Thank you. It's a great pleasure for me to address the committee on behalf of ROCAHD. I'm here today with Mr. Barthélus, who is the Vice-Chair of ROCAHD's board of directors.
What is ROCAHD? It's a coalition of Canada-Haiti organizations that has been in existence under that name since 1994, but was founded in 1987 under the name of the Fonds délégués AQOCI-Haïti. ROCAHD represents 47 organizations, including 36 Canada-Haiti international cooperation organizations and 11 Canadian and Quebec organizations.
ROCAHD's priorities are community health, economic development, occupational training and literacy. In recent years, we have supported numerous projects: a midwife training project, a training project for Jacmel hotel staff and a training project for illiterate young mothers from an isolated place, in Port-de-Paix. I should also mention the construction of wells in the Fossé-Naboth region, construction of latrines in Jacmel, the creation of a micro-credit circle, chicken farming, goat farming, coffee production and reforestation activities. These projects reach a lot of people—approximately 30,000—and help them survive and improve their living conditions.
The members of ROCAHD in Canada are all multipliers. They come from various regions of the country, they know the situation in their region and they can propose projects designed to improve the living conditions of those people.
We've been supported by CIDA since 1987, and we've been a diligent partner in that time.
Since ROCAHD is a development NGO, we're mainly going to talk about development, but we're also interested in security in Haiti. Security is a fundamental concern, and the climate of insecurity that has reigned in Haiti in the past three years has slowed the country's development and ROCAHD's development projects. I learned earlier that the education cooperation projects were also affected by that climate of insecurity.
Canada and, more particularly, the United States send Haitian criminals operating in their countries back to Haiti. When they arrive in Haiti, those criminals are considered graduate students of crime. They vitalize the criminal world. They are, in a way, leaders who facilitate communications with Canadian criminals. A good way to help Haiti would be to declare a moratorium on the deportation of criminals because, for the moment, the country isn't able to manage the situation. Until Haiti is in a position to do so, we shouldn't deport these criminals.
It is the prerogative of a sovereign state like Canada to deport undesirables, but a moratorium would be appropriate in the circumstances. Haiti's judicial and correctional system should be reinforced so that it can shoulder its responsibilities. If we deport people, we should at least put them in prison and, if necessary, expand prison capacity.
We must invest in efforts to reinforce Haiti's institutions, but those efforts should exclude initiatives that are not the subject of a consensus within Haitian society.
To date, a large part of the assistance provided in recent years has been allocated to stabilizing the situation in Haiti—sending experts and police officers, establishing MINUSTAH—but we should invest more in re-enforcing Haiti's institutions so that they are able to take over when the time comes.
I want to take this opportunity to hail the ultimate sacrifice of Canadian police officer Mark Bourque, who died in Haiti in the context of the efforts to stabilize that country.
Now I'm going to talk about development. CIDA documents show that investments of more than $700 million have been made in international aid since 1968, most of which was specifically intended to deal with crises. In the past two years, Canada has made a commitment to allocate more than $180 million to the Interim Cooperation Framework in response to transition and stabilization needs identified by the interim government.
Today, Haiti remains the least developed country in this hemisphere, with more than 70 per cent of its population living below the poverty line. Fifty per cent of the Haitian population is still illiterate, and only 1 per cent of the country's area is still wooded.
Canada's aid is important for Haiti. ROCAHD appreciates Canada's aid in improving the situation in Haiti. Some $3.6 million persons in Haiti are able to work, and 70 per cent of them are unemployed or underemployed, or still work in the informal sector.
Considering the development indicators in Haiti and the very pronounced shortcomings in meeting basic human needs, ROCAHD thinks Canada's aid to Haiti should continue to involve the organizations of civil society in Haiti and Canada that are engaged in cooperation in order to meet health, education and economic development needs.
It is essential that Canada's aid to Haiti be used, on the one hand, to reinforce the domestic capabilities of Haitian government institutions so that they can more effectively carry out their mission and, on the other hand, to strengthen the organizations of civil society, which are agents of development among the Haitian population.
As regards security, while we agree that it is important to reinforce Haiti's public institutions in this sector, we recommend that the essential portion of aid in this sector be directed toward increasing the number of police officers and judges and improving their training so that they can perform their duties.
As for development, ROCAHD believes that, given the social development indicators in Haiti—illiteracy, unemployment, health, deforestation, water access, availability of energy resources and gender equality—it is essential that the essential portion of Canada's aid to Haiti be directed toward improving the situation of the Haitian people. These needs can be taken into account by government programs, of course, but also by activities in the community sector. The Haitian community sector is very large and can, to a large degree, meet the basic human needs of the Haitian population. We should support that sector so that it continues to do this work.
It is impossible for the Haitian government, and for the Haitian private sector, to take charge of everything there is to do in Haiti. Whether it be projects for reforestation, soil conservation, water access, the establishment of cooperatives for the production and processing of farm and stock farm products, we think that we at ROCAHD can help carry them out. We could do more, if we received more contributions from CIDA and if our Canada-Haiti associations could receive a larger cost-share ratio.
Thank you for inviting us to testify before the committee. We'll be able to provide more details in our answers to the questions that follow.