Thank you.
One challenge in crises has always been that we respond to the immediate crisis, what's just in front of us. We lose sight of the long-term policy frameworks that got us to this place. Part of those long-term policy frameworks, in times when there's not apparent crisis.... We allow stockpiles of the cholera vaccine to dwindle to nothing. Canada can play a leadership role in times of apparent peace.
Paul had a phrase, “acute on chronic”, and that's what's happening in Haiti right now. It's very acute. It's more acute than it has ever been. The chronic situation, certainly for health and education, also ties into chronic underfunding of health for diseases that affect poor countries because of all the underlying social and economic conditions. Cholera is there because there's no water or sanitation. Part of the result of the 2010 earthquake was no investments in Haiti's public sector to be able to build long-term WASH standards within the country, which would have helped prevent cholera right now.
Despite the fact that we are in this crisis, we need to maintain a long-term perspective on policy. What is Canada doing in the humanitarian and development space that has a long-term vision?
In the 2010 earthquake, one thing that Partners In Health did was build a teaching hospital. At the time we were heavily criticized for it. People asked, “How can this be a priority in a time of crisis?” Well, when there was the Haiti earthquake last summer, the people who responded were the people who were trained at that hospital through the residency programs. It was a 100% different response from 2010. It was a response led by Haitians, in part because we made an investment in health infrastructure, training and teaching that allowed some capacity to respond.
I think it's exactly the right question to be asking. How do we not have blinders? Everything we're talking about is incredibly important—security and what the international community is going to do to respond to so many crises—but we have to do it with an eye on long-term policy that includes how we approach political leaders and what we are doing to ensure that poor countries have the capacity to respond during times of crisis.