Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 4th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Good morning.

Welcome to meeting number 18 of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today, as well as the honourable members and support staff.

This meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022.

Members are participating in person and by Zoom, as are witnesses.

I have just a few comments to start us off.

Please wait until I recognize you and give you the floor before speaking. We had an incident at the last committee meeting that was really interesting. I'm sure that it won't happen again.

You'll be recognized by name. We're also on the Zoom application for interpretation. Go to the globe icon on the bottom of your screen, where you can choose either “floor”, “English” or “French”.

All comments should go through the chair. When you're recognized, you will be able to speak.

Pursuant to the motion adopted by the House and

Standing Order 108(2) of April 26, 2022, we are going to study the situation in Haiti.

For our first hour, we welcome—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

There's an interpretation problem on the witnesses' end.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you, Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe.

The problem seems to be fixed now.

We have three witnesses joining us now.

We are welcoming Chalmers LaRose, from the Université du Québec à Montréal, department of political science, and the Royal Military College of Canada.

From the Association of Human Capital of Ethnocultural Youth of Tomorrow we have

Patrick Auguste, who is here in person.

We also have, from Little Footprints Big Steps, an international development organization, Ms. Morgan Wienberg, by Zoom.

Now we'll have opening remarks from everyone.

You will each have five minutes.

I'll give a hand signal when you have one minute left. Please keep an eye on me. Once you hit the five minutes, I will interrupt. You'll be able to continue what you want to say through the questions and answers.

Starting off the presentations will be Mr. LaRose, for five minutes.

Sorry, but I'm being told that Mr. LaRose isn't online right now.

We'll start with Mr. Auguste, then. He is here, in the room. You have five minutes, Mr. Auguste.

[Patrick Auguste, Master in Business Administration, Université du Québec à Montréal, Association of Human Capital of Ethnocultural Youth of Tomorrow]

Good morning.

I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me today.

I want to provide a brief overview of the situation before I discuss my recommendations.

Today is November 4. In Haiti, political paralysis has led to the emergence of violence at the hands of armed groups, the undermining of police, justice and other institutions, widespread insecurity, economic paralysis, deteriorating socio-economic conditions, rapidly worsening living conditions for the majority of the population and a total loss of confidence in authorities, fuelled by government paralysis.

Things are where they are for many reasons. Going back 36 years, the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986 gave rise to an ever-deteriorating political discourse. With the political and social environment becoming increasingly adversarial, political and social divides have grown, and Haitian society has become more and more fragmented and divided.

Many actors have a hand in the current situation. Political activists, for one, are constantly fuelling political strife, blaming one another for causing all the country's woes. Refusing to budge, those same activists consistently stand in the way of consensus building, with their my-way-or-the-highway attitudes and their unwillingness to compromise, bend or look for win-win solutions. Then, there are the authorities, whose game is the same as the political activists'. Add to that the unofficial and illegitimate armed groups that fuel the state of insecurity by using violence against the people—mainly in the form of kidnappings, rapes and threats—against police, against institutions—courts, in particular—and against political activists. Those armed groups know they can count on a significant inflow of illegal guns and ammunition, as well as weapons taken from police officers and kidnap ransoms.

Police forces are increasingly overwhelmed and unable to stand up to the unofficial and illegitimate armed groups. Police killings are becoming more frequent.

Widespread opposition to foreign interference exists in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. That is largely due to the failings of foreign involvement in the past.

Foreign military troops inflicted violence on vulnerable members of the population, women and children, in particular. Rising housing and food prices also play a role, as does disease. Soldiers from Nepal are suspected of having brought cholera to Haiti.

The international community's political support for the current government is contested. Not only does the current regime appear to lack leadership and be powerless, but it is also negotiating in bad faith with political opponents. Since the assassination of the country's elected president Jovenel Moïse over a year ago, no timetable has been set for an election.

Nevertheless, some support for foreign military intervention exists in Haiti, since most of the population is suffering terribly. More and more, people lack the basic necessities, face violence and feel abandoned. I have two brothers in Haiti, and they are telling me the same thing.

As regrettable as foreign military intervention is, it is still preferable to violence at the hands of armed gangs.

Now I'll turn to some recommendations.

As I see it, there is no way around foreign intervention. However, it is important to bear in mind the mistakes of the past so that history does not repeat itself.

I also think that Haitian authorities should not be the only people at the negotiating table.

I'll leave it there because I'm out of time, but I would be happy to answer any questions you have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you, Mr. Auguste.

We'll continue with Ms. Wienberg via Zoom for five minutes, please.

