Foreign Affairs Committee on June 14th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call to order this meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), study on Canada's role in complex international interventions that involve multiple foreign policy instruments focusing on Canada's efforts in Haiti.

As we continue our study on Haiti, today, in the first section of our meeting, we will hear from SOS Children's Villages Canada: Boyd McBride, the national director; and Stefan Paquette, the director of overseas programs.

We will also hear from the Canadian Foundation for the Americas. John W. Graham is here. He is the president of the board of directors.

We look forward to your comments and observations.

We normally open this with 10 or 15 minutes of time that's given to our guests, and then we will go into a period of questions, where every member is given five minutes, which includes the question and the answer. So we want to be concise in our questions.

Welcome here. The time is yours.

[Boyd McBride, National Director, SOS Children's Villages Canada]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and committee members. I appreciate the opportunity to address you on the subject of Haiti and its broader implications for Canada's foreign policies.

Stefan Paquette and I are here representing SOS Children's Villages, as you've indicated, Mr. Chair.

SOS is the world's largest orphan-serving charity, and SOS Children's Villages Canada is a small element in the larger international organization. I'd like to introduce you to my organization and its work in Haiti, and then offer some observations on the evolving relationship we see between Haiti and Canada.

SOS Children's Villages was founded in western Europe after World War II, as a result of the very large numbers of orphaned children there—orphans of war. Now we operate in 132 countries around the world, including Haiti. We have continued to focus in all of our work on children at risk, primarily those who have literally nothing and no one to turn to. Sadly, I'd have to say we're busier than ever.

We do what the development community often refers to as poverty alleviation work, community development work—or what we often call family strengthening—from our social centres and from what we call our villages, or clusters of homes in which orphaned and abandoned children grow up. But we also operate kindergartens, schools, vocational training centres, medical centres, a range of facilities focused on helping to develop, what we like to think of as, whole children. So it's not just a feeding program or an emergency response, but a commitment to developing whole young adults. We had about 800,000 beneficiaries around the world last year.

If I can turn your attention to Haiti now, we know that Haiti is a troubled country. John and I were just talking about the kinds of struggles the country has faced over many years now. We hope that the recent election of René Préval will provide some of the much-needed stability that our organization, and every other NGO working in Haiti, would benefit from.

We've been working in Haiti since 1979, so we're well rooted in the country. We're staffed locally and we're run as a local non-governmental organization. In Haiti we operate two SOS villages, half a dozen schools, two youth facilities, four poverty alleviation programs, or a range of activity, all of which I think you'd be very proud to be involved with.

The crisis of the last few years has eroded government's ability to work effectively in that country. We've experienced that crisis firsthand; SOS Haiti had one staff member kidnapped and two of our vehicles stolen just last year.

The kind of situation that now exists in Haiti has prompted us as an organization to shift our focus slightly—not from serving children at risk, but shifting to what we're now calling poverty alleviation programming, outside of our traditional village operations. So some of it is community outreach work at its finest. We also work on education—the vocational training—and other necessary services to help young Haitians grow up and be able to make a contribution back to their communities.

I have four key points I'd like to make before we break into questions. The first is that we believe Canada must continue to take an active role in that country. I sense that our new government in Canada is very much committed to that. Canada has claimed a long-standing special relationship with Haiti, and there are all kinds of reasons for that: economic, political, geographical, and even linguistic links. Today we've got a very large Haitian community in Canada, adding to the notion of links between our countries.

We also understand and support the fact that the Canadian government is now playing a lead role in this pilot testing. I don't know a lot about this, but the pilot testing of the OECD's “Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States” could be very exciting for Haiti, and I think for all of us, as we watch it develop.

The second point I'd like to make is that we believe Haiti represents really a wonderful opportunity for Canada to do several things: to model a new integrated model of support and involvement; to demonstrate its commitment to enhancing living standards in our own western hemisphere, serving the poorest citizens of the poorest country in our own backyard; an opportunity to acknowledge that it's going to take time and a serious long-term commitment to achieve meaningful results.

There will be no silver bullet in this, and there will certainly be no quick fixes. We're very much aware of that, with our many years of involvement in the country.

It's also, and finally, an opportunity to work together with other interested nation states, multilateral agencies, and international NGOs such as my own. The Canadian government, even in a small country like Haiti, can't possibly be expected to bring to the table all the resources necessary to achieve the kind of success and development we would all like to see.

