By: Regan Boychuk - HaitiAnalysis.com
A recently released report by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is chock-full of heartening language describing all the good Canadian aid allegedly achieved in Haiti during its holiday from democracy between the 2004 coup and its 2006 elections. One might be tempted to believe Canada is a benign do-gooder when it comes to Haiti. The missing context should dispel any such notions.
CIDA notes that its strategic approach to Haiti “was approved by the Minister in the summer of 2003” and was aimed, in part, to “support the emergence of a social consensus at all levels of society and support agents of change.”[1] CIDA (which had been informed of and agreed with the holding of the 2003 Ottawa Initiative on Haiti[2]) took its cue and labeled the Haitian government as a “difficult partner” in September 2003, suggesting aid should be directed through alternative channels. Internal documents show that CIDA almost exclusively funded organizations ideologically opposed to the overwhelmingly popular government of Jean Bertrand Aristide.[3] In February 2004, the strategy bore fruit when Haiti’s democratically elected government was forced from power and replaced by a regime hand-picked by the United States and headed by a business consultant from Florida.
Since the coup, CIDA states that “Canada’s commitment to the Government of Haiti is in accordance with the priorities of the ICF [International Cooperation Framework], which is currently the main frame of reference”.[4] Since CIDA offers no details about the ICF, I will. The un-elected regime installed in Haiti developed a comprehensive two-year economic and social plan with “about 300 mostly foreign technicians and consultants, some 200 from institutions like the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank”. The plan “calls for more free trade zones, stresses tourism and export agriculture, and hints at the eventual privatization of the countries state enterprises.” And despite the plan’s claim that “The government wishes to undertake a national reconciliation process by involving all components of society”, “Almost no one from the country’s large and experienced national non-government organization (NGO) community, the local and national peasant associations, unions, women’s groups or the hundreds of producers cooperatives or numerous associations was invited to participate” in the preparation of the economic plan. “Even the seven-person Council of Eminent Persons, meant to serve as a kind of counter-balance for Latortue, was not aware of or invited to participate in the process.”[5]
As an unusually frank World Bank report noted: “The transition period and the Transitional Government provide a window of opportunity for implementing economic governance reforms with the involvement of civil society stakeholders that may be hard for a future government to undo.”[6] Canada took full advantage of this “window of opportunity”: Canadian Ambassador Claude Bouche and the US-installed regime presided over the creation of a Haitian-Canadian Chamber of Commerce and, in October 2004, Canada sent its first trade mission since before Aristide’s re-election nearly five years earlier. Demonstrating the Canadian government’s dedication to Haitian well-being, Prime Minister Paul Martin visited Haiti in November 2004–a trip planned in part to recognize the legitimacy of the unconstitutional government, already responsible for wide-ranging repression of Haiti’s pro-democracy movement. “There are no political prisoners in Haiti,” Martin apologetically declared while thousands rotted in prison. “Justice is slow in Haiti.”[7]
On the eve of Prime Minister Martin’s trip to lend legitimacy to the coup regime in Haiti, his office published a backgrounder stating that most tariffs and quotas on Haitian exports to Canada had been eliminated on many “textile and apparel goods, an important and promising sector for Canadian investment.” Four months earlier, a delegation of the Haiti Accompaniment Project reported:
There has been a crackdown on labor unions and peasant associations. We met with peasant organizers who told us of cooperatives being ransacked, with tools and equipment stolen. One organizer told us of repeated death threats and an assassination plot against him in late May. We met with a labor union organizer who told us of a steadily mounting anti-union campaign directed at the assembly sector. He has received many reports from workers who say that factory owners are not respecting the minimum wage, which was raised last year by the Aristide government. In addition, three hundred workers have been fired from a Grupo M factory in the free trade zone along the Dominican border.
On July 13th, shortly after we left Haiti, the Latortue government announced that it would be offering a tax holiday of up to three years to large businesses who suffered losses between December 2003 and March 2004. No state support was offered to the thousands of poor people who have lost their homes or livelihoods due to the coup d’etat.[8]
So, despite page after page in CIDA’s report on Canadian aid to Haiti’s post-coup regime detailing water and literacy programs, the overall picture is somewhat different. Canadian aid was used to undermine Haiti’s legitimate and popular government and then it was used to prop up the brutal and unpopular regime installed in the absence of Haitian democracy. In a familiar pattern, Canadian aid dried up when foreign investment prospects were not forthcoming but flooded in when the investment climate improved, Haitian human rights be damned.
NOTES
[1] CIDA, “Canada-Haiti cooperation: Interim cooperation framework result summary (April 2004 – March 2006)”, Final report, July 2006, pt. 1, “Canada’s intervention approach in Haiti”.
[2] Foreign Affairs Canada, Caribbean and Central America division, “Secretary of state (Latin America and Africa) (La Francophonie), Mr. Denis Paradis, to host a high level roundtable on Haiti on January 31-February 1, 2003”, p. 2 (CIDA informed and agreed). On the Ottawa Initiative, see “Canadian officials initiate planning for military ouster of Aristide”, Haiti Progres, vol. 20, no. 51 (5 March 2003) and Michel Vastel, “Haïti mise en tutelle par l’ONU?”, L’Actualité, vol. 28, no. 4 (15 March 2003), pp. 14-15.
[3] CIDA, “Haiti—Strategic approach: Concept paper”, 12 September 2003, pp. 8-9 (‘difficult partner’); Anthony Fenton, “Canada’s growing role in Haitian affairs”, Haiti Progres, vol. 23, no. 1 (16 March 2005) (internal CIDA documents).
[4] CIDA, “Canada-Haiti cooperation”, pt. 1.
[5] Jane Regan, “A national plan without the people?”, Inter Press Service, 21 July 2004; Republic of Haiti, “Interim cooperation framework 2004-2006”, July 2004, p. 8.
[6] World Bank, “Haiti: Economic governance reform operation project”, 10 December 2004, p. 4.
[7] “Canadian business mission in Haiti”, Agence France Presse, 22 October 2004; Brian Laghi, “Internal strife will undermine rebuilding plan, PM tells Haiti”, Globe and Mail, 15 November 2004, p. A4; “PM Martin: Canada in Haiti for the long run”, Agence France Press, 15 November 2004.
[8] Office of the Prime Minister, “Prime minister to travel to Haiti”, 12 November 2004; Laura Flynn, Robert Roth, and Leslie Fleming, “Report of the Haiti Accompaniment Project”, 29 June–9 July 2004.
