What Has Canada Been Doing in Haiti?

By Riaz Sayani-Mulji


In order to help an impoverished and decimated state like Haiti, proper context is required. Unfortunately, mainstream media coverage of Haiti before, during, and after the earthquake last year provides none of this. When speaking of long- term development in Haiti, one would assume that Haitian history prior to the earthquake would be given consideration. Questions ought to be raised as to why Haiti was so unable to deal with the earthquake in the first place. Few know that 6 weeks later, Chile was hit with an earthquake 500-900 times more powerful than the one that devastated Haiti, yet the casualties reported are starkly different (over 800 for Chile, over 200 000 for Haiti). Did any corporate media outlet question why there exist slums in Haiti in which houses are actually built on top of houses, compounding the number of people killed? For that matter, who has inquired into the fact that 95% of the Haitian population, consisting of 10 million people, is so poor in the first place?
To address this and provide context to the plight of the Haitian people would require exposing a farce in Canadian foreign policy. Canadian policy towards Haiti has never been about helping the Haitian poor. Instead, Canada has actively colluded with the United States and France (one of Haiti’s historical colonial powers) in repressing the Haitian people, which culminated in a 2004 coup d’état, planned in Ottawa no less, in which the democratically elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide was overthrown.
Aristide was overthrown because he was actively combating the causes of Haitian poverty, i.e. neo-liberal structural adjustment programs imposed by Canada and the United States, that kept the Haitian poor in squalor while enriching a small segment of their population.  Aristide was responsible for the doubling of the minimum wage, the financing of hospitals, medical schools, literacy programs, community food centres, and other vitally needed social safety nets. Aristide created a disaster relief program in which volunteers were trained to rescue and aid victims during a time of crisis (e.g. an earthquake), with goods and medical supplies stored to ensure people survived. He even created public sanitation plants for water, to prevent diseases like cholera. In fact, Aristide also demanded that France repay the $22 billion it stole from Haiti in 1825, for the Haitian people rising up against their slavemasters and emancipating themselves.
Aristide represented the interests of the Haitian people, yet at the same time posed a threat to imperial interests and the profits of international financial institutions. In order to combat the “threat” Aristide posed, funding was cut to his administration. For example, in 2003 Aristide could only spend $39 million on all government education, healthcare, transportation, and environment programs. Contrast this with the fact that McMaster University annually spends $39 million on facility services and utilities alone. CIDA and USAID then began funding NGOs to provide the basic services Aristide could not, creating a parallel system of delivery that is completely unsustainable and also served to decrease his government’s legitimacy. CIDA and USAID also began a campaign of civil society sensitization, providing funding for the political opposition, comprising sweatshop owners and other elites within Haitian society. Simultaneously, the death squads and Haitian army that Aristide had previously disbanded began receiving weapons and training in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, in order to invade Haiti in 2004 and remove Aristide’s government.
After the coup, the model of NGO (unsustainable) development that creates dependency has continued unhindered. Prior to the earthquake 80% of Haiti’s services were being provided by NGOs, with more than 10,000 operating at a time. Aristide’s social programs, including water sanitation and disaster relief, were gutted. A United Nations, Canadian-directed peacekeeping team known as MINUSTAH also began occupying Haiti after Aristide’s removal, suppressing the resistance amongst Haiti’s poor majority and widely implicated in human rights violations. Evidence also indicates that MINUSTAH brought cholera to Haiti.
Only after understanding the context, or commitment of Canada to “helping” the Haitian people can one understand the obstacles to Haitian long-term development. Haiti needs our support, not our exploitation. We as Canadians must stand against this unjust use of our tax dollars.