Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 28th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Welcome, everyone.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study on the Canadian and international disaster response and the situation in Haiti will commence.

I want to thank the Canadian Red Cross for being here today. I know an informal meeting was set up with some members and it was very informative and we're glad we could have you back officially and on the record. We can go from there.

Susan, will you be speaking? We'll give you ten minutes to make your statement and then all committee members will have a chance to ask some follow-up questions on what we're doing.

Ms. Johnson, thanks for being here. The floor is yours.

[Susan Johnson, Director General, International Operations, Canadian Red Cross]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to speak to the committee today. I will make a few remarks, but I'm also going to ask my colleague, Richard Clair, to make a few remarks.

The Canadian Red Cross always welcomes the opportunity to engage with parliamentarians, both on domestic and on international issues.

I am going to make my comments in English. But if the committee members ask questions in French, I can answer in French. My presentation will include a few words in French, but I will speak mainly in English.

We're here on behalf of our secretary general, Conrad Sauvé, who's in Haiti today attending on behalf of the International Federation of Red Cross the meeting of the interim commission for the reconstruction of Haiti that is taking place in Haiti today.

We'll be brief with our opening comments, and we look forward to answering your questions and participating in this important discussion. I would like to take a moment to introduce myself and my colleagues who are here with me.

My name is Susan Johnson. I am the director general for the international operations of the Canadian Red Cross and I've been with the Red Cross movement for about 12 years, here in Canada, in Geneva, and in New York.

Richard Clair was until very recently our country director in Haiti. He has been there for the last year. Obviously he has been dealing with the day-to-day operations in Haiti, and has many insights into the challenges we have faced there and that we will continue to face.

Pam Aung Thin is our national director of public affairs and government relations. Pam has been in the forefront here in Canada, telling the story of the Haiti earthquake to Canadians from the perspective of the Red Cross. She will also be available to answer questions during the discussion period.

The Canadian Red Cross is a name recognized by many Canadians, but the full scope of our services is understood by very few. Our organization touches Canadians at home and the most vulnerable people around the world every day. We respond to emergencies in Port-au-Prince or in Petawawa. We support health work in Mali or in Mississauga. Our reach is determined not by boundaries or borders but simply by where the most vulnerable people may be in need. We are the largest humanitarian organization in Canada and we are part of the largest humanitarian network in the world.

Our strength comes from our vast network of volunteers, who are able to respond to international crises, like the one in Haiti, but also like all the ones that take place in Canada, as was the case last year when Hurricane Igor hit Canada’s east coast. We are the preferred organization of Canadians when they want to make donations during international disasters and crises.

Our core funding does not come from governments, but we work closely with governments on a project-by-project basis. Internationally, we're one of 186 national societies that are members of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Our preparation, training, investment, and infrastructure allow us to respond rapidly and effectively to crisis situations. Our connections in communities give us unparalleled access to those most in need. At home, Red Cross engagement with diaspora populations provides a unique link to those most affected when a disaster strikes. Abroad, our network allows us to reach individuals and families that others cannot access.

I understand the committee is interested in understanding and improving the Canadian international emergency response with a focus on the Caribbean. This is timely and very appropriate for Canada.

Each year, the Caribbean is hit with natural disasters. Hurricanes batter these islands every year, resulting in the loss of numerous lives, and the costs associated with property losses have a long-term impact on the economy of the islands.

In addition to hurricanes, the region is also frequently hit by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

As part of the International Red Cross network, and often with the generous support of Canadians and the Canadian government, the Canadian Red Cross has been responding to disasters in the Caribbean every year. We work side by side with our sister national societies in the region to help them prepare for and respond more effectively to disasters. I will say a few words about this work and what Canada could be doing to improve our assistance, but first I'd like the start with a short look at what we mean by “disaster”.

It's worth recalling that a disaster is an event that overwhelms the capacity, be that of a family, a village, a city, or a community. An event in and of itself is not necessarily a disaster if the community can withstand the impact. For instance, if people are living in hurricane-proof houses and the hurricane blows through, it can have minimal impact on their security and the well-being of the community. But if people are living in weak, improvised structures, it does not take much to create a disaster and for the community to need the assistance of its neighbours. A disaster results from this combination of the event and the capacity of the community to resist the impact of the event.

How do we best respond to disasters? In our experience, we have learned that the most effective way to respond to disasters is first to build the resilience of families, of communities, so that the impact of the event--such as a hurricane--is minimized. Investing in disaster preparedness means being ready to respond when needed, and with the right materials and people.

I cannot stress enough the need to be prepared before a disaster strikes. It is estimated that every dollar invested in disaster preparedness saves seven dollars in disaster response. Disaster preparedness is more than just infrastructure. The need for sturdy housing, maintained retaining walls, and natural hurricane defences--such as mangrove forests--is evident. However, the training and support for disaster volunteers, the proper planning and implementation of disaster plans, and basic health and safety understanding are just as necessary.

The Red Cross, through its network and communities, engages governments at all levels, and we offer our expertise and key services that are needed before, during, and after disasters. In the context of this study the committee is undertaking, we feel that one of the responsibilities of government is to continue and work together to support the needs of governments in affected regions. We must work together to build the knowledge and understanding to be ready when the next emergency strikes.

We can see the impact of these kinds of investments in the international Red Cross engagement in Haiti. In Haiti, in response to the January 2010 earthquake, the International Red Cross has undertaken its largest ever disaster response in a single country. The Canadian Red Cross, in collaboration with the Haitian Red Cross, had been working on the ground in Haiti long before the January earthquake. We've been working there, with the Haitian Red Cross, to help build their capacity to respond to the regular hurricane season. This has included first aid training for volunteers and other community disaster preparedness initiatives.

In the first hour after the earthquake, Haitian Red Cross volunteers--many of whom were themselves victims of the earthquake--were combing through the mountains of debris, searching for signs of life. They were also providing immediate first aid to those most in need.

In the hours after the earthquake, other national societies, including an emergency response contingent of the Canadian Red Cross, began to arrive in Haiti. The regional and international system of the Red Cross was fully mobilized. Relief goods that were in stock in Panama and elsewhere in the region and people from the other islands in the Caribbean, from Central America, South America, Canada, and the U.S. were all called upon to be part of the response. The people and the goods fit into an already tried and true system, which has been built by the International Red Cross over many years. It's a system that we review and improve regularly.

To give you a better picture of Haiti and the work currently under way, I am going to now turn to my colleague, Richard Clair, so that he can share with you some of his experiences and observations from his experience over the last year.

[Richard Clair, Country Director, Haiti, Canadian Red Cross]

Thanks.

Until yesterday I was the country representative of the Canadian Red Cross in Haiti. The year 2010 in Haiti reminds me a bit of the old country and western song that went “If it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have luck at all”. Haiti was hit by an earthquake, a cholera outbreak, political instability, and a hurricane as well. The word “resilient” does not even come close to describing the Haitian people.

Haiti was experiencing problems long before the earthquake, and this catastrophe did nothing to help things. In fact, 80% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. It is impossible to travel around the country without being struck by this devastating poverty. The statistics on access to drinking water, education and health care are shocking. But we must not give up and say that there is nothing we can do.

Since January 12, over one million emergency relief items have been delivered by the Red Cross. From January on--and yes, this process is ongoing--2.5 million litres of safe drinking water have been produced daily. To put that into perspective, this is the same as providing 20 litres of water every day to every one of your constituents in your respective ridings here.

Access to medical treatment was an immediate need after the earthquake and continues to be a priority of the Red Cross. To date, more than 216,000 people have received care at a Red Cross facility.

The Red Cross movement responded quickly and effectively in the emergency phase immediately after the earthquake. We have delivered millions of litres of water, tens of thousands of hygiene kits, and hundreds of thousands of units of plastic sheeting and tents. To date, we have built close to 6,000 temporary hurricane and earthquake-resistant shelters.

I would like to clarify something about the distribution of water. After the first few cases of cholera appeared, we were particularly afraid that the displaced persons camp would be the hardest hit, but thanks in particular to a massive distribution of water, which is continuing to this day, and to a considerable awareness and prevention campaign by Red Cross volunteers, the impact of cholera in the displaced persons camps was reduced considerably.

The Canadian Red Cross is putting a lot of its resources into shelters, working primarily in the regions of Jacmel and Leogane. We have committed to building 7,500 shelters and have built over 1,200 so far. That means that more than 6,000 people are no longer living in tents, thanks to Canadian donations. We are picking up steam, and we'll be finished with construction by early fall.

The shelters we are building are sturdy, earthquake resistant, hurricane resistant shelters that can house an average-size family of five people. We are also working with partners to provide water and sanitation access in the communities where we are building shelters. The idea is to provide basic shelter to families who lost their houses in the earthquake but to also help rebuild communities around them.

Shelter is, and will remain, one of the greatest challenges facing the Haitian people. Ensuring that the Haitian people are moved out of temporary shelters and into more permanent homes will continue to usurp large amounts of time and money from international actors. Currently there are approximately 800,000 Haitians living in temporary shelters. It is estimated that a year from now there will still be 400,000.

Shelter difficulties are about more than just walls and cement. Land ownership rights are an impediment to providing the help needed. The Canadian government has an opportunity to advocate strongly for clear and fair land assessments by the Haitian government. This is essential to moving forward with both public and private reconstruction.