[Morgan Wienberg, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Little Footprints Big Steps]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My original intent was to draw to the committee's attention the violation of children's rights due to systemic family separation and the exploitation of children in Haiti in for-profit institutions, yet due to the current crisis even the most basic of human rights are now inaccessible to most Haitians. Due to what we can only call a civil war, there are currently over 100,000 internally displaced persons in Haiti. Many families have remained homeless since the 2021 earthquake.

Schools are not operating. Multiple times over the past five years, all students nationwide have been deprived of access to education.

Hospitals and ambulances have become non-functional. Many medical procedures are available only in Port-au-Prince, which is currently inaccessible. Blood transfusions and oxygen are challenging to access, especially in regions outside of the capital.

Malnutrition is rampant. Amidst exponential inflation, most families have lost their source of income due to prolonged lockdowns and lack of circulation within the country. Shortages of critical supplies have caused even more crippling inflation in regions that have been cut off from the capital. Families who were considered middle class a few months ago are now struggling to feed themselves.

Prisoners are dying of famine. The penal code is actually not respected in Haiti, as many children in prisons are below the minimum age, and prisoners can spend over a year in prison without even having a trial. Child prisoners are often placed in adult cells as punishment and are sexually as well as physically abused within the prisons.

Haitian Social Services has identified a spike in separated and unaccompanied children due to the current crisis. Street children are being recruited and even trafficked by armed gangs and then forced to commit crimes.

As families struggle to survive, children are at a higher risk of being placed in institutions. Already over 700 orphanages in Haiti are currently operating illegally, and in them countless children's rights violations are occurring, including severe neglect, physical and emotional abuse, child trafficking and sexual exploitation. Foreign pedophiles often prey on children in orphanages and are difficult to reprimand despite formal reporting. Political connections and financial means allow several human rights offenders within Haiti to be seemingly untouchable.

While Haitian authorities attempt to close illegal orphanages and reunite separated children with their families, orphanage directors often bribe, threaten or dismiss local authorities due to an imbalance of resources. Foreign support for child protection or any other sector must be aligned with the initiatives and recommendations of Haitian experts in that domain. Otherwise, we may unintentionally be supporting the very systems that are exploiting children.

Many girls and boys in Haiti are resorting to prostitution as a means of survival. Sexual violence is also rampant, as high numbers of women and children are being raped. This is not isolated to the capital; insecurity has spread across Haiti. Murders and sexual assaults are often filmed and shared nationwide, yet seldom penalized. The toll this has taken on mental health is debilitating.

These issues are the results of continually soaring poverty levels, a lack of economic stability, a weak justice system and the abuse of power by corrupt politicians as well as a small group of elite influential families.

Immediate action is required to address access to basic supplies, affordable transportation, medical care and education to reduce the unrealistic costs of living, to curb child trafficking and to allow Haitian people to circulate safely in their own country.

However, longer-term action is also required to address the systemic separation and exploitation of children throughout institutions; to push for prioritization of child welfare; to ensure that international interventions provide sustainable support that actually builds the capacity of Haitian citizens and infrastructure to remain more autonomous in the future; and to hold Haiti's leadership accountable for the conditions and treatment of the Haitian people so that the current crisis is not repeated.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you, Ms. Wienberg.

We'll continue with Monsieur LaRose for five minutes.

[Dr. Chalmers LaRose, Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Université du Québec à Montréal; Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual]

Esteemed members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me today. I am pleased to be here as part of your study on the current situation in Haiti.

I am Haitian, I am an expert on international relations, and I have been watching the political situation in Haiti. That is the lens through which I will be sharing my thoughts and observations on what I call the Haitian problem.

I'd like to start with a brief history of Haiti's evolution on the world stage.

A former French colony known as Saint‑Domingue, Haiti gained independence by dismantling the slave-based colonial structure that fuelled the capital accumulation regime. The new state's contribution to freedom and equality was extraordinary, both in terms of what it achieved domestically and in terms of the momentum it created around the world. This was especially true at the regional level, given the role Haiti played in the freedoms gained by people in Latin America.

After the country gained its independence, however, several generations of Haitians were still forced to pay reparations to the descendants of their former slave owners. The weight of Haiti's double debt—the reparations owed and the loans taken out to pay those reparations—was immense, setting Haiti on the path to underdevelopment, while making Europe's and North America's major financial centres richer.

The state of the country today is disastrous. The situation is dire. Haitians forced to leave the country to find work face inhumane conditions. More than just poverty, Haitians are experiencing terrible misery. Hospitals are left with nothing, roads are inaccessible, justice is non-existent and violence is at its peak. The government is not in control of anything. The country is dying a swift death; Haitians are in desperate straits.

