Why is Canada involved in Haiti? Why is it Canada’s job to fix a failed state?
Those are two of the most common questions CBC News hears from Canadians about the current state of anarchy and widespread gang violence in this Caribbean island nation. The answers are complicated — because Canada’s involvement in the international response to Haiti’s plight is much more limited than it might appear.
In fact, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not volunteer for the job of fixing Haiti. As they say in the army, Canada essentially was “volun-told” to sign up for the daunting task of restoring order there — and the federal government has been doing everything it can to limit its role ever since.
It was the Biden administration that tried to drop the Haitian hot potato in Canada’s lap, arguing that Washington’s hands were filled with larger global matters, such as the war in Ukraine and threats to Taiwan.
Nearly two years ago, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began to talk to Caribbean leaders and others about Canada taking the lead on an “international stabilization force” for Haiti.
It was an assignment the Trudeau government appeared determined to ditch.
WATCH: Should Canada intervene in Haiti?
Should Canada intervene in Haiti? | Canada Tonight
3 days ago
Duration 4:50
Amid the political unrest and violence in Haiti, the U.S. is pushing for Canada to lead an international ground operation in the Caribbean country. Greg Beckett, an associate professor of anthropology at Western University who has worked in Haiti since 2002, discusses Canada’s role and the ongoing violence in Haiti.
It’s rare for a Canadian government to resist heavy and sustained pressure from an American administration, but that’s what happened in the case of the Multinational Security Support Mission for Haiti.
But unlike Jean Chrétien, who turned down Washington flat when asked to contribute troops to the invasion of Iraq, Trudeau chose to run out the clock.
Instead of soldiers, Canada sent fact-finding missions to Haiti to look into the possibility of a mission. It sent aircraft to fly over Port-au-Prince and contribute intelligence to the Haitian National Police. It even sent two Kingston-class coastal defence vessels to Haiti to patrol Port-au-Prince Bay, ostensibly to stop gangs from attacking shipping or launching amphibious attacks on rivals’ territory.
In other words, it did everything short of putting boots on the ground.
And through it all, the message coming from Prime Minister Trudeau, Ambassador to the UN Bob Rae (his chief envoy on Haitian matters) and Canada’s ambassadors in Haiti was consistent: Canada does not wish to repeat the mistakes of past deployments.
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry looks on as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers opening remarks at an event focusing on Haiti at the United Nations on Sept. 21, 2023 in New York. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Trudeau repeated that message this past week, saying that changes in Haiti “have to come from within the Haitian society and have to be executed by Haitian police and by others.”
“We have to come to grips a bit with the history of large military interventions, where basically you’re just pushing aside all of the Haitian institutions and [saying], ‘We’ll do this,'” Trudeau said. “And then the pressures come from back home, saying, ‘Well, how long are those troops going to be there?’
“Troops come out again, and then where are you? What have you got left?”
The federal government has consistently couched its position in terms of respect for Haiti’s self-determination.
“We believe very strongly that Haitian institutions themselves have to play the leadership role,” Rae said at a CARICOM summit in the Bahamas last year. “We don’t think it works for Canada or any other country to substitute itself for institutions that should be able to do the job.”
Trudeau and Rae often have implied that Haiti’s leaders have failed to live up to their own responsibilities — a view widely shared by Haitians themselves.
“We think with the appropriate kind of help and assistance, and whatever it is that they ask for and feel that they need, yes, we’re going to do it,” Rae said at the CARICOM summit. “But it’s really important for the Haitian political elite to take some responsibility for what’s taking place and what continues to take place.
“That’s exactly why in all of our discussions in Haiti on the ground … we’re saying to all other leaders, you’ve got to get together, you’ve got to create a path that leads to an election but … also leads to it strengthening all of the institutions that make up a democratic society.”
The Trudeau government stuck to that message through more than a year of U.S. pressure, while carefully avoiding a public split with the U.S. over the mission. Ottawa essentially ragged the puck and raised doubts until the Biden administration got tired of pushing.
Fortunately for Canada, at that point African and Caribbean countries began to express a willingness to step up and take on the mission themselves.
Why isn’t Canada doing more to help Haiti?
