Foreign Affairs Committee on June 7th, 2006

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

We went to Afghanistan, and French is less important over there.

[Col Denis Thompson]

No, that is not it. The fact is that soldiers are not the best instrument in a situation of this type. As I said in my presentation, it is better to use civilian police officers.

It's not the right tool for the job. Militaries are blunt instruments. They're not meant to police civilian populations. And what we have here is a circumstance where the military keeps a lid on the general security situation, because militaries are meant to separate armed groups in a peacekeeping environment, or deal with armed groups, not with criminals. That's not our training. You need a general security framework provided by the military, and underneath you get the police working with local police to address the true problems, the local security problems. You can't do that with a military force.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Yes, but MINUSTAH will remain. The Brazilians and the Jordanians are soldiers.

[Col Denis Thompson]

Absolutely. It's a fact that militaries are cheaper, too. If you want to put a lid on something, you get the military on the ground, and they put a lid on it; then you begin to work on what's called security sector reform: you start to work on the police, the justice sector, and the corrections sector, which is another part of Haitian security sector reform that needs to be addressed.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

We must put an end to the impunity.

[Col Denis Thompson]

Absolutely.

There has to be the full gamut. But it's a plumbing job, and we're electricians. I don't know how else to describe it.

[Francine Lalonde, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I would like to conclude by saying that in Kosovo, I saw soldiers who were both plumbers and electricians. The Canadian soldiers that I know can, I believe, take on two roles.

[Col Denis Thompson]

Thank you. Anything is possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Lalonde.

We will go to Mr. Goldring.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for appearing here today, gentlemen.

Colonel, we won't discuss the particular instance of the former police officer, but the entire case seems to substantiate previous comments we've heard about a disconnect—threat versus threat reduction, remediation, and a disconnect of authority to act under certain circumstances. This seemed to be a common comment from various places when we visited Haiti. In other words, there's a tying of the hands of the various authorities there, preventing them from acting under certain circumstances.

One of the most obvious examples is of their police officers, who are on the streets but are not allowed to arrest and don't have the charging authority other jurisdictions would normally have. Then, of course, we see the red zone area that Jordanians, I understand, are attending to. The comments were that they don't speak English or French, and that might very well be a difficulty too.

You commented towards the end of your remarks that it would be better to have civilian police officers than to have soldiers. But here clearly you have an area and a zone that requires heavily armoured vehicles if you are to go into it and where the criminals and thugs have far heavier firepower than normal police officers would utilize in their normal street patrolling.

Has there been an authority problem? Has there been a lack of direction, a lack of coordination to explain why that area hasn't at least been cleaned out and mopped up by a military action to set the stage for policing with light-duty weapons or whatever normal tools police officers have, and to provide some authority to begin the actions of a justice system with authority to arrest? Is there a reason why this hasn't been done? Or what stage has the planning for it reached? Obviously you can't just put police officers on the street under a scenario like that.

[Col Denis Thompson]

First of all, we're talking about maybe a four-square-kilometre patch of Port-au-Prince. This is not the condition of the entire country. Let's be clear that we're talking about a very small patch of ground. The force necessary to control it would probably initially be military. What's happened in the past.... It's not my place to comment on the performance of other nations, or even the performance of another nation's commanders; however, I know there's been a change in the force that's responsible for Cité du Soleil. It's been handed over to a Brazilian battalion, who have taken a bit of a different approach, and I think you'll find that over the coming weeks and months there'll be a change in the security situation in Cité du Soleil.

Do you want to speak to some of the details of that, Michel?

[Maj Michel Lavigne, Desk Officer - Haiti, Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command , Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The situation the colonel mentioned is in a small patch of the territory with about 120,000 people in very close quarters. If you visited Port-au-Prince, you'd see it's similar to some of the slums in bigger cities around the world. It's a very confined area in which operations are difficult to conduct.

Strictly doing military operations in such a confined area is very difficult, and it's risky for the population there. You're trying to apprehend one or two bad guys amongst thousands of civilians. You don't want to start shooting just anywhere simply to grab those two.

As I understand it, the Brazilians have developed a more collegial approach to the situation in Cité du Soleil. They will try to win over the population through community projects—civil-military cooperation and what not—to try to clean up the area, and then slowly but possibly surely move into the area and possibly apprehend some of the criminals.