Our second-biggest investment is in the health care system. We are working with many partners to move this forward. We've committed to helping rebuild the Saint Michel hospital in Jacmel. We are also rebuilding clinics and are providing community-based health programs, which will be centred in the southeast of the country. We are implementing programs that are sustainable. We expect to work in Haiti for the next five to ten years.

We are also working on small-scale mitigation projects for reducing natural disaster risks in communities. We are also doing gender-based violence prevention.

And lastly, we are working very closely with the Haitian Red Cross to strengthen its abilities so it can become a more solid organization for supporting Haiti’s communities now and in the years to come. The Haitian Red Cross, like the Canadian Red Cross, is an important partner for public authorities, and it is our responsibility to become a stronger organization so it can come to the aid of its fellow citizens in moments of crisis.

I will now pass the remarks over to Susan.

[Susan Johnson]

Thank you, Richard.

I'll just close with a few remarks now on partnership and our partnership with the Canadian government.

On a daily basis, the Red Cross is helping vulnerable communities around the world, thanks in large part to the support we enjoy from the federal government. In response to the earthquake in Haiti, Canadian government action was immediate, and the support has been steadfast. A shining example of this is the new field hospital that was created through a partnership with CIDA and the Canadian Red Cross. This field hospital was deployed for the first time on December 3 to Carrefour in Haiti, where we've been treating the cholera outbreak. More than 1,300 people have now been treated since that hospital was established.

With this mobile hospital, which is a first for the International Red Cross in this hemisphere, we can now be on the ground and working in an emergency situation a day after we've been called in. It ensures a rapid and comprehensive response to even complex medical situations. This would not be possible without government support.

As with any partnership, the Canadian Red Cross is working closely with the government to strengthen our bond. Together we have made some important investments in building real capacity to respond to disasters in this region and around the globe. In addition to the mobile hospital, we have relief supplies ready to ship to respond to urgent needs. We have trained Red Cross staff and volunteers who are well prepared to face the most complex of disaster situations.

This stand-by capacity takes everyday investment, and we would encourage the Government of Canada to continue and to in fact increase efforts in this regard. Our unique capacities and experiences around the globe make us a valuable partner of the Government of Canada in policy development in the areas of international humanitarian assistance, relief, reconstruction, and capacity development.

I would also like to note that the Red Cross is not only a disaster preparedness and response organization. We make big contributions to addressing a range of other humanitarian needs. But with regard to today's subject, I think you will have appreciated from our remarks here today that we have a wide base of knowledge and expertise in the matter.

We now look forward to responding to any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Johnson. I know that, just in context, you are the first witnesses we have on this whole situation of Haiti and disaster response. I just wanted to give some context in terms of your being here today. Thank you very much.

As is normally our custom, we're going to start with the opposition parties, and Mr. Pearson is going to start for seven minutes.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome. I think we all appreciate very much all that you have done. We know it's a real struggle there to try to coordinate it all, and we appreciate very much what the Red Cross has done.

I know that many of the members here are going to drill down to try to get particular information. I wonder if I could start with some broad strokes first.

Regarding the Haiti interim commission, I was there in New York when Bill Clinton was there and talking about how it is to be coordinated. I realize there have been some difficulties internationally around that. Sometimes it was around timing, around reports that were supposed to be coming. I would like to get from you your assessment of how that was handled. I know there have been other relief and emergency situations around the world that have been difficult. Here was one in which we took a former president and made an interim commission, to try to coordinate all of this along with the government report from Haiti itself that was supposed to be coming out. I've heard so many mixed signals on that as to whether that was actually a good idea or not, and I wonder if we could get at least some of the lessons learned from the Red Cross in that process.

[Susan Johnson]

Let me just say a couple of words about that. Certainly we'll be in a better position after today, with our secretary general participating in today's meeting.

Of course we have been following closely the interim commission's work—the creation of the commission and the work of the commission to date. I think it is fair to say that the commission had some start-up difficulties in terms of getting going. I think we can all appreciate why some of that might be the case, given the complexity of moving forward on multiple fronts at the same time.

In these last months of what is supposed to be an 18-month commission, I think it's yet to be seen whether we're going to see real traction and clarity in terms of decision-making and so on going forward. Certainly from a Red Cross point of view, we think that the effort to create that kind of mechanism in which the Haitian government, with the international community, however organized—and the international community has made the choices as to how it wants to be organized in this regard—has the opportunity to see the breadth of what assistance is possible for the country and to have a say in terms of how that assistance is organized.

Some of the mechanical questions, as to how that's been done in terms of projects coming well to the committee and things like that, are details. I think that the actual creation and the intent to set that up and create that unity of leadership has been an important step for Haiti. As I said at the very beginning, we'll have a better sense ourselves of what the day-to-day workings of the committee are, now that we're much more integrated in the workings of it.

Richard, I don't know if you have anything to say from the in-Haiti perspective.

[Richard Clair]

The big question was whether this was going to be a parallel structure to the government in place. That's still not resolved, you see. The political instability in the country has made it even more difficult, because in the last few months very few decisions seem to be coming from the government. You've had the political instability. You've had the commission's role. The actors are the same on both sides, to a certain extent. We're not sure how it's going to work out. They have to wait and see. But there were competing forces in play, and because of the vacuum of political leadership, I don't think things advanced as quickly as they should have.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

For you, is it more or less the lead agency moving into that, the organization, as that interim commission kind of stalled for a while and was working its way through that process? How did you find operating within that context, when everybody was asking people to wait, or Mr. Clinton was asking people to wait, where you had these emergency situations you were trying to respond to? Did that make it difficult? Was it disjointed?

[Richard Clair]

Yes. We kept meeting with them. We met with the executive director, Gabriel Verret, through the federation.

We kept them informed of the progress we were making. We're still in the emergency recovery stage, so we're still providing them with the information. Shelter was one of the main ones we were presenting, and shelter was going to be needed one way or another, so we kept moving and kept them in the loop, informing them along the way. That is how we proceeded.

[Susan Johnson]

Perhaps just to clarify, the interim commission is looking at mid- to longer-term investments in terms of infrastructure and so on in the country as part of supporting the Haitian government's long-term development plan. As a humanitarian organization dealing with the more short-term and some of the medium-term needs, we coordinate first and foremost with the humanitarian sector, which is coordinated essentially by the UN system, the cluster system, which I'm sure you've heard a bit about.

In terms of the short-term emergency needs we're dealing with, be it in shelter or health or water and sanitation, there is another mechanism in which that coordination takes place, which has actually been quite effective. I would say shelter is the most effective of all and that we've been able to share information, get a full picture from the other actors, and move forward the work that we want to get done—within what is possible in the context of Haiti.

The commission's effectiveness or ineffectiveness has not been an impediment to our getting on with our emergency humanitarian assistance.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

I'm wondering if it's a model that they kind of put out there after Haiti. You get a former president to do it. To me, the jury is still out on that model. Is that the assessment of a lot of the groups still working there, waiting to see if it will actually be effective?

[Susan Johnson]

It may well be, but there will be so many contextual factors. I don't know that it's relevant to say that one model works or doesn't work in all places. After the earthquake in Haiti last year I think people were looking at modelling it on something similar to what existed in Indonesia after the tsunami. But the context politically is so different, and the strength of the national government in the Indonesian case is so different from the strength of the national government in the Haitian case that in the end the comparison doesn't really hold a lot of value.

I certainly believe that the international community will look at this experience over time and try to draw out of it what lessons can be drawn. But I would be cautious to suggest that because it worked or didn't work in one place, it will or won't work somewhere else. It really depends on the relative capacities of the national government, and the interests of international actors partnering with that government.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Fair enough. That's good.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You have time for a quick question.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

On the ongoing tension that seems to have resulted, I know there were something like 10,000 NGOs in Haiti not too long after the whole thing happened, and a good many of them were indigenous. Some of them have come to our offices and talked to us. Some of them felt somewhat left out of that coordinated process, and others didn't.

As far as your operation and your work, did you find it was easy enough to coordinate with the local NGOs? Many have been there for a long time, trying to get their voices out there within government and others. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Richard Clair]

We have our local humanitarian organization, which is the Haitian Red Cross, so we coordinate our work through them for everything. We don't face the same dilemma that way. We work on the higher levels through the federation, and on the local stuff, the Haitian Red Cross already has a network across the country.

It might be more difficult for others to plug themselves in, but we have a system in place. The local branch network of the Haitian Red Cross is connected within the Government of Haiti, at the higher level through the federation to the UN system, and through other interlocutors. That's one of the advantages of working for the Red Cross, I would say.

[Glen Pearson, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Pearson.

Since Mr. Sauvé is not here today, if there is any important, pertinent information that you could forward, that would be great, given the fact that he's at those meetings.

[Susan Johnson]

We'd be very happy to follow up with the committee with further information on that question. There may well be other questions in the course of the afternoon.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much. That's great.

Mr. Dorion, the floor is yours.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Johnson, Mr. Clair, Ms. Aung Thin, thank you for being here.

I have always really admired the Red Cross. I think the creation of the Red Cross was a very important step in the history of humanity. Henri Dunant certainly did something extraordinary because, for the first time, we saw the creation of charitable organizations whose statements moved beyond national and religious borders. I simply wanted to mention that first.

I was in New York when each country came to put forward its contribution for Haiti. Mr. Pearson was there too.

How will the money that was promised get to the areas you are focused on? Does the money promised by the various countries at that time—and we are talking about billions of dollars here—really exist and has it materialized? Have the governments made the contributions they said they would?