Add to that the damage caused by repeated natural disasters and a rampant socio-political crisis, and you would be hard-pressed to find a worse situation. What is generally described as countrywide terror at the hands of criminal gangs is merely the product of a political phenomenon. Bolstered by foreign governments in the face of the current geopolitical tensions, economic elites and transnational political actors are using these impoverished members of society as pawns in their political war, arming them with weapons and ammunition and giving them political and legal protection.

In response to the situation, many are calling for new foreign intervention under the umbrella of humanitarian assistance. I strongly disagree with that recommendation. The events of the past 20 years clearly show that nothing good has come of such intervention. To advocates of intervention, I say have a look at the Organization of American States' assessment of foreign intervention in Haiti.

The organization's general secretariat released a statement on Haiti on August 8, 2022, and this is what it had to say:

The last 20 years of the international community's presence in Haiti has amounted to one of the worst and clearest failures implemented and executed within the framework of any international cooperation.… Instead, this failure has to do with 20 years of erratic political strategy by an international community that was not capable of facilitating the construction of a single institution with the capacity to address the problems facing Haitians. After 20 years, not a single institution is stronger than it was before.

Also telling is the resignation letter of former U.S. ambassador and special envoy for Haiti Daniel Foote, and I quote:

This cycle of international political interventions in Haïti has consistently produced catastrophic results. More negative impacts to Haiti will have calamitous consequences not only in Haïti, but in the U.S. and our neighbors in the hemisphere.

In the face of such a situation, what can we do to encourage co‑operation with Haiti and help the country get back on track? First and foremost, nothing can happen until relative security has been restored. Right now, international co‑operation with Haiti should focus on the country's immediate security needs.

Haiti is a country on a unique and different track, a country whose security cannot be left solely to the whims of external forces or hypothetical friendly countries; nor can it be left exclusively in the hands of police. While it is necessary to support capacity building so that Haitian police can intervene, it is just as necessary to focus on the military's role in security and the redeployment of Haiti's armed forces.

At the same time, international mediation to resolve the political crisis must be encouraged. The resulting political compromise could ease the transition to an elected government, without outside forces getting in the way. Only on the basis of those concrete actions can Haiti—

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

Thank you, Mr. LaRose.

You'll have an opportunity to say more during the question-and-answer portion.

[Dr. Chalmers LaRose]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

We'll start the round with the Conservative Party.

Mr. Aboultaif, you have seven minutes, please.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

I will start with Mr. LaRose.

I think I would have loved for him to continue his testimony, as he was going down to the real cause of the problem and also the solutions that can be long-term solutions rather than a band-aid, as he probably indicated, in a way that's been the case for the last 20 years.

If we were to make a priority list of what needs to be done to start finding meaningful action to first stop what's going on in the country in terms of violence, with all the disasters the country has been going through, plus now the unrest and the kidnapping and all the implications on vulnerable communities there, especially children and women, and if I ask Mr. LaRose to give me a list of priorities for what needs to be done, sort of a road map, what will he say to us?

[Dr. Chalmers LaRose]

I had not finished my speech, but according to your question, I will say the following.

The situation in Haiti is complex, but also simple. It is a situation that has been going on for a while. The problem in Haiti is a lack of security. How now to handle the security question in Haiti is by providing resources to the security forces in Haiti.

The international community, after 1994, created a police force in Haiti and destroyed the Haitian army. The premise behind this was that the police force was sufficient to provide security to the Haitian people, but now, and as time passes, we have realized that this is not the case, and it will never be the case, given the nature of Haitian society.

What can be done as far as security is concerned in Haiti? We can provide logistic resources and build the human resources necessary for the national police. Second, in parallel, we can build the Haitian army as a security force of the second order. The combination of the two security forces should and would provide the security necessary for the Haitian force and prevent international intervention in Haiti.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Rebuilding the army is not as easy a task as we may think. It's going to take resources of all kinds. What do you think is the reason the international community is not really intending to go that way? Can you tell us what you think could be the reason that rebuilding the army is not on the list of things that are on the table right now?

[Dr. Chalmers LaRose]

It would take me a long time to comment on this.

I think there was a reading of the situation in Haiti that goes to the history of the army in Haiti. You have to take into account that the army we had before 1994 was built by the Americans in 1940 when they invaded Haiti. They built an army that was the kind of force that they had on the ground. This army was very much politicized in its content and also in its actions. This army also was responsible for the coup d'état against the elected government in Haiti in 1991.

The reading was that if we eliminate the army, democracy will prevail. In the context of the Haitian society, the army was a kind of obstacle for the emergence of democracy. They removed the army and they emphasized the police, but the police were never organized and were never sufficient to provide the security necessary in all areas of Haiti.

The problem was that for ideological, political, geopolitical and economic reasons related to the island, the army of Haiti was destroyed, leaving Haiti in a situation of a security vacuum.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you for that.

