Technical Co-operation in the CIS: the Canadian Experience

Annotation
My purpose this afternoon is not to pepper you with statistics or to stray into fields in which your expertise is far greater than mine but rather to engage you on a subject with which I have been involved for several years, that of Canada’s experience in the Commonwealth of Independent States and of the bilateral relations we have built here with the assistance of the technical co-operation programme of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). I want to identify some of the ingredients that have been central to the successes of CIDA’s technical co-operation programme and to explain why Canada feels this mechanism has been and will continue to be so important for our relations with the CIS countries. Our thirteen years in the CIS have taught us that as a flexible instrument to improve global security, strengthen democratic political systems and market economies and lend further substance to our bilateral relations, technical co-operation is uniquely suited to this environment.