Foreign Affairs Committee on May 30th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Goldring, we're out of time.

Madame McDonough.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thanks very much.

It's not even necessary to take up the committee's time right now, but I wonder whether you might table--perhaps you're going to do so in any case with your final report--the statistics that would give us an opportunity to make the comparison between the previous election, both numbers of electors registered and the turnout, and this election. I think it's the combination of those two things that makes the achievement quite remarkable in terms of the level of participation. Separate from each other, the percentage turnout isn't as overwhelmingly impressive as when you take into account the number of electors who were actually registered.

You may want to comment, but I don't want to use up all my time asking questions.

Second, I'm more confused than ever about the status of what was clearly the provisional electoral commission. I had thought--and maybe I came away with the wrong impression--that by definition, because it was provisional until there was a duly elected government in place, that what would have been anticipated is legislation brought in to create...I don't know what it's called, but as we have in Canada, a totally independent, permanent Elections Haiti apparatus, as we have with Elections Canada. Could you clarify that?

The third thing is, I have to say, there is nothing worse than politicians who go somewhere for a few days and think they get a total impression. It's ridiculous, but it was really impressive how much you could sense a real hopefulness and pride people took in turning up at the polls with their identification, which meant they weren't facing all kinds of questions, and so on. There had been some criticism about the significant reduction in the number of polling stations, and a concern about whether this would limit access.

Could you comment on whether the recommendation would be to go with the 802, or is there some interim number between that and the previous 11,000 or 12,000, maybe even 13,000? I understand the reason for reducing, but it appears, as you've said, that it didn't severely reduce the number of participants, in fact, the opposite. Is there some recommendation about extending even more opportunities to vote, which would be based on more experience, more know-how, and so on, or would a recommendation be to stick with that?

I have one final comment. Against the backdrop of what clearly was a pretty positive experience, hundreds of political prisoners were languishing in prisons, invisible to the international community but not invisible to Haitians themselves. I think they were overwhelmingly supporters of Lavalas, not charged with anything, not entitled to any due process of law. It's hard to imagine that not being something you would comment on as part of the environment in which it's hard to say an election is completely fair and free. Somebody suggested, and it's not a bad analogy, it's like imprisoning the whole leadership of a political party in Canada and expecting that party to say yes, it was tough, but it was fair and free other than that.

I'm wondering if you chose not to comment on that part of the political landscape. It's hard to understand why it wouldn't be important to take note of this factor in the context in which you were trying to conduct this election.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have about 30 seconds to answer.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

With respect to documentation, we'll provide that comparison for you, to the extent that we can find it.

The conseil electoral provisoire is provisional, as the word says, and it's supposed to become permanent through the elections. The elected local authorities are supposed to roll up into a permanent body, and if there are no local elections, one will have to see what can be done. It probably will be another conseil electoral provisoire, but I do want to build on the point my colleague made. A concerted effort should be made to make sure a permanent body is established to maintain election readiness, because 16 elections in the next 10 years are foreseen under the constitution. This is in answer to Mr. Goldring's question about elections as well. They are foreseen in the constitution. They'll have to amend the constitution to do things differently. At least, that's my understanding.

With respect to political prisoners and the fact that the body I chaired did not comment on them, I suppose we could have, but everybody else was, even the United Nations, which had approved the holding of elections through the presence of MINUSTAH. So that's one factor. If it had become a factor that negated the whole purpose, then Elections Canada would not have participated. I would not have participated as the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada. The international community encouraged Haiti to solve the problem and, at the same time, to go ahead and hold its elections. As long as it has UN blessing, Elections Canada feels it can play a useful role.

So that's my answer to that question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Kingsley.

A very short question to Mr. Van Loan, and then to Mr. Martin.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

On the issue of making the election superstructure permanent, is there an assessment of the cost of doing that? That's my first question.

Secondly, is there a proposal to include that in any of the future asks, if you will, of the international community in terms of development? Does it represent part of Mr. Préval's program of social appeasement that he's putting forward? Does it belong anywhere? Is it somewhere in the financial asks?

On the issue of the municipal versus local elections, your position, Mr. Bernard, I think reflects that it's still an ongoing debate. But I think the emerging consensus among the donors is that it's best to proceed with the municipal and the mayors and leave the local councils to later. How long can those be left before that permanent, temporary, or whatever voters list that has been developed with these national identity cards is going to require a serious investment in updating? At what point does that list become so stale that we have to go another round of heavy investment?

[Jacques Bernard]

If I may, I will answer the second question first. The registration of the voters was stopped voluntarily because we had to stop somewhere to be able to build a list. Once we complete the municipal elections, then we can go ahead and restart registration. We have the technology. Haiti doesn't really require any technical assistance, because the OAS gave us the initial assistance.

The whole team was Haitian. They were in the field with a computer, doing the work, putting it on a CD, and sending it to Mexico for the printing of the card. The government in Haiti would have had to invest in a small plant to produce those cards.

We don't have to have the local election to start registration. We can go ahead after the municipal election to start registration, and we can even update the list for the local election. I think we will have to do that.

Regarding the local election, I think there is a problem with the districts and going to the database to look at the people in the exact district where they belong. It's a very cumbersome process. That is why my preoccupation right now is to provide Haiti with enough governmental structure so that it can work effectively and efficiently.

The other aspect of it, as I mentioned earlier, is that there is no legal framework for the ASEC, CASEC and town delegates. So the government would have to do that first before you can elect these people. The last time they were elected in 1994, they didn't know what to do. They were just there. They were never a part of the government budget. They were just walking around. So I really think the government needs to do a lot of background work in creating the legal framework and including those people in budgets and so on, before we, as a CEP, can go ahead and have an election. Otherwise we're going to have a bunch of elected officials and they won't know what to do.

