“Democracy and Human Rights as universal goods: The prospects and Perils of Promoting good ideas”

On the occasion of the visit of the Honorable Bob Rae, the Foreign Affairs Critic for Liberal Party of Canada to Egypt, the Canada Egypt Business Council in cooperation with the Faculty of Economics and Political Science organized a one day visit at the Cairo University. Dr. Hossam Kamel, President of the Cairo University welcomed the Hon. Bob Rae, they discussed new future means of cooperation between Egypt and Canada in the field of higher education especially the successful educational missions and exchange of students and professors between the two countries on a constant and the need to do that on an organized constant basis. Mr. Rae then did a tour at the university where he visited the university’s museum and library.

Mr. Rae then gave a lecture at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, under the title “Democracy and Human Rights as universal goods: the Prospects and Perils of promoting good ideas”. Dr. Alia El Mahdy, Dean of the faculty together with Mr. Motaz Raslan, Chairman of the Canada Egypt Business Council shared the panel with the guest. Members of the Canadian Business Council, Canadian Embassy in Egypt in addition to students of the faculty of political science where all among the audience who shared in the interactive discussion which followed the speech.

Mr. Rae gave a general brief about Canada as an international engaged country with a massive terrain linked south to the U.S. and up to the North Pole. Canada is active in the arena of trade mainly with Europe, the Mediterranean, the U.S. and pacific countries. With 35 million inhabitants where diversity plays the key role of the Canadian cultural identity, any visitor to Canada can maintain his own culture and traditions thus being included in Canada’s different inhabitants’ cultures.

“Canada is a country which is in the world and the world is living inside us”, a term used by Mr. Rae describing Canada, for being a country engaged in promoting relationships through a belief in equality, autonomy and the importance of community. Canada has a multi-cultural society where an individual can maintain his own personal culture thus adding in to Canada’s mosaic culture. The Canadian constitution recognizes diversity as the heat of identity where the Canadian culture is not based on triumph over another culture like what can be found in other countries around the world, the country maintains a harmonizing policy between its indigenous culture, the European immigrants and the international immigrants. The Honorable Rae also discussed Canada’s foreign policy of peaceful approach, its continuous creation of non violent solutions for conflicts and reconciliations.

Answering a question that came from the audience about how far is the political involvement of Canada in the Middle East, Mr. Rae stated that Canada has been actively engaged in the Middle East especially in Egypt, giving two examples where in 1952 Canada headed the intervention committee during the Suez Canal crisis and in 1991 when Canada headed the refugees committee and actively got engaged in the Oslo delegation peace process.

Mr. Rae also called for a creation of a new international language which creates international standards in countries where conflict is in constant escalation like Iraq and Afghanistan. Criticizing the current political approaches of policy makers Mr. Rae commented “First and foremost we need to always question ourselves, is it the right action to be taken and the second question is will that work”?, commented Mr. Rae when stressing on the importance of learning and understanding between the different cultures and societies. Finally Mr. Rae concluded “Canada and Egypt should learn from each other, understand and engage further more in the coming period”