My third point is that to seize what I see as this golden opportunity, I think our current Parliament and our new government are going to have to do a couple of things. We're going to have to see the many departments and agencies of our government that can contribute to this challenge commit themselves to really working together. I don't think it's going to work if we end up with silos and fiefdoms. We can't have unilateral decisions by a particular group or agency of government.

The second thing the government, I believe, will have to do is continue to bring more resources to the table and look at creative ways to encourage other nations, NGOs, multilateral funders, to step up too, to leverage the resources the Canadian government generously commits.

Good government-to-government programs aren't going to be enough. I don't think good governance and security programs are going to be enough—absolutely necessary, but not sufficient. We're going to need more, and a lot more, grassroots community development work in Haiti. Organizations such as l'Association villages d'enfants SOS Haïti is just one of many organizations that are going to have to find a lot more support if we're going to achieve what I think many of us would like to see in that country.

We're going to have to also develop, in partnership with the Government of Haiti and other interested parties, a collective, and I think it's going to have to be an inspiring vision of just what it is we would like to see five or ten years out in that country. If we can set a vision and then commit the resources to achieving that vision, we will probably have a great deal more success than with ad hoc measures.

My final point—I said I had four—was that SOS Children's Villages is eager to do more community development work in Haiti with families at risk there. Some people call it poverty alleviation. We call it family strengthening, but essentially it's funding and technical support for the work our organization has been doing and will continue to do for many more years.

We at SOS Canada are prepared to step into this, working within our international federation, if we can work in partnership with the Canadian government. I think there's a wonderful opportunity there.

Our focus in Haiti and in 131 other countries around the world has historically been on at-risk children and youth, and that will remain our focus in Haiti over the next 25 and 50 years.

Those are my opening remarks, and I hope Stefan and I are in a position to answer questions or perhaps encourage some discussion amongst you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. McBride.

Mr. Graham has a presentation.

[John Graham, President, Board of Directors, Canadian Foundation for the Americas]

Thank you.

As Boyd said, we were talking at the outset about the panorama perspective of Haiti. I first visited Haiti over 40 years ago at the time of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. I've been back on and off for different reasons over the years. With just a few bumps upward, it hasn't been a very happy 40 years, and it hasn't been a happy 50 years. In many ways, conditions have actually slid over that time.

One of the periods of bright expectations was the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, some 15 years ago. Those hopes were quickly extinguished, and once again we're into a period of expectations. Fortunately there are some—a few—success stories, but even a few success stories in Haiti is something that is unusual and gives us cause for gentle rejoicing.

In welcome contrast to this long period of frustration, Canada has had some success in efforts to support redevelopment in Haiti. The most notable successes were in December 2004, at the Montreal conference with the Haitian diaspora, and also in September 2005, at a meeting at Meech Lake, chaired by former Prime Minister Joe Clark, with Enrique Iglesias, the former president of the Inter-American Development Bank President, Robert Greenhill, the president of CIDA, and a number of members of the Haitian private sector. Both of these Canadian-led initiatives opened new areas of support for the redevelopment of Haiti by strengthening the role of non-traditional actors.

The biggest success of late has been the elections. The importance of these elections was driven home by the recent visit of the newly elected president, René Préval. Haitians from all over the Haitian political spectrum came to an event with Mr. Préval. Some were invited; some were not, which usually happens. What was unusual about this was that they were not hurling insults at each other.

In the past, high-profile events on Haiti have almost invariably been marked either by mass boycotts or protests. This did not happen with the Préval visit, and that is an important indicator that something has been accomplished and an opportunity now presents itself. With a legitimately elected government, with reasonably widespread popular support and support among donors, the conditions are finally in place to make some progress in rebuilding. The window of opportunity is there, but it is fragile and can shut very easily.

I'd like to turn now to the present situation in Haiti and several key issues.

Haiti is—and this is almost a cliché—at a critical juncture. Successful elections and the inauguration of a new government have created this extraordinary window of opportunity, in addition to raising these expectations and also expectations among hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the diaspora in Canada and other countries. For the first time in over a decade, there is a glimmer of light at the end of this dark Haitian tunnel. There is a similar feeling among donors. Yet all of this can fall apart easily if action is not taken to link the electoral success to tangible, visible improvements in the material conditions of life in Haiti.

