Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to say how much I appreciated the opportunity to go to Haiti just before Préval's inauguration. I learned a great deal. I had some of my concerns reinforced and I changed my mind about some things. Hopefully that's what we all do when we go on a trip like that.
I have so many questions; I'm trying to boil it down.
I'm very glad to hear you stressing the importance of human rights and rule of law and so on, but I want to start with what potentially is an embarrassment, something we need to really deal with.
You will know that we had the privilege of meeting with Préval in Haiti with his senior adviser, Jacques Edouard Alexis. When Préval came to Canada just before his inauguration, Alexis was barred from entering Canada--to the monumental embarrassment, I think, of Canada--because he's supposedly “blacklisted”. I wonder if you can clarify exactly what that means.
Subsequently, by overwhelming majority of both the Senate and Parliament, Alexis was ratified as Préval's designate as prime minister. I'm just wondering if you can speak to how we're going to clean up our act in that regard and what it means.
Secondly, I share the guarded optimism, I really do. There's been a real sense of celebration thus far, based on the hope that people expressed, but at the same time, just horrendous human rights violations continue, including the imprisonment of political prisoners who have never been charged with anything. It seemed to me when we were there that one of the undercurrents is the need for that to be dealt with in a very serious way. Neptune, for instance, remains imprisoned. I had clear signals from people that he would be released before the inauguration. That appears not to have happened. I wonder what Canada is doing in that regard.
Thirdly, I think what we're attempting to do in terms of penal reform, in terms of prison reform, and in terms of judicial performance is very important. I have to say that I wasn't surprised to see, on the eve of the inauguration, a major riot in certainly the worst penitentiary I've seen in my life. I haven't seen great numbers, but these had absolutely unbelievable conditions. Teenagers who may have stolen chickens to save their families from starvation are imprisoned together with political prisoners--guilty of who knows what, and never charged with anything--together with murderers and drug dealers. Nobody really knows who is guilty of what, because nobody has ever been charged. We saw conditions in a prison where, to meet international standards, there should be four or six prisoners, but there were forty people there. They could barely stand up, and were allowed out for one hour a day from those conditions. I just wonder if you could speak specifically to that.
Finally, I want to say how impressed I was by the leadership shown by our police, by our military, by a small number of officials there. It was very refreshing to hear them making the point that security and economic development are interrelated. They pleaded the case, really, for both poverty reduction and environmental remediation. As they pointed out, we could end up salvaging a country that's unsustainable if we don't turn to that, which of course can be job-intensive.
I know I've raised four questions there. I would appreciate your comments.