Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 28th, 2011

[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.