The next four months of the Préval administration are critical. Over this period, it is essential that the Haitians observe visible improvement. If this doesn't occur, critics of the new president will be able to feed off public disillusionment and the country will fall back again, and as that happens, an enormous amount of investment money, ours included, will have been lost, as a lot of our money has been lost over the past 20 years in efforts over that period to rebuild Haiti.

We have a choice: to do what is necessary to move things forward, or allow things to slip backwards. The first is a challenge to leadership and the process-driven wheels of donor bureaucracy; the cost of slipping back is, of course, increased instability and further Haitian suffering.

Many things are needed. The first thing is visible improvement, a large-scale public works project to generate employment to show that there is movement and to give people a stake in the success of a new government. The challenge was present during the transition government of Gérald Latortue, yet the international community and the interim government failed to do what was necessary, failed to create a public works program that would create employment.

The result was that large parts of the population saw life either staying stagnant or actually moving backwards. With no sign of economic improvement, no new employment, no widespread high-impact attention paid to areas such as the slums of Cité Soleil, large segments of the population became alienated from the process of rebuilding and from the visions of rebuilding a political, social, and economic basis.

A large-scale public works program is, of course, not rocket science. In Haiti, there is no shortage of projects that would fill that role: road repair, port clearance, garbage removal, housing. The problem has been, in part, with the international community--it cannot all be laid at the door of the international community, but part of it certainly can--and donors who view such an undertaking as part and parcel of a normal aid delivery business and not as it should be seen, as an emergency intervention.

The situation in Haiti is that critical. We cannot afford to wait for the usual process of aid systems to grind out their well-structured, properly bid programs. We need shovels in the ground now. We have to do what it takes to make this happen. These results will need political leadership to provide the diktat, the political cover, to allow donors to end-run the normal disbursement rules. It will also require political courage.

An emergency public works campaign will inevitably suffer from some abuses. You cannot do this in a country like Haiti--you can't always do it here--without some scandal being attached, and if you do it quickly, that's going to happen even more so. But that is a risk that in this situation it is necessary to take.

Beyond the public works, there are two other items that are of urgent and critical importance. The first is that the new government not be overwhelmed with demands from every donor's wish list. It's essential that human capital resources of the government be improved to allow it to succeed in a few critical areas.

The second is that it is necessary that the security and judicial services be brought up to at least a minimum competency. This will require a higher level of support and intervention than is currently envisaged.

On the first point, the unprecedented opportunity--well, almost unprecedented; we had that opportunity with the first election of Aristide, and we have it again--has prompted an outpouring of expectation and exuberance from NGOs, aid agencies, and Haitians. When that happens, there is a danger that this will overwhelm the new government and lead to unrealized and unrealistic expectations.

The new government does not have the resource capacity to carry out the basic normal functions of government, let alone tackle the complex, critical challenges that are beyond and in addition to those normal functions.

Tough choices will have to be made. The new government has indicated that it will make education a priority. Other top priorities, as indicated, will have to be security and job creation. This means that the environment, trade negotiations, and other priorities will have to, for the time being, sit on the sidelines--not the sort of thing that Boyd is talking about. That certainly should not sit on the sidelines.

There are models for doing this through recruiting from diaspora. There's a very good model that is now being employed with the Afghan diaspora under the auspices of the International Organization for Migration, which might possibly serve as a model.

I mentioned security, which is absolutely basic. Only by improving security will investment return, which will promote that job creation and will lower the tensions and promote greater well-being.

Donors will have to look at the changing composition of the United Nations forces in Haiti. The forces, when they were first put together, were assembled in haste, and to some extent inappropriately for the mission they faced. Instead of riot control in general military forces, there is an obvious and pressing need for military or police SWAT units with skills training, experience, and capacity to conduct hard urban interventions.

In addition, the United Nations mission needs authority to collect signals intelligence. The lack of signals intelligence dramatically raises the risk for UN forces and civilians when operations are conducted in densely populated urban areas.

Last summer I had a number of conversations with RCMP officers about exactly that point in Haiti.

Reformulating of both the police and the quality of the Haitian judicial system are equally important. There is a causal link between corruption and low salaries, and it is unlikely that we will see improvements in Haitian security and judicial institutions until salaries are improved.