[Richard Clair]

An analysis was recently done. Several funds have not yet been paid out. A number of donors seem to be waiting for a new government to be created before advancing these funds.

According to the UN report I recently saw, several billions of dollars have not yet been paid.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I was in Haiti last April on a departmental mission. We were told that safety was the number one problem. Do you see it that way? We visited a prison built by Canada, we were shown how Canadian police officers—in this case, police officers from Quebec—trained a new Haitian police force, and so on. Does this problem seem critical to you, a fundamental aspect of the dossier? And has there been progress in the area of safety?

[Richard Clair]

I can speak only for the Canadian Red Cross. There really are safety problems in Haiti. I think that, on average, two police officers are killed each week in Port-au-Prince. The political situation also sometimes prevents us from doing our work. So, last year, we stopped our work for almost a week because of rioting.

So the matter of safety is real, even if the MINUSTAH brings some amount of stability. When we are in Haiti, safety is something that we must always consider when we want to do work.

[Susan Johnson]

I would like to say that safety is a factor that we must really consider. As for the Red Cross, with the examples that Richard just gave, I can say that it has, more or less, managed to respond to the needs of the people. Working with the Haitian Red Cross, we have integrated into the community, and people know us. For example, in the case of Leogane, people in the community reacted to protect the safety of the Canadian Red Cross and the Haitian Red Cross colleagues.

I can say that, so far, the Red Cross has always found a way to do its work, but it is true that we need to consider safety every day.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

One of the features of the international response in Haiti is the extremely strong presence—this was the case last April—of Cuban doctors. Are they still there? Do you know if they are effective? At that time, people were giving praise all over the place. Are they still there?

[Susan Johnson]

To be honest, we don’t have contact with the Cuban doctors. I heard the same thing, but we do not have any information on it.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

My colleague might want to ask more questions.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

We saw that you acted as first responders following this disaster that struck the Haitian people. What is your vision after one year or longer? What will your participation be? Where do you figure in the rebuilding in Haiti?

[Richard Clair]

We are doing an enormous amount of work on shelters. We are spending about $60 million dollars to build shelters. There is also the water and the purification of the water. We are working very closely with the Netherlands Red Cross, which is doing that part of the work.

As for health care, there is a $25 million investment, and we have different partners, including the Sainte-Justine hospital in Montreal. We are working on rebuilding the hospital in Jacmel, we are working on community health in the regions. We are also working on strengthening the Haitian Red Cross, because that is the organization that is there and that can respond to needs when disasters strike.

We are also working on reducing the risks in Haiti, in addition to working on protecting children. We are conveying anti-violence messages because violence is a real problem in that community. These are the major challenges for the Canadian Red Cross.

[Susan Johnson]

As I said in my comments, we were already in Haiti before January 2010. It is clear to us that we will be there in the years to come. We cannot imagine that we are going to do a little bit of emergency work and that it will respond adequately to the needs of Haitians.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Still, we have seen a generous response from Canadians and Quebeckers, among others. People donated to a particular fund, and we asked the population to give generously. What is left of these funds? Do you still have enough money?

[Susan Johnson]

We can talk about the funds that the Canadian Red Cross currently has. I would ask Pam or Richard to give details.

[Pam Aung Thin, National Director, Public Affairs and Government Relations, Canadian Red Cross]

A good part of our funds have already been spent. As Susan explained, we are addressing not only the emergency phase in the short term, but also the other phases. So far, we have spent over $100 million, and $50 million has already been set aside for other projects. We are also looking at long-term projects, which corresponds to approximately three-quarters of our funds. Through our fund-raising campaign, we collected $200 million.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

People gave money following the disaster. Are donations still coming in? Are they slowing down?

[Pam Aung Thin]

Yes, we continue to receive funds. Even if we don't run a very proactive fund-raising campaign, people still manage to find us and donate. A special fund has been set up specifically for Haiti. All the funds donated to the Red Cross for Haiti are devoted to the efforts in Haiti.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have. We'll come back again.

We will move over to Ms. Brown for ten minutes.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here. There have been many good stories about the Canadian Red Cross, and I want to thank you for the work you do.

What we saw after the Haitian earthquake was the generosity of Canadians who came forward to donate and to ensure that these vulnerable people had access to clean water and to shelters, so we say thank you also to the Canadian public.

I have a couple of questions for you.

Mr. Clair, you made a comment, and that was my question when I was listening to you at first. What kinds of impediments do you find to building these shelters? You talked about land rights. Obviously, international development wants to see people have shelters because that's fundamental to good health and to education for children, and we are contributing to all those things. What is the average length of time that you face in order to get land right disputes settled, and is there a way we can help with that?

Could you comment on that?

[Richard Clair]

In Haiti 70% to 80% of the people are renters, so what we need to find is a balance to strike between the landowner and the tenant, because the shelter that we build is given to the tenant, but it is on the land of the owner. Our shelters can actually be taken apart and moved, but we want to create a sense of community. We're building back where people used to live. We get agreements between the landowner and the tenant; we have teams of lawyers and notaries who draft an agreement together to say that we are allowed to build a shelter on this land for a certain period of time, sometimes for three years, sometimes indefinitely. They can still rent the land part, but the shelter belongs to the tenant.

Land rights are an extremely difficult and complex issue. I'll just give you an example. An international federation tried to lease a piece of land, and they had almost signed the cheque when three other owners showed up.

There is no working land registry system, and a lot of land is held by few individuals in Haiti. To create businesses and to create property rights, what governments could do--and not just the Canadian government--is really push the Haitian government to créer un cadastre, to put a land registry system in place, because that's one of the main issues for businesses to be located there and for resolving the landlord-tenant issues as well. That is a major impediment.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

That leads to my second question. When you were talking earlier, Ms. Johnson, about the Haitian Red Cross, you said that we need to talk about capacity-building there. You made the comment that we're there for years to come.

Where do we start? We know that Canada has an incredibly long history of investment in Haiti to date. In fact, I know some nurses who were there 40 years ago and were participating in humanitarian work then. Have we seen a change? Where do we start? Where do we go from here? What is the future for the Haitian Red Cross, and how can Canada help to build that capacity?

[Susan Johnson]

Thank you very much for the question.

I think from our perspective, we're certainly working very closely with the Haitian Red Cross at the national level, and then also at the local level in the communities where we're working, in Jacmel, for instance, where there is a local branch of the Haitian Red Cross. Our work with them is everything from the simplest practical things like having an actual location where they can work from, helping them with the recruitment and training of volunteers, some first aid training, all the things it takes to be a viable, relevant, local Red Cross, and helping them do that.

Our work is also finding a way of helping them do that in a way that doesn't mean we're doing it for them, that the Haitians themselves are in the leadership positions, that we're with them in that process but not delivering that process for them, so to speak. It also makes it a longer process but one we believe will have more sustainability over the longer term. So we're involved in training of people, in working with Haitian Red Cross on things like good finance systems, good human resources systems, the basic things you need to be a viable organization.

It's very difficult to see how to do this, though, over the long term, because we're only one actor in Haiti. We're talking about a Haitian Red Cross. It's one organization in a broader jigsaw puzzle of what is Haiti today. We're clear that we will stay as a partner with the Haitian Red Cross and we'll do the best we can, but of course it takes place in a broader context. What will happen to Haiti in that broader sense is something that is in many people's hands, certainly not just the Red Cross hands and certainly not just the Haitian Red Cross hands. But we're committed to staying with them and working as closely as we can with them to help them be, as I say, the most relevant humanitarian actor in their own context.

Certainly I think, as Richard was saying earlier, that as the political situation stabilizes and it becomes more possible for people to move on in that sense, it will allow organizations like the Haitian Red Cross...it will allow this work to go forward more effectively.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

There are other NGOs you're working with. Can you tell us about some of those other NGOs? How do you look for an NGO that has stability and has the capacity to work?

[Susan Johnson]

Do you want to talk about it?

[Richard Clair]

We work with a German organization called Diakonie. It's a Lutheran church organization from Germany. They are building permanent shelters in an area in one of our districts. There's a shelter cluster that decides the Canadian Red Cross can work here or there, so in the part where we're working, which is called La Vallée, just west of Jacmel, we're working closely with them. Before we work closely with them we ensure we have the same type of approach, the independence of their work, and they go through a heavy vetting system to make sure they treat issues the same way and that they address the needs of the most vulnerable.

That is just one of the organizations. The American Red Cross works with many others to build shelters across Haiti as well. We try to work first with the other Red Cross societies, such as the Netherlands Red Cross and the Danish Red Cross. We partnered with the German and the Finnish Red Cross for the hospital, and the Japanese Red Cross for the cholera treatment centre. So we do have these privileged partnerships, but others work outside the movement as well.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Very interesting, thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're going to now move to Mr. Dewar.

Sir.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our guests for their update.

As you were speaking I was thinking of the massive amount of work that needs to be done and the amount of work that has been done. I think your report acknowledges the work that has been done, but I guess most people have been concerned about the expectations and frankly the hope that people had at the beginning, because there was such an incredible response, not just from Canadians, but globally.

I think most people were happy with the first response and then it became a concern of many. People I was talking to had been on the ground where things were stymied and a cluster of resources was locked in. That had to do with capacity, it had to do with problems around the airport and moving items out. But now we're at a point where it is a year later and people are starting to say it really is a challenge to see things developing. I know some of that is political, and we won't discuss that with you. But you were touching on the number of shelters you've built and you were looking at a forecast of what was it, 7,000 by next fall?

