Foreign Affairs Committee on June 7th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

Mr. Allison.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

So there are only five senior officers in the country now. Is there any other Canadian military...in terms of Canadian Forces members? The 500 members were deployed to help out in the short term and they came back.

[Col Denis Thompson]

What happened was they deployed in March 2004, and they deployed for a six-month period. It transitioned from the first 90 days of the MIF, the multinational interim force, into the first 90 days of MINUSTAH, and then they redeployed.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Perfect. Okay. That's what I thought. And there are still five staff officers there.

[Col Denis Thompson]

There are still five staff officers.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

What about civilian police? Do we have any there?

[Col Denis Thompson]

The number is 101. The authorized ceiling for the Canadian national police, because it's not just the RCMP, is 101. So there's Chief Superintendent Graham Muir, who's the head policeman, and a hundred RCMP across the island.

At the moment, on the exact number that is deployed, I'd have to defer to someone from the RCMP, because it's not quite 100, is it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

I believe it's 65.

[Col Denis Thompson]

I don't know the precise number.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

I realize that as the government asks or requests, those will be done, made probably by ministers, etc. I guess my question is this. Will you five have some input in terms of whether the mission needs to be extended, or the request? It seems to me that the challenge of Haiti in the past has been the fact that we tend to pull out too quickly, as opposed to making sure that we have the bodies on the ground so that we can ensure the proper training, get people in place.

So I guess I'm assuming you will be consulted. I realize it's still political.

[Col Denis Thompson]

Absolutely. We will be consulted. There's no question. Again, it points to the fact of the importance of the positions that these gentlemen hold. So, on the police side, as I mentioned, Chief Superintendent Graham Muir is the police commissioner for the UN police forces on the ground. Any assessment team that shows up in Haiti is going to speak to him. There's just no other way. They're not going to visit Haiti and not talk to the top cop.

They will speak to Michel Duhamel, the chief of staff at the headquarters, to get his sense of it. So those two gentlemen will have an opportunity to weigh in, as it were.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Now, is there any sense that when the initial mission is extended through to next year that we'll be able to accomplish our objectives then, or is it too hard to look into the future at that?

[Col Denis Thompson]

Trying to put a timeline on these things is, to use the vernacular, a mug's game. We talk about end states and not end dates. It's very jingoist, but it's the truth, because you just can't predict when some spike is going to occur that will send things down for a period of time.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

All right. I have no other questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Allison.

You had a minute and a half on that question. You have one minute, and then I go to Mr. Patry for his five.

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

The question we keep asking to help us is what has Canada done wrong or could have done better in the interventions in the past? Specifically, perhaps, in your case, should we have been asking more on the policing and less on the military side?

[Col Denis Thompson]

Now you're asking me to speculate on what the government should be doing, and I'm not in the business of nation-building.

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

On the overall intervention then--what we've done right, what we've done wrong.

[Col Denis Thompson]

I think it's generally recognized that we didn't stay long enough in order to build properly accountable democratic institutions in Haiti, and as a result we're back to repeating it again. It's not any more complicated than that.

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

In terms of our intervention this time, is there anything we've done wrong? Is it the mix of instruments we're using? You talked about the electrician and the plumber. If all you have is a hammer and that's your favourite tool, is every problem a nail? Is it the nature of these interventions that we tend to send the military when perhaps we should be sending more police?

[Col Denis Thompson]

The fact of the matter is it's the military forces that are available. There are only so many capacities in various fields, so you're often obliged to use, as you say, the hammer.

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

If we could invent those resources?

[Col Denis Thompson]

Well, again that's speculation. I know the Australians, as an example, have between 400 and 500 federal policemen who are permanently on the payroll, set aside to deploy overseas. Again I'm talking outside my line, and it's best to speak to Dave on this. I know that they're in the process of getting a 200-person police force set aside for international policing operations, an increase to their A-base funding.

Those are all positive developments and they all would contribute to nation-building efforts, not just in Haiti, but in a whole myriad of states around the world, because security sector reform is the most difficult thing to do, and it's not the work of militaries, with the exception of reforming armies, and there is no army in Haiti.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Thompson.

We'll go to Mr. Patry.

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

Mr. Thompson, in your opening remarks, you said that MINUSTAH was an integrated mission. I want to mention, in passing, that during my three visits to Haiti, I witnessed the professionalism of our soldiers and police officers. I even walked around Port-au-Prince, accompanied by two police officers from Montreal. I had the impression that I was with people who were very highly appreciated by the general population, as is the case in some neighbourhoods in Montreal. It was very positive.

My question is sort of along the same lines as the question asked by Ms. Bourgeois. During previous meetings of this committee, on several occasions, witnesses told us about corruption in the Haitian national police force. This is a problem that causes considerable harm to the people.

If a soldier or an on-duty police officer from MINUSTAH were to learn that a member of the Haitian national police force had committed public mischief, would he have the right to arrest the police officer?