Improvement of salaries, of course, would have to be commensurate with what the Government of Haiti will be able to afford. They should be commensurate, but the reality is that they won't, which means that given the limited resources of the Haitian government, international donors may have to pick up the tab for a portion of this expense for some time into the future.

If these steps are not taken, then we do not have a real basis for optimism. Rebuilding a fragile or failed state is neither easy nor cheap in financial or political terms, yet in the past that is the manner in which we have tried to contribute to the rebuilding of Haiti. In terms of financial contributions, a significant share of the burden is borne by the Haitian diaspora. It's interesting that the diaspora spends something like four to six times as much a year as do the international donors.

There is an opportunity, and I hope we will have the determination to seize and run with that opportunity.

Thank you very much.

There are a few other bright spots in the Haitian constellation at the moment that I could mention, if you would like me to do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

We are always looking forward to bright spots, especially with Haiti because we haven't had too many of them. Maybe some of those will be brought out during the questioning.

We'll move to the first round of questions.

Mr. Patry, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

First of all, we always appreciate the work FOCAL is doing, and your analysis. If you have any analysis right now concerning Haiti, the committee would be very pleased to have it.

Monsieur Paquette and Mr. McBride, you talked about SOS and what you're doing over there, but you also mentioned in your statement that you're eager to do more work. I know you are worldwide, but I didn't know that you were present in Haiti. I've been in Haiti many times. We met with NGOs, with the former Prime Minister.

You talk about eradication. It's a question of both eradication of poverty and, as was touched on by Mr. Graham, visible improvement. What would be important in regard to visible improvement?

If you talk about infrastructure, a lot of infrastructure was done in Haiti, and there was in a certain sense abuse, as you mentioned, corruption. I mean, you build a street, and a year or two years afterward, the street is no longer there. There are so many reasons--it was not properly built, things like this. You talk about education and many things like that.

What is the priority? I think your NGOs are very good with kids. You see orphan kids. What's the priority for kids over there? Is it just to take care of them? Is it education?

It's quite important for us to understand, because you cannot focus on every field. If you're going too wide, as you said.... You mentioned that all the nations need to work together.

Do you work with some other NGOs in the field, or are you working alone? Where are you? You talked about half a dozen schools. Are you in Port-au-Prince? Are you in Cité Soleil? Are you in Jacmel? I don't know, you see. I just want to understand a little bit more about you.

My question for Mr. Graham is, what is most important right now? Is it to bring electricity to Port-au-Prince? People need to see changes, but what changes? Do we need to see people cleaning the streets? They say they're going to create some jobs. There are so many things to be done, it could be like starting from the beginning over there.

But for you, what's the first thing that needs to be done in the next four months? As you mentioned, you don't want to go back to insecurity, to having the real opposition come from the street, as opposed to in the government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Patry.

There are two questions.

Mr. McBride, then Mr. Graham.

[Boyd McBride]

Thank you.

Stefan and I together will try to respond to your question.

We've been operational in Haiti for many years. We do there, as we do in almost every other country in which we work, cooperate with local community groups as well as other international NGOs.

Stefan might be able to say a little more about the actual locations of some of our facilities.

[Stefan Paquette, Director, Overseas Programs, SOS Children's Villages Canada]

We're located in two places: in Port-au-Prince, near Santos, and Cap-Haïtien. There you find children's villages, schools and community centres.

Now I want to answer your first question, which concerned needs. In a crisis, the biggest challenge is to meet basic needs, for equipment, food, health and safety. Those have to be met immediately while other investments are being made.

[John Graham]

You ask all sorts of good questions. What's first?

It's impossible to separate job creation from security. You absolutely need to spend resources on building security, building training, building a police force that has some credibility, not only in the Port-au-Prince area but also further out, where there is less control.

At the same time, it's job creation. This was a great failure over the period of the interim government, and it was a failure that attaches blame both to the interim government and to some extent to the donor community. There were not the massive jobs.

The parallel is a little strange, but there is a model for this in the Depression years in the United States, with President Roosevelt, the Tennessee Valley Authority. It was the enormous amount of labour that was required in those developments that put money in pockets, that put food in mouths. And that is not happening. Also, there's going to be a psychological impact, which is important. People can actually see that earth is being moved--to quote from this, that “shovels are on the ground”.