The permanent CEP will come from this election. We need to make sure that if we do it, there are no changes in the constitution. They are talking about changing some of the procedures in the constitution because they are so cumbersome. I have calculated the number of elections over the next 10 years, and there are going to be 16 elections. Haiti cannot afford to have 16 elections in the next 10 years. Something will have to be done. One has to recognize the financial constraints of having 16 elections in 10 years for such a poor country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Bernard.

Mr. Martin, for a very short question.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Kingsley, Madam Davidson, and, Mr. Bernard, for being here today. Congratulations on your work, not only in Haiti, but all over the world. You really put Canada on the map in terms of guiding countries and developing their electoral capacity building.

A friend of mine asked a friend of mine about the top three things that Haiti needs. He said, first, Haiti needs a free and open election. The second thing they need is a free and open election, and the third thing they need is another free and open election. How long do you anticipate our involvement with respect to Haiti in terms of investment before Haitians can actually take substantial control of their own electoral infrastructure?

Lastly, when one is dealing in an environment where corruption is endemic--which has to affect your ability to create the infrastructure on the ground, as you have all mentioned--what is needed to try to address that endemic corruption beyond the obvious economic restructuring that has to occur in the country?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

Certainly, I'll answer the first question, and obviously I'll allow my colleague to talk about endemic corruption.

In my view, it would take perhaps one more year of partnering with the Haitian electoral authority—should one be established—to say there is no longer a need for any kind of external support, other than perhaps financial through other means and so on. I say a year because I take into account what my colleague has just said about the transference of knowledge that is required from MINUSTAH and especially the OAS about the matter of the lists.

That may sound a little short, but I like to think it would be realizable.

What's next on the horizon is the next round. I will be having discussions with the people at CIDA and Foreign Affairs to see exactly what involvement there will be from my office for that next round and for any other kind of permanent partnership that can be developed to allow the one year to elapse—and to feel that we've gone as far as we can and are no longer required, in the same sense as we are now. It would be something akin to what we did with Mexico, for example.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Kingsley.

Mr. Bernard, on the second point of Mr. Martin's question.

[Jacques Bernard]

On the corruption point, let me say that I was put in charge of organizing elections, but I'm not really an election expert. Believe it or not, I'm primarily an international banker and an economist. I can tell you that I have travelled to a lot of third world countries, and I consider corruption as the cancer of third world countries. Therefore, it's something that should be eliminated. I always believe that you don't have to be economically efficient to grow your economy, but if you have corruption, you're not going to go anywhere. Indeed, corruption is endemic in Haiti.

Since most third world countries cannot develop by themselves—they don't have the necessary capital and know-how—countries like Canada are involved. Frankly, I think part of the conditionalities for foreign aid should be a systematic program of anti-corruption. If the country cannot impose the discipline on itself, I really think one of the conditionalities to providing foreign aid is that there needs to be a systematic program of anti-corruption.

Frankly, I think one of the reasons Haiti has never developed and basically stayed behind most other countries in Central America and the Caribbean is precisely corruption. If you go back to the 1950s, Haiti was at the same level of economic development as, and perhaps more advanced than, a lot of these countries. Today they might be 100 years ahead of us. The whole thing can be traced to corruption.

So I am very much against it. I think it's something that the international community should take very seriously, and it should be a part of the conditionalities for extending aid to a third world country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Bernard.

In your presentation you mentioned—or perhaps it was Mr. Kingsley—the fact that there were a number of different individuals who were challenging the results, or you had a protocol for those who would challenge the results.

Were there a lot of different challenges? Was it one challenge overall, or were there certain challenges at certain polls? Was it a vote count challenge, or was the entire exercise challenged?

[Jacques Bernard]

We can't really classify it into a category. I must say that in Haiti we have a lot of sore losers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Well, we do here too.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I'm not looking anywhere, but....

[Jacques Bernard]

There we have two types. One is the tally, the number of votes, but since it was an open process, everybody had a copy of the reports. They come, and we take them to the tabulation centre and show them precisely that what we post on the Internet is a reflection of the actual vote.

The second type is that we had reports of problems in some voting centres, and indeed in some areas we did have problems. For instance, in one area I stopped the election for the second round. It was the second time I had stopped the election in that district. It's an area called Grande Saline in the Artibonite. One of the reasons we are redoing 11 districts is precisely that they were a problem. Some of it is fraud; some of it is that candidates would come with armed men and invade the voting centres and then would stuff the ballot box, and things like that.

We have identified all these things and have eliminated those voting centres. There are cases where we eliminated voting centres, but they were voting centres in an area where we still went ahead and published a report. But there are areas where the voting centre was so significant that we had to redo the election.

So I would say that there were these two types. One is a candidate saying there were mistakes in the calculation, and the other case is where there were real problems, and that's why we had to redo about 14 constituencies.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You mentioned that there was a 63% voter turnout. Is that in both election days? On one election I heard someone say there was 30%.

[Jacques Bernard]

In the first round of elections we had 63%, and in the second round of the legislative elections we had 31%, actually 30.86%. Mind you, the way you should compare it is to look at past second rounds for legislative elections in Haiti. We never went beyond 15%. This time we reached 31%, so I think to that extent it was a success.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

And there were no presidential candidates for the second round, and despite that there was still a 30%-plus turnout, which was double the previous score. It was recognized to be a very successful second round, frankly. I just thought I'd add that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I want to thank you for coming today. I know this has helped our committee. Sometimes we have committee meetings and wonder after the witnesses have been here how the testimony fits into what we may be studying. But certainly this has been a very good hour, and I want to thank you.

And specifically, Mr. Kingsley, I want to thank you for helping to facilitate Mr. Bernard's being here.

We will adjourn.