[Richard Clair]

It's 7,500.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So 7,500, and right now you have how many?

[Richard Clair]

We have 1,200.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay. You probably were projecting to have built more at this point?

[Richard Clair]

Slightly more. It's the logistics chain that is the problem—the buildup, and then you can implement.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I figured that. I was going to ask you about that. You already touched on land access being one of them, and getting a model that works.

Is it your belief that you'll hit that target by the fall?

[Richard Clair]

Yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

So you're talking about September, October?

[Richard Clair]

Yes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

One of the things that I think is important, which we've seen in other areas—and you've already touched on this—is that when you're helping, you're working with people locally. Do you have numbers of how many Haitians are actually employed in the work you're doing?

[Richard Clair]

With the Canadian Red Cross, I think there are 700 Haitians employed in construction and technical and support services, throughout Leogane, Jacmel, and Port-au-Prince.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Can you open that up a bit for us? I think that's one of the things people want to know more about: how it works, how you hire people.

[Richard Clair]

We hire people primarily through the Haitian Red Cross. When we put our plans in place, the construction crews are all Haitian; the supervisors are all Haitian. We also get the communities involved in the construction. We select people from their own communities to do the digging of the trenches for their own homes.

The community is very much involved. We mobilize the communities with volunteers who go into communities to find out whose houses were destroyed. We send technical teams out to do the assessment. Once the technical teams say Mr. Dewar's house has been destroyed, we check Mr. Dewar. Is he one of the most vulnerable people? Is it a single family...monoparentales ?

We have a whole process, first of all, going into the communities, identifying who are the most vulnerable and whether their homes have been destroyed. This is a group of volunteers who go out and who are paid a slight amount of money. Then we have groups of technical expertise—engineers—and all of them are Haitian. They go into the communities to do an assessment of the land, to see where the debris needs to be cleared.

Then we have the crews who peg out the land. We have the excavation group, primarily from the community, and then we have our charpentier people who put up the housing. Then the Dutch Red Cross comes in and puts the water and the sanitation in for almost every house, depending. In some communities they share—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Are they working with locals, or how does that work?

[Richard Clair]

Absolutely. Everybody works through locals. The planning is done by some of the delegates, and we're trying to replace ourselves as we go along. We try to get as much of the local expertise as possible. For example, the engineer the Dutch hired is a local Haitian.

[Susan Johnson]

And a lot of the lawyers are also.

[Richard Clair]

The lawyers, the notaries, the site supervisors. We hire as many people.... We don't bring people from Canada or other places to do this work.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

That's helpful. When we hear about numbers of places built, I think it's also important to see there's a ripple effect. Everyone talks about capacity-building these days: the skills, also the cash for work so you can stimulate the local economy. That's a principle that I think most people want to see followed.

We haven't talked about it or touched on it, but I know you do work with women. There's a lot of concern about the exploitation of women. It's not new, but it is heightened with the precarious situation people are living in.

We often talk about security, but when you look at concerns around gender violence and the precarious situation women are in.... I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about that as an issue and how you're dealing with it.

[Richard Clair]

We have a specific violence prevention program.

Violence against women is one of the main social issues identified in Haiti. What we do when we give shelters out is to try to ensure that if the couple is married, for example, the property right goes to both the man and the woman. For couples who are not married, the title goes to the woman because we understand the women are in more vulnerable situations.

In our communities, our work crews, we deliberately select women to do work. In our warehouse--I hope you will come to Haiti to see the massive warehouse we have--we hire women specifically in non-traditional work. We try to address that side of it.

On the violence prevention, we're training our staff—the local staff, the regular staff—identifying violence, and also finding out the resources in Haiti to address those issues, such as the social system or the police or whatever. We need to find the local actors who can help these people.

We don't have specific programs or halfway houses, but we are in the community. When we do find these facts, we try to get the resources to them and show them where they can get assistance.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

On the last piece, I have a question I ask all aid agencies. What are your administrative costs with regard to your work in Haiti?

[Susan Johnson]

By that do you mean the actual costs of running the team we have in Haiti?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I guess I'm looking for an aggregate of what your administrative costs in Haiti would be. Is it 5%, 10%...?

[Susan Johnson]

It's 12%.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're going to move back to Mr. Lunney as we start our second round. You have five minutes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, folks, for being here. We very much appreciate the good work the Red Cross has done, and we are certainly proud of that work. I appreciate also the way you started off this discussion with the very practical remarks about defining disaster versus an event versus the capacity of a nation. That's sort of the direction I want to go in a moment.

I just wanted to pick up on some of the themes. Since my colleagues have asked some of the questions I had lined up, and you've answered them very well, let's go on from there. The land reform question and the lack of access to land was a good one, I think. But you know, we have a real problem here still, a year later after the fact, with debris removal. Maybe that's a good place to start.

To what extent is rubble still an impediment to progress and to actually building those houses you want to build and to housing the people who are desperately going to need it as we move towards a difficult season, weatherwise, there?

[Richard Clair]

In the peri-rural areas and the peri-urban areas, it's not such a big issue. But in Port-au-Prince, it's a tremendous issue. The rubble is taking up so much space that it's very difficult to build a new shelter on a place you have to clear. Clearing it can be very dangerous, as well, so a lot of organizations are loath to get involved in the clearing.

As well, there's this aspect of building back better. I wish I'd brought the pictures of what they call the bidonvilles on the sides of the hills, where people are living. We have to be careful when we do rebuild to build safely and to give a bit of space. That means that some people will not have a roof over their heads in the same area. You can't rebuild better if you build back the way it was.

Rubble removal is a huge issue, and it's still one of the major impediments to building in the greater Port-au-Prince area.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

You mentioned in your remarks the houses you're building. I think you said you had 1,200 shelters prepared now and will have 7,500 by the fall. There are some pictures in the documents you gave us. We were talking about temporary shelters versus more permanent ones. I wanted to clarify whether the pictures we see here--you might have said that they're built on rented space--are the temporary shelters you were talking about. Or are these ones that might be considered permanent shelters? Can you help us with that?

[Richard Clair]

They're very sturdy structures. Let's put it that way. I think most will probably become permanent. We call them transitional shelters, but compared to what they had before, they're much better built. They're much more sturdy. They're much more resistant than anything they've ever had before. They are 18 square metres. They're not huge, but they're as big as if not bigger than many of what they had before. They're very solid. And people are very happy with them. We have letters from people who have received them about the sturdiness and how well built they are.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I appreciate that. I'm just looking at those pictures, though, and I'm thinking about hurricanes. In your earlier remarks you were talking about their being unfortunate in Haiti. They are in the eye of a lot of nasty storms. And you feel that these shelters--they are certainly a big upgrade from where they started--would withstand the kinds of hurricanes Haiti has.

[Richard Clair]

We had them tested. SNC-Lavalin is the firm we hired. They did a study of the wind speeds in both Jacmel and Leogan, where they are most vulnerable. We built them to withstand higher winds in Jacmel than in Leogan. They are absolutely designed and built with engineers from Quebec. So we're very confident that they would resist it.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

There's a lot of frustration on the ground still, I gather, with organizational problems in a government that, first of all, as my colleague Mr. Dewar said earlier.... We can talk about the political challenges in another forum, perhaps. But there's certainly frustration with the government's lack of capacity to deliver operational capacity and essential services. The institutions really lack the confidence of the people. To what extent is that lack of organization in government capacity interfering with the ability of the Red Cross to deliver the services you're trying to deliver on the ground?

[Richard Clair]

Luckily, though, we have a privileged relationship with the Haitian Red Cross that can open doors for us. For example, last year we met with the Minister of Health to get the approval to rebuild the Jacmel hospital, and this was in the middle of the cholera epidemic and he was stashed somewhere. So we do have privileged access thanks to the Haitian Red Cross.

You have to remember, as well, that I think about 20% of the public servants were killed in the earthquake, and that has a huge impact on the delivery of services. And it was a challenge before then. Plus you have the interim commission, which is another organization that is drawing qualified people away from government, and there is competition there.

But, again, we have a privileged relationship with the Haitian Red Cross, which is able to open doors for us. We've been able to get things out of the port. We have been able to establish a logistical chain. Because of the relationships we have and the size we have, it's been a bit less difficult than for other organizations, I would say.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Well, I think one of the reasons why Canadians have a lot of confidence in the Red Cross—and the government certainly appreciates your good work—is the great model you have with capacity in the region, human resources in the region, and integration with local authorities, which certainly seems to be bearing fruit for you in that regard. And I think that's a model we certainly respect.

In regard to the building of the hospital, I heard some remarks in relation to that. Is that a hospital in Jacmel that we're taking about?

[Richard Clair]

Yes.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

I think I heard about a relationship with a hospital in Montreal. I'm wondering if you could relate a little about that experience. Where are we at in that institutional rebuild, and how does that work with the relationship with the hospital? And are you using local materials and local workers? How long does it take to rebuild an institution like that?

[Richard Clair]

It takes a while.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

You can answer the question, but I just want to let Mr. Lunney know it's all of his time.

[Susan Johnson]

Why don't I just start with a little bit of the background? Then I'll ask Richard if he wants to jump in with some more of the up-to-date details.

We've been working for several months now with the Ministry of Health in the Jacmel area and with four organizations in Quebec, and those are the Sainte-Justine Hospital....