All of which brings up another question a lot of Canadians have been asking CBC News about Haiti — why isn’t Canada sending peacekeepers, as it has in the past?
Canada is contributing $80.5 million to the multinational security force but will not send soldiers or police to participate directly.
The U.S., meanwhile, is giving $300 million US to the mission, or about $406 million Cdn. Both countries are also earmarking side donations for humanitarian relief.
A server ladles soup into a container as children line up to receive food at a shelter for families displaced by gang violence in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Thursday, March 14, 2024. (Odelyn Joseph/Associated Press)
A very small number of RCMP officers are deployed to Haiti now, mostly in training roles. Their number fluctuates; the terms of the deployment allow for up to 45 Mounties to be in Haiti at a time, but their current complement numbers in the single digits.
Instead, the soldiers and police making up the multinational security force will come from Kenya, Benin, Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Barbados and a few other Caribbean island nations. Kenya will take the lead and will be the first to deploy.
The weight of symbolism
This will be the first major multinational security mission led by an African country outside of Africa. It will differ from past UN-run missions in that it is being assembled almost entirely by black African and Caribbean former colonies, rather than the European and American powers that tended to dominate before.
Those nations will feel a heavy weight of symbolism as they struggle to put the world’s first black republic — a nation born out of a successful slave rebellion — back on its feet.
For Kenya, there’s a chance to win considerable international credit if it’s able to pull the mission off successfully. President William Ruto’s government has made it clear it sees the mission as a kind of coming-full-circle for Kenya — from British colony to a responsible world citizen doing its part for international peace and security.
The Kenyan government has shown some qualms, though, as the security situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate and now that the government of outgoing Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has fallen apart. So have some other participants.
A resident walks past a National Police officer guarding the empty National Penitentiary after a small fire erupted inside the jail in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Thursday, March 14, 2024. This is the same prison that armed gangs stormed late March 2, allowing hundreds of inmates to escape. (Odelyn Joseph/Associated Press)
This would be a formidable security mission for any nation. For the multinational security force, Haiti will be an extremely difficult environment.
Haitians have expressed deep frustration with past interventions by the United Nations. UN peacekeepers earned an unsavoury reputation when some of them took advantage of impoverished Haitian girls. Nepalese Army peacekeepers cut corners on wastewater disposal at their base in Haiti in 2010, introducing cholera to a country that had eradicated it more than a century before.
The disease has since killed tens of thousands of Haitians — more than the violence of the past few years. It didn’t help that the UN dragged its feet for five years before admitting its responsibility for the epidemic.
A security mission unlike any other
The fact that the proposed deployment is led by and composed of black African and Caribbean nations could give it greater acceptance in Haiti, and help to soothe fears that Haiti’s sovereignty is again being disregarded — or that the U.S., Canada and the former colonial powers of Europe are calling the shots.
But in practical terms, this mission will be more difficult than any before in Haiti. Canadian peacekeepers faced disorder and gang violence — but the gangs of twenty years ago were less organized and much less well-armed than the gangs of today.
“This is the worst of the worst,” said Jacqueline Charles, longtime Haiti correspondent for the Miami Herald. “Haiti’s had so many different periods of instability and gang violence. And when you think back to 2004, we were talking about just a handful of gangs and you knew where they were.
“Today, you’re talking about gangs who control, I would say, over 80 per cent of the capital even before this violence flared up.
“In the last two weeks, what we’re seeing is coordinated violent attacks by gangs that normally don’t speak to each other. They’ve orchestrated two major prison breaks. We’ve got thousands of people on the streets, murderers, kidnappers, other kinds of criminals. They’re still out there. You have a police force that is overworked, outgunned. So I don’t think anybody has seen this in Haiti in recent years.”
Members of the Five Seconds Gang appeared on the streets of Port-au-Prince this week with new, standardized uniforms and rifles. Haiti’s bigger gangs are morphing into criminal paramilitary groups rather than mere street gangs. (Djovany Michel)
This week, members of the Five Seconds gang appeared on the streets of the capital in brand-new camouflage fatigues, sporting new FAL rifles, assault sidearms and radios, and looking more like a paramilitary unit than a gang.
The gangs also have all the advantages of being locals. They can fade away into a crowd whenever they need to — “like a fish disappearing into a school of fish,” as a former Canadian soldier once put it.
