Nossal: Does Canada need an independent organization to promote rights and democracy abroad?
Director of the Centre for International and Defence Policy, Queen's University
No: if the government of Canada is intent on embracing a 21st century version of a mission civilisatrice, and wants to go charging off to give other peoples moralistic lessons in how to behave politically, it would be better that it be done by an agency of the Canadian state created specifically for that purpose. This will not only guarantee that the government in Ottawa can directly control theseoperations, but it will also ensure that the government can take the appropriate blame when its often half-baked social engineering experiments in other countries go off the rails, or produce nasty unintended or unanticipated consequences.