So what are the actual...?

[Richard Clair]

I forget. Is it USI?

[Susan Johnson]

USI of the Université de Montréal and the public health agency of Quebec and of Montreal. So there are four health organizations in Quebec we've partnered with, all of which are going to play a different role in this initiative where we're going to be rebuilding and rehabilitating the St-Michel hospital in Jacmel. The St-Michel hospital exists in Jacmel, but it's a debilitated structure and it needs serious work.

So we've been looking at that and looking at developing, in fact, the master plan for the rebuilding of the hospital. Our initiative to play that role has been approved by the Ministry of Health in Haiti. As I think Pam mentioned earlier, we've sort of ear-marked some of the funds we have for this integrated health initiative, which is going to include the rebuilding of the hospital, the building of probably three or four community clinics in more rural areas around Jacmel, and training for the professionals who will be needed to work in the hospital and in the clinics, as well as community basic public health programming that we'll be doing hand in hand with the Haitian Red Cross. It's an integrated program that's going to deal with basic health issues as well as provide tertiary care.

We've been constructing the partnership, essentially, and working with the Ministry of Health, as Richard explained. We are now in a dialogue with the Japanese government, which is also indicating interest in coming into the partnership with us to assist with the actual reconstruction of the hospital. We don't have the full plans yet of the hospital. It's still early days in terms of the design and everything else. We actually have a mission going from Quebec in March, so all of the partners and the Canadian Red Cross will be going to Jacmel to look at the site and look at the situation and develop further the detailed plans in terms of how all the partners come together to work on that.

One of the reasons we've built the partnership with the organizations in Quebec is that in terms of longer-term sustainability, we wanted the relationship with Sainte-Justine and the other organizations in Quebec in terms of the training of health professionals. We see ourselves, as the Red Cross, as pulling these partners together creating sort of the impetus or the catalyst for all that to happen, providing a certain amount of resources for that for a period of time, but then over time stepping back. We are imagining the organizations in Quebec and the Jacmel Ministry of Health sustaining that partnership over a longer term, once we've done what we can with the resources we have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. Lunney.

Mr. Rae, sir.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I'm very interested in the question of economic development in Haiti. In my one visit there after the earthquake, one just had an overwhelming sense that there really wasn't an economy, that there was almost no way for people to actually make a living, apart from the reconstruction. What efforts are you and others making to use the reconstruction as an opportunity to give people a chance to work?

[Susan Johnson]

That's an interesting observation, and absolutely true at a certain level.

I would say, though, that Haiti is an example of where you have a very rich what we would call informal economy. People are trading and doing business on a very active level. You can certainly buy and trade just about everything in the country. What it doesn't mean, though, is that an official economy is in place where you have a functioning tax system and things like this.

What are we doing? We, the Canadian Red Cross, are not ourselves experts in what we call “livelihoods work”, which is that sort of small-scale family-level or even community-level economic development. There are other national societies—Red Crosses—like the British Red Cross and a couple of others, who are more expert in that area. For instance, in the shelter work we're involved in we've been partnering with some other national societies to bring that sort of small-scale economic activity into the programming, but it's certainly not at the level of building a factory or a major economic input that's going to employ hundreds of people for a long, long term. That's not what we see ourselves in the business of doing.

We're probably not the best-placed people to have that conversation with.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

When you do your reconstruction, when you look at the work you're doing on the housing side, all that work is presumably done by local people.

[Susan Johnson]

Absolutely. For the time that we are engaging local people, which is, as we described earlier, a very deliberate strategy, we hire local people, engage local people, and offer them training so that they actually come out of the experience with upgraded skills. We do make those kinds of initiatives. For the time that they're with us, they will get paid a very decent wage. They'll be treated humanely and appropriately, and they will come out of that experience with upgraded skills.

We're making that contribution, but what I was trying to say is that we're not in that sort of macroeconomic development business.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Understood.

I have a completely different question.

The Red Cross system must plan for a certain number of disasters of a certain size every year, everywhere. Can you give us some insight into that in terms of what your overall sense of the world...? We have to stop being surprised by these events. They happen. They come. They have a huge impact. Depending on the poverty of the country, the impact can be more or less. We can see the recovery rates from the poorest countries and the recovery rates from the richer countries.

What's the scale we're looking at around the world? Do you have any sense of that?

[Susan Johnson]

We do have a sense of that. It's on the basis of that sense of that, the working assumptions we have, that we have decided to make certain investments, which are investments in preparedness, essentially. A working assumption of ours is that these large-scale catastrophic events will increase, that we will not see a diminishing of this. We will see an increase of this for two or three reasons. One is that a lot of disasters are water-related, which is to say hurricanes or cyclones, or the opposite, which is to say drought. Those are climatically affected disasters.

As climate changes there is an impact on the nature of hurricanes and cyclones and so on, that combined with more and more people living in densely populated urban areas. We have gone from being a rural population globally to being an urban population globally, so we see more and more people at risk in highly densely populated and at-risk situations in very poor neighbourhoods in cities. When you get that combination of the event and people living in extreme poverty, that is where you get disaster on a massive scale. We completely expect to see that. We have Haiti this year. We had the Pakistan super-floods, and those are at the mega level. Below that there are several.

For the international federation in any one year somewhere between 40 and 60 emergencies demand an international response. That could be anything from simply some relief goods being shipped, or some people being moved to organize the response. Certainly that is the level at which we're organized. It leads us then to have agreements between national societies in terms of having materials already pre-positioned and having what we call contingency plans with regard to, depending on the scale of the event, who will be called upon to respond, with what materials, and with what people. We have people trained to be the first responders, if you like, as part of the Red Cross system. We invest exactly because we have this sense of what the needs will be. As I said in my earlier remarks, we invest every day in preparedness, in materials being pre-positioned, in people being trained, and testing systems, so when there is a need to respond we know the system works.

[Richard Clair]

There is a good report called the World Disasters Report that's published every year by the federation and it gives you a good view of the overall emergencies and disasters across the world for that specific year. It is worthwhile for the committee to--

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Unfortunately, you haven't developed a predictive power yet.

[Susan Johnson]

You can look at the last 30 years of history, and the top 20 at-risk countries and the top at-risk cities are identified. There is a certain predictability of what we have been managing and what we expect to see over the next coming years.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Is that information available in this report as well, or where is it?

[Susan Johnson]

That information is available through other reports, which we could make available to the committee. Certainly, based on that, the international federation has established the hubs of Panama, Kuala Lumpur, and Dubai in terms of the physical proximity to where events happen and the logistics systems you need to have to move people and goods quickly to the places where they are going to need it.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Am I done? Is that what the nod means? Does it mean I have another question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

If you have one more question, go ahead.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I'm very interested in this question of what is the world's infrastructure to respond to this, and where does Canada fit into this. Can you give us your candid assessment as to whether the government has as effective an emergency response infrastructure internationally as it could have?

[Susan Johnson]

I think the Canadian government has done remarkably well as an effective disaster responder as part of a global community. One of the things I referred to in my remarks is this new addition over the last year of agreeing with the Canadian Red Cross to co-invest in creating this rapid deployment hospital. This is a wonderful addition, in the sense of the toolbox the Canadian government has when it wants to respond to an event. We saw that used in December.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

That is in addition to the DART.

[Susan Johnson]

Yes, it is in addition, and separate from.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

What is it different from?

[Susan Johnson]

It's quite different. It's much smaller, mobile, and modular, so we are able to tailor the hospital to the size and nature of the event to which we're responding. For instance, when we got called to respond to the cholera outbreak in Haiti, we took pieces of the hospital—if I could put it that way—and we composed the initial team based on what we knew we were going to need in-country. We have that capacity to be very flexible and very fast.

Also, that particular initiative to build that capacity in this hemisphere speaks to our wanting to have more capacity to respond to events in the Americas. That's an important thing, given what we are seeing in terms of trends in this region, that it's important to be able to respond. As we've said often within the Canadian Red Cross and within the Red Cross family, if an event happens in the Caribbean, we, as Canada, should be among the first there to respond. These are our neighbours. It's great if Norway or Japan can also join in, but in fact it's our responsibility in our own neighbourhood to be part of the arrangements we have among countries in our area. And I'm speaking as the Red Cross. We have that understanding that in a sense there are gradations of response: you know, your neighbour responds first, the same thing as in a village; if you actually need more help, then the people down the road will help. We see ourselves as that, in terms of our proximity to the Caribbean and proximity to Central America and to South America. It leaves us with a certain responsibility and certain opportunities to be very engaged.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Obhrai.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses and thank you to my colleague for giving me his space.

The reason I moved in was to ask about the issue of global community cooperation.

Last Wednesday I went to Brussels, representing Canada. It was an international conference on Haiti. It was organized by Canada, the European Union, the Belgian government, and the Haitian authority. I gave the keynote address. Michaëlle Jean was there as well, and so was the Belgian foreign minister and the commissioners from the European Union.

This was a conference to see, one year later, exactly what was going on in Haiti and what the challenges are. The conference was divided into two parts. One part was on best practices that have come out of the challenges, after one year, for all the NGOs and for the development assistance that has taken place. The second part was about where Canada played a leading role.

My keynote address has already gone to the committee members, and the clerk will confirm when they will get it. The speech I made has gone to translation, and it will be sent over to you so that you can see Canada's position. Please read it as bedtime reading.