I don't have the knowledge to say whether it should be dredging ports, building more roads, or clearing out slum areas and building more housing; there are people much better placed to provide that. But it is the need to start public works that involve a lot of basic manual labour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

Madame Lalonde, cinq minutes.

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

Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone.

In the past month, another 10 officers of the Haitian national police have been killed in the performance of their duties, some in Cité Soleil.

In my view, Minister Alexis' speech to the nation was filled with promises... Based on the information we have, interim funding will be granted until the donors' meeting, and the president and prime minister will subsequently be given about one year to present a more substantial investment plan. The prime minister is talking about an appeasement policy, in particular about creating jobs for people in the shanty towns—they're the clients of the so-called "Aristide" fringe and are therefore very poor—and for the country dwellers. They want to deal with these two groups, but will that plan be enough to do that?

My next question is for Mr. McBride, because he was the first person to talk clearly about a new integrated support and commitment model. You said that a lot of NGOs and government organizations would have to commit to working together in order to achieve results.

NGOs and government organizations have held preparatory meetings. Are you referring to those meetings? Can you get me more information on the subject because I'm somewhat troubled by that? In the past, development plans had been prepared by people who are now called colonizers. We have to be careful about the way we want to help people. You have to start by getting a clear idea of the terrain, possibilities and priorities, and by relying on civil society, the country dwellers and other local stakeholders. Are you referring to a kind of socio-economic good will invasion?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Madame Lalonde.

Mr. Paquette, you have a minute and a half.

[Stefan Paquette]

When you want to talk about development integration, you can go back to Canada's International Policy Statement, which discusses development, diplomacy, defence and trade. That entails an integrated approach.

I'll be brief because time is limited. One of civil society's concerns was that there was a lack of integration of the agents of civil society. And yet civil society is recognized as playing a very important role, not only in development, but also in security. If people are earning wages and are able to feed their children, they won't be inclined to commit violent acts or acts that might compromise the security of the country in question.

I'd like to emphasize the fact that civil society has to integrate the voices of people in the community. By what mechanisms should that be done? I can't suggest any to you. It's a process that has to be done by Haitians, for Haitians. Only in that way can things work. We can encourage the process. That's hard to do, but it's being done. If we impose our intentions, even if they're good, they'll of course come from the outside. Haitians know what they want. We must give them the resources.

With your permission, I'd like to raise another point. We're not talking enough about human capital and women. Give each woman a little money in the form of micro-credit, and you'll see that will make an enormous difference. We must attach more importance to women because they are the pillars of the families.

[Boyd McBride]

Well, I would only add that in the suggestions or proposals we were making we focused on the need, as we saw it, for the Canadian government and its various agencies and departments to be working together. But I certainly accept your suggestion or your critique, if it's that, that non-governmental organizations also need to be working together and to coordinate their efforts, and that they will be more effective if they do that.

I think it's fair to reinforce Stefan's point—and in fact, your point—that we must start with where we are in Haiti. We must work with indigenous Haitian community groups. It just happens to be that one of those is the SOS association in Haiti, but there are many others. If those are partnered effectively with Canadian NGOs capable of providing added value—not just funds, but technical assistance and the like—we can see a great deal more success

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. McBride.

To Mr. Van Loan, please, for five minutes.

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

My question is for Mr. Graham.

What we're largely trying to do with this study is to draw lessons from Canada's past interventions. We've had a track record of lack of success, or failures, in Haiti. We felt that would not necessarily be a bad thing, because you can often learn a lot more from you failures and your mistakes than you learn from when you do things right. But as we've gone through this, we've been a little bit frustrated because we've been having trouble drawing out lessons.

I've been beginning to muse out loud that perhaps what we should have done was a comparative study of the Dominican Republic versus Haiti. The former has a lot of similar past roots but has turned out to be very successful, and the other not so much so.

You have some personal experience in the Dominican Republic; you were the principal international mediator there in their post-election crisis in 1994, so you've got some understanding. So you can be my comparative study of why there is the difference between the Dominican Republic's success and the lack of success in Haiti. What can we draw from the lessons between the two?

[John Graham]

The first time I travelled from Santa Domingo, which was called Ciudad Trujillo in those days—as the dictator had named it after himself—to Port-au-Prince, I had the sensation that I was moving from one planet to another. It's the same island, but they are so different.