Canadian military experts told CBC News that any mission to pacify and retake control of the capital from these gangs would require a force vastly stronger than the one currently proposed.
And the question Prime Minister Trudeau asked would still remain — what happens when the foreigners leave again?
WINNIPEG – The federal New Democrats have kept a longtime stronghold in the Elmwood-Transcona riding in Winnipeg.
The NDP’s Leila Dance won a close battle over Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds, and says the community has spoken in favour of priorities such as health care and the cost of living.
Elmwood-Transcona has elected a New Democrat in every election except one since the riding was formed in 1988.
The seat became open after three-term member of Parliament Daniel Blaikie resigned in March to take a job with the Manitoba government.
A political analyst the NDP is likely relieved to have kept the seat in what has been one of their strongest urban areas.
Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, says NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh worked hard to keep the seat in a tight race.
“He made a number of visits to Winnipeg, so if they had lost this riding it would have been disastrous for the NDP,” Adams said.
The strong Conservative showing should put wind in that party’s sails, Adams added, as their percentage of the popular vote in Elmwood-Transcona jumped sharply from the 2021 election.
“Even though the Conservatives lost this (byelection), they should walk away from it feeling pretty good.”
Dance told reporters Monday night she wants to focus on issues such as the cost of living while working in Ottawa.
“We used to be able to buy a cart of groceries for a hundred dollars and now it’s two small bags. That is something that will affect everyone in this riding,” Dance said.
Liberal candidate Ian MacIntyre placed a distant third,
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say the Liberals have “all sorts of reflections” to make after losing a second stronghold in a byelection in Montreal Monday night.
His comments come as the Liberal cabinet gathers for its first regularly scheduled meeting of the fall sitting of Parliament, which began Monday.
Trudeau’s Liberals were hopeful they could retain the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, but those hopes were dashed after the Bloc Québécois won it in an extremely tight three-way race with the NDP.
Louis-Philippe Sauvé, an administrator at the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economics, beat Liberal candidate Laura Palestini by less than 250 votes. The NDP finished about 600 votes back of the winner.
It is the second time in three months that Trudeau’s party lost a stronghold in a byelection. In June, the Conservatives defeated the Liberals narrowly in Toronto-St. Paul’s.
The Liberals won every seat in Toronto and almost every seat on the Island of Montreal in the last election, and losing a seat in both places has laid bare just how low the party has fallen in the polls.
“Obviously, it would have been nicer to be able to win and hold (the Montreal riding), but there’s more work to do and we’re going to stay focused on doing it,” Trudeau told reporters ahead of this morning’s cabinet meeting.
When asked what went wrong for his party, Trudeau responded “I think there’s all sorts of reflections to take on that.”
In French, he would not say if this result puts his leadership in question, instead saying his team has lots of work to do.
Bloc leader Yves-François Blanchet will hold a press conference this morning, but has already said the results are significant for his party.
“The victory is historic and all of Quebec will speak with a stronger voice in Ottawa,” Blanchet wrote on X, shortly after the winner was declared.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his party had hoped to ride to a win in Montreal on the popularity of their candidate, city councillor Craig Sauvé, and use it to further their goal of replacing the Liberals as the chief alternative to the Conservatives.
The NDP did hold on to a seat in Winnipeg in a tight race with the Conservatives, but the results in Elmwood-Transcona Monday were far tighter than in the last several elections. NDP candidate Leila Dance defeated Conservative Colin Reynolds by about 1,200 votes.
Singh called it a “big victory.”
“Our movement is growing — and we’re going to keep working for Canadians and building that movement to stop Conservative cuts before they start,” he said on social media.
“Big corporations have had their governments. It’s the people’s time.”
New Democrats recently pulled out of their political pact with the government in a bid to distance themselves from the Liberals, making the prospects of a snap election far more likely.
Trudeau attempted to calm his caucus at their fall retreat in Nanaimo, B.C, last week, and brought former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney on as an economic adviser in a bid to shore up some credibility with voters.
The latest byelection loss will put more pressure on him as leader, with many polls suggesting voter anger is more directed at Trudeau himself than at Liberal policies.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