We took a very strong stand. We took a very strong international stand on the issue of governance. As a matter of fact, my speech really shocked everyone there. We were there with the UN representative as well as the American representatives. We will send you that. I think you individuals and all of the Canadian NGOs working in Haiti should read the speech and see what came out of that conference, because we were talking about best practices and everything.

Michaëlle Jean mentioned one key issue to me. By the way, I have asked Michaëlle Jean to attend the committee, and she has agreed to come. She is the UNESCO representative. You will send the invitation to her.

One issue Mr. Lunney was talking about that I want to check with you was the issue of land tenure in Haiti. There is no land tenure in Haiti. Henceforth, land has no title. Today you can build something. One of the key issues with the debris not being removed is that those people want to indicate that this is where they used to live, because there's no land title. I want to know from you what the challenges for some of the institutions like yours are.

I allude to one hospital that had been built, and all of a sudden the title of the land has become an issue. The Haitian government can give you the land. The problem is that the Haitian government does not own that land. They don't know who owns that land. So you get conflicting statements coming in. You get conflicting people walking in and saying “This is my piece of land. You have already built this, but I'm sorry, this is not your piece of land. It's my piece of land.”

This has become a big impediment, from what I understood at that conference. Maybe you who are building structures in Haiti want to tell us your experience in reference to land title and the buildings you are making and whether you are facing similar challenges. We have asked. We are going to put in money, and the international community, including the European Union, is now going to work with the Haitian government to try to get a land tenure system in place. But as you will notice from the speech I made, governance has become the strongest impediment to providing long-term solutions, as Bob said, for work, for jobs, and for building the economy. At this current stage, it is bad governance and the lack of institutions, including land tenure.

Tell me about the land tenure issue. What are you trying to do? You're building structures, but are you facing problems?

[Susan Johnson]

Yes. Thank you.

We've certainly had exactly the experience you're speaking of, and Richard mentioned that earlier this afternoon, a couple of examples of that. I mean, we've certainly had a situation.... I'm remembering myself in Leogane, where we were looking at the resettlement of some people into some transitional shelter, and we got very far into a conversation with one person who was the mayor of the area and very close to the end—or what we thought was the end—when another person showed up who was the mayor of the next-door area. Both were claiming to be the mayor of the piece of property we were speaking about.

We have found our way, and I'll let Richard speak a little bit more about this again. We have found our way of validating to all parties and having it sort of authorized by local authorities as to “Yes, it is going to be understood”. As we were saying earlier, we've employed some local Haitian lawyers and notaires who are helping us with this process to validate as best we can and have it be understood by all parties and the local authorities that what we are doing is on solid ground, so to speak.

[Richard Clair]

When it comes to the hospital, we're rebuilding where it is presently. We were looking at other pieces of property, but where the ministry has landed on is where they have the present hospital, so it's reconstruction. So for land, for that piece, I think we're fine. The other piece is huge, and that was what stymied us from the beginning: how do we put shelters on properties where we don't know who the owners are or where they are located? They might be in Miami. They might be in Santo Domingo. They're in other places, other parts of the world.

We brought a system together that acknowledges, through the neighbours and the local authorities, that this person was residing on that piece of land before. He was a tenant before, and they all agree that the owner to whom he pays his rent is this particular person, and it is signed off by the CASEC who is the local municipal government employee. We built this system, consistent with all the other Red Crosses, because we didn't want to all have different systems from different Red Crosses or different organizations. We pooled our resources and asked what it would take to acknowledge that this piece of land belongs to such and such a person, how we would go about designing that. So we designed a process. For some, it's the first piece of paper that shows they actually have some sort of ownership title to the place.

We kind of created a system in Haiti, to a certain extent.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

Would it stand in a court of law, if I were the guy who's making a claim, and you come along and create this system? Can I go to the court of law in Haiti, which is of course not...? Well, you know how it works. Then what? I go to court and challenge it and say that this guy is not the legitimate owner.

[Richard Clair]

But we have that with the pieces of land we don't work on. I mean, it's amazing; land tenure is a huge issue in Haiti. Four or five people claim the same piece of land. We can't resolve everything. We're trying to resolve the biggest problem, which is to get shelters over their heads quickly. We're trying to design a system where we can do it.

Plus, our shelters can be taken down and moved. It's not like somebody is going to push the tenant out and keep the structure. The tenant can take the structure with him. There is an impetus for the owner to keep the tenants on the ground and let them pay rent on the land alone. We had to design a system; we couldn't wait for the government to come up with a system. We had to design something that was workable, acceptable by the community and the local authorities. We were talking earlier about the amount of time it takes to do things and rebuild. That was a huge one. I mean, how can you start rebuilding when you don't know if you have...? So that took some time.

[Deepak Obhrai, Conservative, Calgary East, AB]

You don't know who is the landowner.

Thank you very much.

Bob, read my speech, the speech that I gave to you.

[Bob Rae, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I'll read your speech if you read my book.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

All right. Thank you.

We're going to move on to Madame Deschamps or to Mr. Dorion.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I am going to try to leave a little bit of time for Mr. Doiron.

Ms. Johnson, with regard to funding, you said that it was important that CIDA remain a partner. Actually, following the earthquake, CIDA announced that it would give several millions of dollars.

What type of emergency response agreement or plan do you have with CIDA? Of the rebuilding projects that you submitted, are any of them currently on hold?

[Susan Johnson]

Thank you for the question.

The Canadian Red Cross has a very effective relationship with CIDA. We received a grant from CIDA for the emergency response in Haiti in the first few days, but I forget how much it was for. That grant was to support the Red Cross' actions in Haiti. It was most effective.

It is a system that we use almost every day, because emergencies and disasters occur almost everywhere around the world, as Mr. Ray said. As the Red Cross, we respond to these emergencies every week. We are supported by CIDA in this type of response.

When CIDA announced the counterpart funds, we made two requests for Haiti, for the houses. The two requests totalled about $42 million. CIDA has processed the files very efficiently. We signed the agreements last March and are going with that. We have had no difficulty presenting projects to CIDA. We have a good dialogue with colleagues from the agency. Files have been managed very efficiently.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

In your current or future projects, such as the hospital and the shelters, you referred to various partners: universities, experts, engineers from Quebec. Do you also have an approach that includes the diaspora here?

[Susan Johnson]

Yes, yes.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

How so?

[Susan Johnson]

That is an interesting question. Even before the earthquake, we had a relationship with the diaspora, especially in Montreal. Since the earthquake, we have invested a great deal in the relationship with that diaspora. We have even hired people from the diaspora for the delegation in Haiti. We even have a sort of liaison officer, someone who works for the Canadian Red Cross in Montreal and who liaises with the diaspora in Montreal. This person's job is to help the Haitian diaspora understand the work of the Canadian Red Cross, the context and the challenges it faces.

Would you like to add anything?

[Pam Aung Thin]

We are working not only with the Haitian diaspora in Montreal and in Canada, but also with our colleagues at the American Red Cross, who are also working on the relationships with their Haitian community in areas where there is a large Haitian population, such as Miami and New York. They, too, are making a lot of connections with the community. There is a sharing of information not only here, in Canada, but also between the communities in other cities.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I will try to be brief, since I want to leave a bit of time for Mr. Doiron.

From the outside, we see a lot of people with good intentions, people who banded together, people who took up small collections. The continued difficulty in removing the rubble that is still there was mentioned. Is it a lack of manpower or of specialized machinery?

I know that a team trained about thirty Haitians living in Montreal so that they could operate this type of machinery. But they are still held up here because they couldn't find the right channels to bring them to Haiti to help remove the rubble.

[Richard Clair]

As for removing the rubble, one of the biggest problems has to do with knowing who the owner of the place is. Who is responsible for removing the rubble? Is it the state, or is it the individual? This issue has still not been completely resolved, and we are waiting for an answer from the government. We can't simply go to a property and start removing rubble. So determining who is responsible for this is a big issue.

[Susan Johnson]

And what to do with this rubble, as well.

[Richard Clair]

That is another kettle of fish.

It is a matter of cost, absolutely. Who is responsible for paying for that? So these people are probably held up here because of a lack of resources. It costs a lot. I'll tell you right now that it isn't the manpower that is lacking in Haiti. We can train people fairly quickly to do fairly specialized work.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

There are fundamental issues. You just said that it might not be your role to handle them. I think it would be terrible to have an exercise like this one today without mentioning them, at least briefly. I am talking about issues that are at the very root of Haiti's extreme poverty.

One of the big problems is deforestation. When we fly over the neighbouring countries, we see that they are green. Then, when we get to Haiti, we see that the island is bare. All the forests have been burned down because the citizens use wood to cook, among other things. There, we were told that, as long as wood is cheaper than other combustibles, like propane gas, this was going to continue. As soon as trees are planted, they are immediately cut down and burned by the citizens. That means that, when it rains, all the soil goes into the sea, which ruins the possibilities for agricultural development.

The other big problem is the free market. Per hectare, the yield of Haitian land is very low. Take rice for example. A lot less rice is produced per hectare than on American farms. Also American rice is subsidized, so that Haitians eat only American rice, when they can buy it, of course.

With that in mind, don't you sometimes have the impression that, in Haiti, you are only putting band-aids, that are no doubt necessary, on the deep and pus-filled wounds that cannot be cleaned and will always continue to fester?