Right now there are 100,000 displaced Haitians in the country. There's a health crisis with cholera and other health conditions. The education system is broken or is not there. Those situations have implications for the most vulnerable children and women. That seems to be the top priority for the international community to tackle and to work on.

On the other side, I agree. You're talking about the security issue and trying to strengthen the army or the police forces to play the role that is possible to bring back law and order.

To go back to the priorities, do you have any idea what it will take to at least deal with the health crisis and the education crisis at the moment?

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

We'll have to allow that answer in the subsequent rounds. We've reached the seven minutes. Thank you, Mr. Aboultaif.

We'll now continue on to the Liberal Party for seven minutes, please.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll split my time with Mr. Hanley.

I'd like to direct my question to Ms. Wienberg.

I know that you have recently returned from Haiti and that you have been spending years working on children's rights, particularly on the exploitation of children in institutions. This is something that predated the current crisis.

Could you tell us a little bit about what impact the current crisis is having in exacerbating the problems?

I will also take this moment to thank you for the incredible advocacy you're doing for the children of Haiti.

[Morgan Wienberg]

Thank you.

For some context, I lived in Haiti for over a decade and I came back to Canada at the end of September. Due to the situation in Haiti, I was forced to leave.

Even before the current crisis, as I mentioned—actually, since 2018—the Haitian government requested that no new orphanages be opened in the country, because they recognized, thanks to extensive international research, the damage that such institutions do to children. Unfortunately, due to foreign donations and volunteers, there's this false demand created for the development of institutions. We as Canadians have a responsibility to play a role in curbing that.

Due to the current crisis, children who are already being neglected and abused in orphanages are experiencing extremely dire conditions. We're receiving reports of children running away and leaving orphanages because they're not being fed. It's unclear whether these children are returning to their families or simply showing up in the streets, although social services are receiving numerous children of all ages simply unaccompanied in the streets.

There are also orphanages that are actually trafficking children in the form of displacing the children in the orphanages to safer locations because of the insecurity. However, they're doing this without informing Haitian authorities and without informing the children's parents. The majority of children in orphanages have living parents.

In addition to that, there's always a risk in times of disaster and unrest of many children being taken away from their families and going into orphanages or being abandoned into orphanages because the situation is so desperate and families are struggling.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Hanley, I'll share my time.

[Brendan Hanley, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to participate. I'm also going to be very quick, in order to allow Monsieur Dubourg to ask a question. I know time is limited.

Morgan, I'd like to pass it back to you and again recognize your dedication over the last decade or more to the plight of children in Haiti.

I want to take a moment to look beyond stabilization of the current crisis and how we, as a country, can continue to focus on the children of Haiti and end the violence, the exploitation and the trafficking that they have been subject to over many years, even decades. Hopefully, that will continue to be at an end once we stabilize the crisis.

What's the best way that Canada can play a role? I'll ask you to describe it in a minute, more or less, so that Monsieur Dubourg has time for a question as well. Thank you.

[Morgan Wienberg]

Thank you, MP Hanley, for your question.

It's really important that we as Canadians and other foreign countries recognize our responsibility in addressing the child rights violations of children in Haiti and other similar countries, because we play a role in perpetuating the cycle of exploitation that they are experiencing.

Because of an imbalance of resources, which I mentioned, Haitian child protection authorities—primarily social services, IBESR, and the child protection brigade of the police, BPM—really struggle to enforce laws and initiatives to address child trafficking, these abusive for-profit orphanages and other child rights crises.

NGOs and foreign support are so much stronger than the resources that the government has. As a result, orphanage directors, child rapists and different child rights offenders can dismiss the government because they're able to continue receiving support that allows them to either bribe or threaten their victims and at times bribe and threaten the government as well.

It's important that we ensure that our citizens are educated on this topic, that they're supporting families and communities as opposed to institutions, and that all Canadian organizations are working in alignment with the Haitian child protection authorities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sameer Zuberi]

For the last minute, go ahead, please, Mr. Dubourg.

[Emmanuel Dubourg, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for participating in our study.

My first question is for you, Mr. LaRose.

Thank you for your opening statement.

This is a committee on human rights. According to some reports on the current situation in Haiti, 10-year-olds are being raped in front of their parents and more than 85,000 pregnant women don't have access to services. Your way of dealing with all that is to strengthen police capacity.

What do you recommend we do immediately, because help is urgently needed in Haiti?

[Dr. Chalmers LaRose]

Thank you for your question, sir.

I understand that your committee's focus is human rights. To look at the Haitian problem through that lens is the wrong approach. Of course, human rights in Haiti is a vitally important issue. Extreme human rights abuses are happening in Haiti, as they are all over the world. Human rights are at risk in various places across the globe.