There is not a great deal that can be learned from the relative success of the Dominican Republic and that can be applied to Haiti. Haiti was damned by history from the beginning, and has never really recovered from that. Having defeated the army of Napoleon—and, I think, the brother-in-law of Napoleon, who was a general—the Haitians were then subject to crippling reparations by the French. In addition to that, the American government, which was still a slave government at that time, imposed sanctions and said there could be no trade with Haiti. That prohibition went on until the beginning of the 20th century. So they got off to an absolutely appalling start and never really recovered from it, in the course of which, starting with the French, their forests were cut down, so that every time it rains, what little is left of the soil washes down into the Caribbean.

Unfortunately, it's not a terribly helpful comparison, but they are together, and they can do things together that can be productive. Now, the Dominican Republic is in some ways doing quite well; there is a lot of investment money. Some of that would like to move into Haiti to take advantage, in relative terms, of the cheap labour, and that would be advantageous for Haiti in getting more industry moving. That means there has to be more roads or more connections. The road system in Haiti, as I'm sure you know, is mostly non-existent, and where it does exist, it is absolutely appalling—except for the run from Port-au-Prince through to one part of the Dominican border.

So you need more roads to make these industries work and to have industries in the north that can move goods into the Dominican Republic. You also need to clear out the ports; there is not a single harbour in Haiti that can take vessels with the normal draft of commercial cargo ships.

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

We've heard that Haiti needs lots of things. I've heard you edging around the notion that some things are more important than others. Could you lay out three or four top priorities for attention, perhaps because the problem—and you can tell me if you disagree with this—is that there are too many efforts on too many fronts, and we should focus on just a few things. If so, what would these be?

Those are propositions I throw out to you for your comment.

[John Graham]

I guess I'm repeating myself, but one of them is certainly security. Nothing is going to happen unless there's greater confidence that you can go to work and get back from work, that you can send your kids to school and the kids will come back from school—and that there is a school. Education is one absolute priority, along with security, and the other is jobs or employment. The sorts of jobs that are there are part time, or jobs that maintain impoverishment or don't allow people to climb out of impoverishment.

Just to endorse what Stefan and Boyd were saying, I think that when you're looking for projects that will produce employment, you obviously want to consult the Haitians. The Haitians need to say whether it's going to be roads or whether it's going to be slum clearance; they should be involved in making that choice.

To repeat a little of what I was saying in my presentation, the other issue is that donors have to move more quickly. In this room, everybody is aware of accountability, and in our case, everybody is wrapped in layers and layers of asbestos to make sure that they're okay in whatever operation.... This takes a lot of time. There is not time for the kind of accountability we would want, by our standards—which I think, even for us, are exaggerated, because they are slowing down government operations. In Haiti, the donor community needs the courage to take some risks to move money quickly. That is what has not been happening, and that is what needs to happen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

Ms. McDonough, five minutes, please.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm very pleased to hear several references to the importance of really ensuring that what is being acted upon is a Haitian-based consensus. There's nothing more dangerous than someone who goes to a country for four or five days and comes back thinking they understand it.

I had the opportunity, with some of my colleagues, to be in Haiti just prior to Préval's inauguration. What I found deeply disturbing, frankly, was not only the history to which you've made some reference, but also an almost artificial sense of an NGO civil society that seemed to be on a very short leash, and some of it quite obviously created by external or exogenous forces. And you had the sense that if Haiti just didn't quite move in lockstep with, I think, largely American notions of what that should be, probably the leash would be yanked, or any funding would be cut off.

I have so many questions.

The desperate need for material improvement--I mean genuine improvement in the quality of life, which means jobs, which means infrastructure--seems to be something that's quite easily agreed upon. The question is how to make that happen in a rapid enough way that it can actually create some successes before people become very disillusioned.

I was surprised to hear--I believe it was Mr. Graham who said it--that perhaps some of the environmental priorities would have to wait, because one of the things that seemed quite persuasive to me, anyway, in hearing what was needed, was the desperate need for environmental remediation. In fact, I think it was one of our own military officers who made quite a stark statement that even if you could ensure the security, unless we can move rapidly to deal with all of this erosion resulting from the deforestation and the tremendous problems of safe water and waste management, and so on, basically you're creating an unsustainable society that simply cannot survive, let alone thrive.