[Susan Johnson]

Yes, let's be honest: sometimes it can be discouraging. But the Red Cross is used to very difficult situations. This is what the Red Cross' work is all about.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I understand your point of view, and I respect it. Of course, I respect what you are doing, as I said at the beginning. That said, I really wanted to highlight these problems because they are perhaps the true problems Haiti is having, and they are not discussed much.

[Susan Johnson]

No, I understand very well. What I want to say is that, as a humanitarian organization, we are doing what we can. We are fulfilling the Red Cross' mandate. We are trying to do this work as efficiently as possible in a setting that we cannot control. We are doing what we can in a very difficult context. We would really like it if other players could get together to resolve the deeper problems. But that isn't the Red Cross' job.

[Jean Dorion, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I understand that. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Goldring.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing here today.

In your brochure it indicates that one million people have been left homeless. Of course, with a family of five that would mean the need for some 200,000 homes. How many homes have been built to date by all organizations, and how many remain to be built?

[Richard Clair]

I can speak for the Red Cross. There are 5,000 out of 30,000 to be built for the Red Cross movement. The problem is to estimate the kinds of shelters. Some shelters that have been built are not very sturdy, so it's hard to know what the real count is. Some are permanent homes, and some are essentially lean-tos that won't resist the first winds.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

So you have a need for 150,000 or 170,000 homes.

[Susan Johnson]

The humanitarian system estimated there was a need for 135,000 shelters for families.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

I'm going by your sheet here, where it says a million people were left homeless, so you divide that by five. So how many are still left to be built? I'm speaking about sturdy shelters, not just plastic on wood frames.

[Richard Clair]

There are 800,000 people now left in camps in Port-au-Prince. The new approach is to go back to their communities to see if their homes can be repaired, and move people out of those camps into their homes in their neighbourhoods. I think the shelter approach is more practical in less urban areas. They're finding in Port-au-Prince that they'll have to go back to do more repairs, rather than new shelters.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

So at this rate it could take anywhere up to five years before these people are housed in anything.

[Richard Clair]

Absolutely.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

I want to return to the question of governance—you characterized it as a challenge—because in my visit in 2006 I would go so far as to say it was a disaster then, before the earthquake, so little had been done. At that time there was a serious problem with the governance too, and it would certainly sound as though that continues to this day.

Even on this land acquisition difficulty, most countries, in Canada too, if they need land for emergency circumstances or conditions they will confiscate it or appropriate it or annex it or whatever. It certainly sounds as though this is the biggest problem in finding some vehicle, and I really think that by onesie-twosie, getting one piece of property freed or registered, that's going to take forever to go through for the amount of property you need. And quite frankly, that just might complicate the system even more. But if a government were able to appropriate 1,000 acres of land and get to the work of building something on it, that would certainly sound as though that's the better way to go. And then the question goes back to—it certainly is indicated here—whether the governance is at such a low level that the government cannot do that. Is that what it is?

The United Nations intervenes in other circumstances. Is there a role for a government intervention to be able to move this issue forward?

[Susan Johnson]

That's certainly a discussion the Canadian government could be taking up and I'm sure has been taking up with the Haitian government. I appreciate completely where your thinking is coming from, but I would caution thinking that the simple solution is to find a new space and move people to a new space, because the people are very determined to live where they have been living because it's where their informal economic activity is--

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

You could still legislate something to take that space to build on.

[Susan Johnson]

--it's where their schools are, it's where their families are.

We have a lot of experiences in the international response community of those kinds of resettlements that have themselves been very unhappy experiences. That's why we in the Red Cross have been sympathetic to people's demand to rebuild where they were living as best and where we can, because in terms of the longer-term sustainability, the economic environment they're in, their own livelihoods and so on, and their own well-being as a family, they will be in a better situation if we're able to do that.

That doesn't respond to the millions of people. We made a commitment as an international Red Cross to respond to the needs of 30,000 families, and that's the commitment we're working very hard to deliver, but it doesn't respond to the 130,000 or 150,000 families.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

That's right, and this is where I have great difficulty thinking that five years from now we could still be having people in camps under tarpaulins before they even get a permanent house. And I wouldn't necessarily call this a permanent house. I would call this a transitional house.

[Susan Johnson]

It is a slum. We're not calling it a permanent house either. We're not building permanent houses in Haiti.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

But five years to get into this? Wow.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

We're now going to move to Dr. Patry.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you for being here.

My first question concerns the camps, particularly in the Port-au-Prince region. I would like to hear you talk a bit about the vulnerability of women and about the issues of violence.

My second question concerns the government, as a follow-up to what Mr. Doiron said. You said that it cost a lot of money to remove the rubble. But isn't the president authorized to move forward in emergency situations like this one? Couldn't he do it, or is it that he quite simply doesn't want to?

[Richard Clair]

Unfortunately, since I don't know Haitian law, I do not know what the president's responsibilities are in that case. So, unfortunately, I can't answer that question.

I can, however, tell you that a number of Red Cross organizations are working in the camps in Haiti, either to provide water, to see to sanitization or to help people find jobs. It is a glaring problem in all the camps in Haiti.

With volunteers from the Haitian Red Cross, we are trying to put in place programs to determine which authorities people should turn to for help. The Red Cross is unable to meet every need, but we can direct them to the people who have the necessary resources and the ability to help them, either with health matters, such as taking care of injuries, or even for social matters.

This type of aid is under-funded. Obviously, the organizations in Haiti are under-funded for this type of work.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I would like your opinion on the vulnerability of women in the camps. What are you doing in that regard? How are the people acting? Are the Haitian national police stepping in? How can you try to reduce this violence toward women and children?

[Richard Clair]

We are creating education and protection programs. We can also train our volunteers who go to the camps to target problems of violence. They talk to the local authorities and non-governmental organizations to offer help and assistance. For the moment, that is what the Canadian Red Cross and the International Red Cross Movement can do.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

There are hurricanes every year. And there will be more this year, too. Are you prepared for these hurricanes, given the current situation?

[Susan Johnson]

Of course. We have a plan in place. We already have stockpiles distributed in two or three places in Haiti. When I say "we", I am talking about the International Red Cross Movement. With other national organizations and the federation, we have distributed provisions in Haiti. We are also training volunteers of the Haitian Red Cross. Furthermore, we have strengthened the regional team, in collaboration with the colleagues of other national organizations in the Caribbean and in Central America.

We can certainly imagine that there will be another hurricane this year, and the International Red Cross Movement will have to respond to the needs quickly and efficiently.

[Richard Clair]

We have also trained teams in various regions of the country to ensure that quick assessments can be done, to quickly determine the extent of the damage and be able to respond to it. We have various levels of response based on the extent of the disaster: it can be local, regional, national or international.

[Susan Johnson]

I would like to add that we are working with the Haitian Red Cross, which is on the country's disaster management committee.

[Richard Clair]

They call it the gestion des sinistres du pays.

[Susan Johnson]

It is often the role of the Red Cross to provide some of the response in a country. So that needs to be arranged with the government. In Haiti, there was a group that brought together all the organizations that were supposed to be able to respond in the event of a disaster. The Haitian Red Cross took part in that group in Haiti.

[Bernard Patry, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move over to Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing before us.

Mr. Clair, did I hear you right, did you say two policemen were shot every week?

[Richard Clair]

Yes.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Wow, that's incredible.

Obviously, there's a real problem. It must be an incredible frustration for you as an organization too that when you deal with a country like Haiti.... And unfortunately, so many of the countries that you deal with are countries that have some serious issues with law and the rule of law.

One of the comments you made was that you seem to be moving more toward responsibility. When I say “we”, we're talking about the Canadian Red Cross, and I would assume that would be the American, that we would probably be more responsible for the western hemisphere. I know we move all across the world, but is there some talk among the Red Crosses that this is going to be a future thrust so you know you're the lead person for a situation in Chile or Haiti or wherever the situation is? Is that something that's starting to develop?

[Susan Johnson]

Not in the way you're describing it as such, but certainly within the International Red Cross we have the system of different levels of response, and it really is around proximity and capacity, so it would be absolutely natural.

Just as I was describing earlier, let's move away from Haiti for a second and talk about Central America. If you've got an event in Nicaragua, it would be absolutely natural that the Costa Rican Red Cross would be the first to come to the assistance of the Nicaraguan Red Cross, if they need assistance. It's the same arrangement we have with the American Red Cross, where if there's an event that--

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Do you work with the UN in disaster relief with the Red Cross? Is the UN a lead--

[Susan Johnson]

We absolutely share information and we coordinate with the UN and the large humanitarian actors. The international federation within the UN system of clusters plays the lead role of organizing the shelter cluster in response to a natural disaster. So there's a very close coordination and collaboration.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I say that because you mentioned earlier that these types of disasters are starting to intensify, and that's a result of a number of things: the very fact that the people are moving into urban areas, these places are growing quickly, they don't have the infrastructure, and they don't have the structures in place to withstand earthquakes or hurricanes. Have you thought about possibly the UN...?

There just seems to be a lack of coordination, and I'm not being critical. I recognize you have huge demands, and it must be a frustrating thing for you, but has there been a coordination, for instance, to encourage nations to map out large urban areas? You say one of the biggest problems is ownership of land. So you could get that in place and even to the point where you might present a nation with a type of relief that would be immediate—the health care, etc.—but maybe leave some of these areas to a point where nations have those things in place. In other words, “If you haven't mapped this out, if we don't know who owns this, we're not going to go in there and fix that”.

