Prime Minister Paul Martin told a group of well-heeled Liberals that democracy-building will be an important part of Canada's future foreign policy.

And he promised that it would open doors for them.

"Because you cannot have a successful democratic process unless you have a free market economy," he said Wednesday evening in Ottawa.

Martin's speech was to the Laurier Club, whose membership is reserved for those who donate at least $1,000 annually to the Liberal Party.

He told the audience that democracy-building will be the great under-reported part of his just-concluded meetings with U.S. President George W. Bush.

"The president and I talked about the importance of the election to come in Iraq. We talked about the importance of the elections to come in the Middle East," he said.

Palestinians go to the polls on Jan. 9 to select a replacement for Yasser Arafat, who died Nov. 9.

"Finally, we talked about the elections in Ukraine."

Canada and the U.S. have both said they would re-examine relations with Ukraine if the presidential election wasn't seen as reflecting the peoples' democratic will.

The Nov. 21 vote, a run-off between Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, was widely seen by world observers as being tainted.

Some wags in the opposition thanked Martin on Monday for paying a "state visit" to Canada this week, a slap at Martin's 11-day trip to the APEC summit, Haiti, Sudan and the francophone summit in Burkina Faso.

"The world we are going to live in for the next 10 or 20 years is going to be very different. My goal is that Canada be a major player in that world," Martin said on Saturday in Burkina Faso.

Martin said people the world over are fighting back against authoritarian figures that don't respect the electoral process.

He termed it the most important global trend since the end of the Cold War.

Martin said Canada has been a very successful democracy, noting the country has never gone through a civil war. He also said its multicultural nature is a huge asset.

"Our ability to understand what the democratic process is all about, I believe, is going to give us an insight into what foreign policy is going to be like in the 21st Century almost more than any other country."

Economically, the world is aligning into giant tectonic plates, Martin said: China, India, Russia, the U.S. and Europe, to name the major ones.

Canada is only a country of 32 million, but has great strengths in democracy, innovation, entrepreneurship and the high-tech sector. Those strengths "... are going to position us as no other country can," he said.

On the U.S.-Canada relationship, Martin said it might have been a bit tattered but it was never broken.

But then Martin paid tribute to an old Liberal leadership foe for his work in that area.

"In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, there was one person who spoke with a clarity of view on behalf of Canada, that I think does underline the strength of the U.S.-Canada relationship," he said, and that person was former deputy prime minister John Manley, who was in the audience and acknowledged the gesture.

After withdrawing from challenging Martin for the Liberal leadership, Manley -- who was left out of Martin's first cabinet -- didn't run in the June 28 federal election.