As the colonel mentioned, it's a slightly different tactical approach to the operation. A new commander is on the ground with a new force and a different approach. Hopefully they'll have more success than the previous troops who were handling the area.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Would this have anything to do with the renewed mandate for the action that's coming up in August? Are there any concerns, maybe not necessarily for that, but for the authorities needed to do certain tasks? It sounds to me, though, as if four square kilometres is like a poster board of a failed nation that can't handle the territory, so if you're trying to improve the economic development of a country, it's practically impossible without dealing with that.

[Col Denis Thompson]

I understand what you're saying vis-à-vis the mandate. Our expectation, and I'll just leave it at that, is that the mandate will be the same. The question is whether the force structure will change. You would know, I'm thinking, from earlier testimony that Canada is a member of the Group of Friends, which is a loose grouping in New York that meets regularly on Haiti and of course have input into the drafting process for the mandate that will be considered by the Security Council. Again, Mr. McNee will be a pivotal part of that process.

What I've seen to date from our permanent mission in New York in the early discussions--it's still early days in there, and we're going to wait for the assessment mission to return--is we're expecting the same mandate with the same executive powers, so to speak, the same chapter 7 powers, to be in place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

Mr. Wilfert, please.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I asked a question earlier, Colonel, with regard to empowering Haitians to take care of their own security. Obviously developing either a political culture or a military culture, dealing with authority figures in Haiti, the military or police in the past have been viewed not only with skepticism, which would be kind, but obviously with fear, which would probably be more apt. What is being done to empower Haitians to eventually take care of their own security needs? Do you have any assessment as to how that will unfold?

[Col Denis Thompson]

It's a bit unfortunate, because the question you're asking directly relates to what the police do. I'll just tell you that--

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Unfortunately, I missed it last time. I was in Afghanistan when the police were here, but I thought we could touch on it at least.

[Col Denis Thompson]

I know where you're coming from. The difficulty in many countries is the police and the security forces exist to protect the regime instead of to protect the public, and that was the condition that existed in Haiti. It's that environment or that atmosphere the police are trying to reverse. The details of how the security sector reform is being executed would best be drawn from a fellow like Chief Superintendent Dave Beer. We're just not part of the training effort for the police in Haiti.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Would you say that the role of the forces that are there currently--the multinational force--is strictly security, or would you say that, as in Afghanistan, there is an attempt in a peacekeeping role to also try to win the hearts and minds of individuals so that they in fact will feel more secure in this environment? What are you doing in that regard?

[Col Denis Thompson]

Do you mean what is the UN doing? Any peacekeeping force is about two things--deterrence and reassurance. You're there to deter the bad guys by being present, by being in their face, and by actually taking them on when you need to. You're there to reassure the civilian population. All indications are, from the reporting that we read from the UN from our chief of staff who's present on the ground, that in 95% of the country they're achieving success, but there are some patches, in Port-au-Prince in particular, where it's particularly difficult.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

In terms of that assessment that you just gave, do you believe that the forces on the ground have the appropriate tools in order to deal with the current situation?

[Col Denis Thompson]

I do, yes. However, I would just reiterate that there is a UN assessment team on the ground that will do a much deeper analysis than I can do from Ottawa or than I can do from a two-day trip to Port-au-Prince. I have confidence in the UN mission planning service to actually go in there and determine what the appropriate force levels would be for police and military.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Given the current situation on the ground--you use the figure of 95% roughly--the current approach seems to be working. However, in terms of the assessment, obviously you get reports sent, I would assume, that would indicate where there seems to be a difficulty at the present time and what kinds of things may be recommended, not only through the UN, but from our own forces on the ground, I'm sure. Would that be a fair statement?

[Col Denis Thompson]

Well, certainly there's no stopping in the MINUSTAH headquarters. They're constantly doing contingency planning, and they're constantly addressing security concerns that come up.

The biggest challenge they had, obviously, was the election, which by all accounts ran relatively smoothly. I'm certain Mr. Goldring can tell us what his impressions were. But generally speaking, the security situation is being maintained by MINUSTAH.

The trick is, you can't leave 6,000 soldiers and 1,800 policemen there in perpetuity. You have to leave at some time. So we have to profit from the fact that we have a decent security arrangement to train and develop the police forces that exist, and we have to be confident that Mr. Préval is able to bring to heel some of the darker elements of Haitian society.