parallel demands here.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: As I said, we pay $193,000 or $194,000 Swiss francs to Simon Lunn and his organization, out of which $120,000 goes for the salary of Svetlana Svetova. There is a contribution we make for the Rolls Royce seminar, I believe, and there are four seminars we co-finance.
Unfortunately, my life experience is that the amount of money we put on the table does not cover all the costs. So I am very confident that we contribute part of the bargain, and that's the reason why I say to turn to us.
Hon. David Price: I think it's money well spent.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, both ambassadors, for being with us for this interesting discussion. We're glad to hear about your centre, and we look forward to greater participation with you as time goes by.
His Excellency Theodor H. Winkler: I would be delighted.
The Chair: Thank you.
The meeting is adjourned.