That might seem a little heartless, but I would argue that you'll get more results if people know there won't be that type of relief than if you just let things go the way they go. Has there been any movement toward any talk about that?

[Susan Johnson]

Well, if I take part of your remarks and your question, I think there is quite a lot of work that is going on at the national level in many, many countries in relation to mapping risk and mapping what it would take to deliver an effective response to the risk. For instance, most countries do have a disaster management coordination mechanism at a national level.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

But do they have, for instance, ownership of land? That would seem to be....

I suppose we should be getting good at this. That's an awful thing to say, but as they intensify—you say hurricanes are happening more frequently—we're having more response. Wouldn't it make sense then to say all right, when you're done with Haiti—and it looks like it's going to be a long time before you're done with Haiti, but you've done a fair amount of work in Chile, for instance—you say “This has worked; this is a real problem; now let's start trying to rectify this so that if it happens again—” and put countries on notice and say “If you don't have this in place you're not going to see that type of disaster relief”.

[Susan Johnson]

I would hesitate to suggest, though, that the International Red Cross would take such a position.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

If it intensifies, if you had another disaster like Haiti, with all the efforts being put in Haiti, you'd be pretty thin to move forward. And if it does intensify, then I would suggest that you may have to do those sorts of things. I'm just curious if you've talked about it.

[Susan Johnson]

Well, we do have to be concerned about having the right resources in place to respond. Certainly after Haiti we had the concern with the earthquake in Chile six or seven weeks later. Of course it wasn't the same magnitude of destruction and loss of life, but there was a need for International Red Cross response, and we did manage to pull together a response team and so on, but I think for us it simply means that we feel we have to redouble our efforts and actually have more capacity, essentially, in the tool kit and on reserve for these kinds of events.

My point I was trying to make earlier is that from the point of view of the Red Cross, if a terrible catastrophic event happens and a family or a community needs assistance, and if we have the resources, be those the financial resources, the access to the people who need our assistance, that's where we go. Whether the whole system should have been working differently or not is not our concern at the time that people need the assistance of the Red Cross.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I'm just suggesting that possibly you might want to look at that.

There is another thing I want to ask. I look at some of the donor countries, and obviously the United States has always been on top and we're right there as well. I know that private individuals would be interested to know where those private.... I would suggest most of them would be from North America, especially the United States, European Union, China, Japan, and then Canada. Are you encouraging countries—and I'd like to use something a little stronger than encouraging, but we'll leave it at that—like Saudi Arabia, which is an incredibly rich organization and has managed to tag its symbol on the Red Cross...? And I don't want to just pick on the Saudis, but the Chinese probably will have a larger economy than the United States by 2020, they're suggesting. Are you encouraging countries like that to get on board and to do their share as well?

[Susan Johnson]

Absolutely. We actually have a series of very interesting initiatives within the world of Red Cross and Red Crescent, where the Red Crescent societies—the gulf states, the Middle East—are more and more engaged in international assistance and we are really trying to build an effective kind of coordination with them.

In a case like China, the Canadian Red Cross has a long-term partnership with the Chinese Red Cross and we're working with the Chinese Red Cross now on helping them become a more and more effective donor outside of China to disasters, for instance, in Africa—

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Are they responding?

[Susan Johnson]

Yes, absolutely.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Mr. Rae asked about some of the economic benefits on that side. What about this side? I see a lot of these structures—obviously you're building them, but as you get better at this, is there an opportunity to go to Canadian firms, for instance, and say you need this sort of stuff, and have them develop those things, not just bid on them? Say that you're having a problem with this, you're having a problem with that, and go to Canadian firms. Do you have any success stories? Is that happening? Can you maybe share some of those examples?

[Susan Johnson]

We haven't been working only with Canadian firms but also with Canadian researchers and think tanks. Certainly we would do the lessons learned, after an experience like Haiti. We would look at this case and we would sort of look at.... One of the things we are looking at in the shelter business is, in different circumstances, whether there are some assumptions we can make about what kinds of models would work, actual infrastructure models and therefore what kinds of materials you would need to have access to and what kinds of things will be culturally appropriate in different environments, and working with, as I said, think tanks and research organizations. It could well be appropriate to reach out to some private sector organizations in Canada and elsewhere, in terms of being prepared to co-invest and look at that.

But it's early days at this point. Right now, in terms of our own norms, as the Canadian Red Cross, we do a competitive bidding process whenever we're looking at any significant contract whatsoever.

[Richard Clair]

And for the shelters, the winning bid came from Quebec. It was open Canada-wide and it was won by a Quebec firm in Montmagny called Laprise. They're the ones building—

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

The forestry guys are pretty happy.

[Richard Clair]

Yes. It is pre-panelled.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Good.

Okay, we're going to just wrap up.

Mr. Lunney, do you have one quick question, and then we'll wrap up today?

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you very much.

It is a fascinating discussion, with 1,200 temporary shelters already constructed, big upgrades on what existed, and 7,500 on the horizon. Given the challenges of land ownership, I think that's very commendable work.

When you're putting together these temporary shelters, how do you take into consideration—or do you—linkage to essential services like sanitation, safe drinking water, basic medical care, educational services for the community, and so on? How do you evaluate that when you're looking at these temporary housing facilities?

[Susan Johnson]

Absolutely, those are vital, and that's part of why I was saying earlier that we're helping people rebuild essentially where they were living already, to the extent that things like a health care clinic are nearby, or a school for the children and those kinds of things are in place. However, in the Jacmel area, for instance, where I described earlier this integrated health program that we're going to engage in, that we're looking at, we are actually going to be building some clinics in areas where there weren't clinics before. So we're trying to do what we can to actually make the infrastructure a little bit more robust.

But to the question of water and sanitation and livelihoods, as I think Richard explained earlier, we're bringing the shelter part, but our partner the Netherlands Red Cross is bringing the latrine and the access to clean water to each of the beneficiaries of the shelter program. So we've made that a partnership because we realized that it's vital to have that. And then with the Spanish Red Cross and the British, we have the livelihoods initiative, so that people have some small economic activity to get back on their feet.

So we realize that there has to be an integrated package to help people really re-establish their lives where they are and where they want to be for the longer term.

[James Lunney, Conservative, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I realize that I'm usurping other time. I wrote this out.

Mr. Clair, when you were talking earlier, you said that when the shelters are handed over, occupancy rights are given both to the man and the woman in the shelters, even if they're not married, and one of the—

[Richard Clair]

No, if they're not married, it goes to the woman.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay. It goes to the woman, and we were talking specifically at that time about violence against women. So what results are you having with this initiative? Is it decreasing violence against women, and, if so, who's monitoring this so that we get this information?

My other question is are they able to take this and use it as collateral for capital or credit, if they want to start a business?

[Richard Clair]

On the first question, no, we don't monitor violence in communities. We have community mobilizers, and we're there, and we have a list of questions. That's one of the other programs we want to put in place on protection issues, on community violence, but these are early days for the turnover.

On the collateral, there is no real system in place for the people who earn less than $2 a day to use these shelters as collateral. I haven't seen it yet. They're not property owners, and I don't think the basis of the banking system is very well developed. There are a couple of caisses populaires being developed, but the basis of many businesses is clearing up on the land title and ownership. Until and unless that's done, it's going to be very difficult to use any of that for collateral.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Is it something for the future?

[Richard Clair]

Not for the Red Cross. It will be in the hands of the people there.

[Susan Johnson]

I mean, there certainly is a range of small-enterprise economic development organizations in Haiti and, outside of the earthquake context, quite a vibrant informal economy and small kind of trader economy, as I said earlier. There are organizations sort of along the lines of the Grameen Bank. I don't know that the Grameen Bank itself is in Haiti, but that kind of organization doing that kind of micro-credit is in the country. Again, it's not a business we're in, but I'm certainly aware that it's present in the country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Okay. Thank you very much.

I do want to thank our witnesses. I think you guys were a great first organization to lay the foundations for what we're going to be looking at in Haiti.

For committee members, I just want to give you updates on a couple of things. We've talked to ministers Oda and Cannon about coming. Minister Cannon is not available prior to March 22; there is a possibility that Minister Oda is available for Monday, March 21.

The second issue is the subcommittee on international human rights. Scott Reid wanted to appear before the committee to talk about a couple of things they've been doing. That is going to happen on Wednesday.

Then the third thing I wanted to mention to you was that there has been a request by Mr. Dewar to have René Magloire to attend. We want to make sure that we fit him in; he's here Monday, March 7. We'll put him in for the last half hour, because we have officials in the first part.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that the current ambassador for Sudan in Canada, Mr. Elsadig Almagly, has asked to meet with the committee concerning the post-referendum period. I would suggest that's probably not a bad thought process that we look at trying to move in as well.

We're going to try to schedule all those things in; I just wanted to give you a heads-up. Is that all right?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, with regard to the ministers, I will repeat that when we had the estimates the last time, we didn't have a chance to have ministers. The primary function of this committee, of course, is to have the ministers for the estimates. I'm hoping for at least one. I'm hearing you say Ms. Oda for the 21st is what we're—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That is a possibility, and I'm reporting back. We asked them, so I'm just reporting back—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

If I may, on behalf of my colleagues here, remind them that they haven't been in front of this committee for the estimates, and that's part of what their obligations are, as it is ours to—

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Fair enough; I wanted to give you an update—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Once again, thank you very much for being here today.

The meeting is adjourned.