INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Haiti is Canada’s Iraq |
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by Andrew MacLeod The Centre for Research on Globalisation Entered into the database on Sunday, January 15th, 2006 @ 16:17:09 MST |
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Why won’t our leaders talk about what we’re doing there? Last Tuesday, Liberal prime minister Paul Martin made his pre-election stop
in Victoria, meeting with supporters at a rally at the Hotel Grand Pacific.
There, in what must have felt like a strange replay of countless such events
across the country as we head towards the January 23 election, Martin delivered
a short speech with a few feel-good messages and several attacks on conservative
leader Stephen Harper. Harper, he says, would integrate our country even more
deeply with the United States—something many Canadians don’t want
to see happen. And yet, one particular aspect of Canada’s foreign affairs points to
exactly that sort of integration with the States. Our recent dubious record
in Haiti, and our role in Afghanistan, was something Martin didn’t mention,
and there was no opportunity for reporters to ask about. In fact, there has been little mention of Haiti in the entire tightly managed
campaign so far, even though Mark Bourque, a retired Canadian RCMP officer,
died there in recent weeks, shot in the streets of Port au Prince. Not even
the suicide this weekend of Urano Texeira da Matta Bacellar, the Brazilian leader
of the UN forces in Haiti, caused a blip in Canadian political circles. Nor
has the steady criticism from peace activists who question Canada’s involvement
in either country. A call to the Liberal party’s press office in Ottawa confirms the party
is trying to keep Haiti out of the election. “It’s not a political
thing,” says Kristen Connolly, who describes herself as the “press
office answering-the-phone lady.” Questions should be directed to the
foreign affairs department, she says. “It’s government comment as
opposed to politics.” That seems odd to a number of observers, including Victoria’s outgoing
MP David Anderson, a one-time foreign-service officer. “No foreign affairs
issues have come up in the campaign, which I find very surprising,” he
says. “I find it very strange.” The election should include a close analysis of Canada’s foreign policy,
Anderson says, and yet, the closest we’ve come during this campaign is
politicians talking about increasing the size of the armed forces. How, Anderson
asks, can we talk about that without saying what we’d be increasing the
forces for? Right now, he says, it looks like that would be for deployments like those
in Afghanistan and Haiti. “It’s an interesting election debate gap,
but that goes back to my original point, that there’s hardly been an election.”
Or, as Susan Clarke from the Victoria Peace Coalition says, “The country
is never really held to account on foreign policy during elections.” It shouldn’t be this way, she adds. “We never got a chance to say
anything about Haiti. It was all done behind our backs.” And yet, the question remains for many Canadians: Just what is Canada doing
in Haiti, and why is it a problem? Over the past several months, Clarke and the coalition have been trying to
raise awareness of the issue. They’ve brought a couple of speakers to
Victoria, including the journalist Kevin Pina, who is from Oakland, California,
but has lived for several years in Haiti, is married to a Haitian and has a
child there. There are multiple reasons, he says, why Canadians should be concerned
about what’s happening in Haiti. For starters, it’s largely thanks
to us and our efforts to unseat Jean Bertrand Aristide’s democratically
elected government that the country is currently so unstable. Through the Canadian
International Development Agency (CIDA), we funded non-governmental organizations
in Haiti that helped build opposition to Aristide. Then, during the so-called
rebellion in 2004, Canadian armed forces were there to take the airport. Our
forces held the country, along with soldiers from France and the United States,
until United Nations troops could land. Since then we have contributed RCMP
expertise to train Haitian police officers, and we are putting $25 million into
a much-delayed election that many observers say is a sham. In 2000, when Aristide
was elected, there were 12,000 polling places, Pina says. The plan for this
election was to have somewhere between 600 and 800 places to vote. “That
might ensure the photo ops they want of long lines at the polls, but it won’t
guarantee participation.” Pina is currently working on a documentary about the situation in Haiti: a
work that includes scenes of UN troops raiding homes in the Cité Soleil
neighbourhood, and gory shots of war dead. “A lot of what I’m showing
is not being shown in the press,” he says. “I have been in the unenviable
position of being the one reporting the side of the story nobody else will touch
. . . I like documentary filmmaking for that reason, because the images at the
end of the day don’t lie.” Asked what Canadians need to know about Haiti, Pina says, “That your
government is investing millions of dollars in an unelected, undemocratic regime.”
Also, he says, on this one Canada is in “lock step” with the United
States. And, oh yes, the decision to unseat Aristide, known as the Ottawa initiative,
was made in Canada. All of that makes it something that should be an election issue, argues the
peace coalition’s Clarke. “I don’t know when is a better time
to hold our country accountable for its foreign policy than during an election,”
she says. “The Canadian people should have everything to say about foreign
policy, just like the Americans want to have everything to say about their foreign
policy. That’s a huge part of your persona as a nation.” M Mixed Opposition Whether or not Haitians get to participate in a free election anytime soon
in their own country, the election that’s currently happening here could
determine whether there’ll be a shift in our involvement there. So what
do representatives of Canada’s various political parties think, and why
aren’t they giving the Liberals a rougher ride on their Haiti record?
“We are very concerned obviously with developments in Haiti,” says
Stockwell Day, the conservative’s foreign affairs critic, in a voice message.
He’s also the MP for Okanagan-Coquihalla and once upon a time lived in
Victoria and attended UVic (though it’s not clear from his website whether
he actually graduated). He’s concerned, but he’s actually calling
for more involvement, not less. “We feel Canada should have more of a presence there, especially on the
security side,” Day says. “Over the last several years we have been
underfunding our military and we do not have the capability to provide the types
of level of security that’s needed in a situation like Haiti right now
because we’re also committed in other places.” As for the NDP, last spring the party’s foreign affairs critic, Alexa
McDonough, called on the government to do more to stop the flow of arms into
the country and to address the basic needs of health care, education, jobs and
infrastructure there. Then there’s the Green Party, which called this past weekend for a formal
review of Canada’s involvement in Haiti. This follows on the party’s
October stance, which called on Canada to seek a delay in the elections until
all political prisoners are freed and “intimidation of Lavalas Party supporters
by the Haitian National Police is stopped.” “It’s pretty outrageous that we’re involved,” says
Ariel Lade, the Green candidate in Victoria and a member of the Victoria Peace
Coalition. “These elections are going to be a sham unless Aristide and
the Lavalas party are allowed to fully participate and not be harassed by the
police that the RCMP are training.” |