I think the conditionality that was applied in 2000 was because of the senatorial elections. It was because there had been some electoral irregularities during those elections, and it was to kind of push Aristide to either hold new elections for these seven senatorial seats or to somehow give up the seats or something. So it was to push him to change. That's what they were talking about when they talked about governance.
Of course he resisted, and it wasn't just Canada that pulled back aid. The IMF, the World Bank, USAID, and most of the OECD countries cut their aid to Haiti during that time. The situation was getting worse and worse.
So I see the point in that you want to push a government to do the right thing when it's questions of corruption or whatever, but I think this wasn't working. When it finally did work and Aristide was ready to give in, the political opposition in Haiti was basically asking, by that time, that he resign. In other words, that was the only thing they were willing to accept.
The international community at that point should have said, “Look, he's saying he's going to redo these elections; that's good enough. We're going to turn the taps back on.” Instead we sided with the political opposition and we still waited. We were waiting for the political opposition in Haiti to say, “Okay, these are terms we can accept”, when there were not going to be any terms that they could accept.
So I think we have to have some judgment on our side as well when we see an economic situation getting to the point of a crisis in that country, given the fact that Haiti is so dependent on foreign aid. We have to also make some judgments and say, “Well, you guys will have to work it out, but we think this solution, another set of elections for these seven senatorial seats, is good enough and we're going to turn the aid tap back on.” And I have to say this was the U.S. pushing this agenda. I don't know what Canada's position was on that, but I think it went along with the rest of the multilateral donors and USAID.