The second priority that there was some mention of is roads. It seems pretty obvious that there is a serious problem about even moving produce to markets domestically, let alone internationally, unless that is addressed.

And the third priority was something you referred to, which is the low salaries for police officers. We were hearing again and again about literally no salaries for months and months. The suggestion was made again and again that unless that was remedied almost immediately, there is no possibility of putting an end either to the corruption within the security forces, or to the various thefts, muggings, kidnappings, and so on, because people are starving and their families are starving.

I wonder if you could comment on those three priorities, which seem pretty evident. What are the roadblocks? What can Canada do to try to help with whatever processes need to get under way to actually produce some kinds of results?

Three simple questions....

[John Graham]

I certainly agree with you about the issues of deforestation and erosion. This has been going on since, as I say, the French started cutting down an immense tropical forest that had been there. It looks like an interminable, vicious circle. You put some money into one area and you don't have enough to deal with the other simultaneously essential areas.

I wouldn't pretend to offer a really satisfactory answer to these questions, but a partial answer is to work with some of the few building blocks in Haiti that are still standing.

One of them is that the NGO network is in fact large, to a degree, as you suggested. I won't get into this, because Stefan and Boyd can speak to it much better than I can. It's sustained from outside, but it's still quite important. It's where there are educated people, it's where there are cells of development, and a network of these in the country.

The other is the Haitian private sector. As I mentioned, my organization, FOCAL, had a meeting last fall, chaired by Mr. Clark, that brought a selected number of about 18 Haitian entrepreneurs to a meeting at Meech Lake. Meech Lake was great, because their cell phones didn't work, and they didn't want to go outside because they were afraid of being eaten by bears. So they stayed in the room, and it was a very productive conference, and it pointed toward some productive areas.

One issue is that the public service of Haiti is, as you are aware, in ruin. It's small, what there is is deeply penetrated by corruption, of course it's underpaid, and it's basically incompetent. It cannot manage a lot of the basic services that need to be managed. One way you can help that is by creating bridges between some parts—the still standing parts—of the public service and the Haitian private sector so that they can work together--it could be electrical programs, it could be road programs, it could be health programs. Some of the Haitian private sector are already involved in a number of these in a philanthropic way. I think that is one route.

The other is really to persuade the donor organizations to move much more quickly than they have moved. The international donor pace is snail-like. They have to get funds moving, and as I say, they must take some risks with the movement of those funds. Not all of that money is going to go to the workman with a shovel in his hand.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Graham.

Unfortunately, we're at the close of the time we had allocated to this portion of the study. We would have liked a little more time to ask you a few questions.

I thank all of you for being very honest in your presentations, I wish you could be a little more...I don't know how to word this, I wish we could be a little more optimistic about the whole picture of Haiti, but I do thank you for your honesty. In some ways we're moving backwards. Sometimes our deliveries have not been the most successful.

Mr. Graham, one thing you suggested: I wouldn't mind if you wrote a letter or an answer to the committee. You talked about scandal, that in Haiti it's almost expected; it's almost a risk we have to take.

In this committee we're trying to take a look at the most effective routes or methodologies of aid delivery. If it's been abused at the other end, we'd like to hear about that, because we want to focus on better delivery. That's what I think all parties want--we want better delivery; we want a success story at the end of the day. In five years we don't want to be sitting down saying, you know what, we're at the same place we were in 1999, or in 2006.

I thank you for your presentations today. We will suspend for one minute, and then we'll welcome our new guests.

I ask the committee to stay close to your desks, because we don't want to lose time in asking you to reconvene.

We suspend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I call the meeting back to order.

We want to continue on our study of Haiti. Our witnesses in the next segment of our meeting are from the World University Service of Canada. We have Michel Tapiero, manager, Americas and Middle East programs; Elena Alvarado, senior program officer.

Also, we have, from the Regroupement des organismes canado-haïtiens pour le développement, the vice-president to the board of directors, Vernick Barthélus, and Eric Faustin, director general.

I invite your opening statements. For any mispronunciations of titles, names, or positions, I apologize.

Welcome. We want to give you an opportunity to speak, and there will be questions coming from our colleagues here from all parties. A ten-minute presentation would be perfect, but the time is yours.

Thank you.