Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to the witnesses and thank you to my colleague for giving me his space.
The reason I moved in was to ask about the issue of global community cooperation.
Last Wednesday I went to Brussels, representing Canada. It was an international conference on Haiti. It was organized by Canada, the European Union, the Belgian government, and the Haitian authority. I gave the keynote address. Michaëlle Jean was there as well, and so was the Belgian foreign minister and the commissioners from the European Union.
This was a conference to see, one year later, exactly what was going on in Haiti and what the challenges are. The conference was divided into two parts. One part was on best practices that have come out of the challenges, after one year, for all the NGOs and for the development assistance that has taken place. The second part was about where Canada played a leading role.
My keynote address has already gone to the committee members, and the clerk will confirm when they will get it. The speech I made has gone to translation, and it will be sent over to you so that you can see Canada's position. Please read it as bedtime reading.
We took a very strong stand. We took a very strong international stand on the issue of governance. As a matter of fact, my speech really shocked everyone there. We were there with the UN representative as well as the American representatives. We will send you that. I think you individuals and all of the Canadian NGOs working in Haiti should read the speech and see what came out of that conference, because we were talking about best practices and everything.
Michaëlle Jean mentioned one key issue to me. By the way, I have asked Michaëlle Jean to attend the committee, and she has agreed to come. She is the UNESCO representative. You will send the invitation to her.
One issue Mr. Lunney was talking about that I want to check with you was the issue of land tenure in Haiti. There is no land tenure in Haiti. Henceforth, land has no title. Today you can build something. One of the key issues with the debris not being removed is that those people want to indicate that this is where they used to live, because there's no land title. I want to know from you what the challenges for some of the institutions like yours are.
I allude to one hospital that had been built, and all of a sudden the title of the land has become an issue. The Haitian government can give you the land. The problem is that the Haitian government does not own that land. They don't know who owns that land. So you get conflicting statements coming in. You get conflicting people walking in and saying “This is my piece of land. You have already built this, but I'm sorry, this is not your piece of land. It's my piece of land.”
This has become a big impediment, from what I understood at that conference. Maybe you who are building structures in Haiti want to tell us your experience in reference to land title and the buildings you are making and whether you are facing similar challenges. We have asked. We are going to put in money, and the international community, including the European Union, is now going to work with the Haitian government to try to get a land tenure system in place. But as you will notice from the speech I made, governance has become the strongest impediment to providing long-term solutions, as Bob said, for work, for jobs, and for building the economy. At this current stage, it is bad governance and the lack of institutions, including land tenure.
Tell me about the land tenure issue. What are you trying to do? You're building structures, but are you facing problems?