The Globe and Mail newspaper is reporting a decision by the Canadian government to reduce its aid spending to Haiti. According to documents received by the newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act request, the amount of aid is to be reduced to the app. $90 million average per year that was doled out prior to the 2010 earthquake. It is not yet clear what proportion of that figure would be directed to 'development' aid and what would go to the support of policing and prisons that has figured largely in Canadian 'aid' to Haiti since the coup d'etat of February 2004. Enclosed are two news stories reporting on this. More analysis will follow on this website in the coming days.
Memos show cuts planned for aid to Haiti
By Kim Mackrael, Globe and Mail, Sept 4, 2013
The federal government is looking to significantly reduce the amount of aid it sends to Haiti, according to internal documents, saying it has fulfilled its post-earthquake commitments to a country that has long played a key role in Canada’s development strategy. A
spokesman for the newly formed Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development said last week that future funding for the Caribbean country is “still under review.” But briefing notes obtained by The Globe and Mail show the government made plans to scale back its contributions to Haiti to about $90-million per year – a major drop in funding for a country that has been a Canadian priority for years.
“The Haiti program is planning against an indicative budget of $90-million annually, which reflects the level of funding prior to the 2010 earthquake, is commensurate with development needs in Haiti and Canada’s traditional role there,” say the documents, which were written in the fall of 2012.
By comparison, Canada gave about $205-million in overall assistance to Haiti during the fiscal year ending in March, 2012, including more than $150-million in direct aid from CIDA. It is not clear from the documents whether the $90-million refers to funding for Haiti from all federal departments or only to the portion that was previously managed by CIDA. In 2009, Haiti received about $198-million in total aid from Canada.
Despite the planned reduction, a recent trip to Haiti by International Development Minister Christian Paradis was seen by some as a sign that the country is still important to Canada. Mr. Paradis met last week with Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and representatives from local businesses and development organizations in the minister’s first international trip since taking over the development portfolio this summer.
“We certainly noticed in Haiti that this is the first trip abroad of Mr. Paradis and he decided to go to Haiti and just Haiti,” said Frantz Liautaud, Haiti’s ambassador to Canada. “He stated before leaving, and while he was there, that [the trip] clearly marked the importance that Haiti holds in the priorities of the Canadian government.”
Briefing material prepared last fall for Mr. Paradis’s predecessor says Canada views Haiti as an important aid recipient, in part because of the risks associated with having a fragile state in the region. Canada is also home to a large Haitian diaspora, many of whom live in Montreal, say the documents, which were obtained under Access to Information legislation.
Although Canada has been among the top donors to Haiti in recent years, the relationship between the two countries has not always been smooth. Last January, then-international cooperation minister Julian Fantino was quoted in a French-language newspaper saying Canada would stop funding new development projects in Haiti because it was not satisfied with the results – a statement that appeared to come as a surprise to both Haitian and Canadian officials.
The federal government has not yet published data on the total value of its contributions to Haiti during the past year. However, a government database of Canadian development programming in Haiti indicates that about 100 projects are still active in different parts of the country, including several that began in 2013.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development wrote in an e-mail that Canada “continues to play a leading international role” supporting the country and its citizens. He added that Mr. Paradis’s visit was part of the government’s continuing review of its programming in Haiti.
François Audet, a professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal and director of the Canadian Research Institute on Humanitarian Crisis and Aid, said Canada was considered a major donor to Haiti even before the earthquake occurred, and was working with the United States and other countries to assist the impoverished country over the long-term. He said rebuilding Haiti will likely take generations. “Deciding to reduce the budget this much, for me it’s a call to be out of this longterm program,” Prof. Audet said.
Ottawa asks Haiti to improve rule of law
By Kim Mackrael, Globe and Mail, Sept 5, 2013
Canada’s International Development Minister is asking Haiti’s government to improve transparency and rule of law as Canada reviews its long-term funding plans for the Caribbean country. Christian Paradis travelled to Haiti last week to meet with government officials and see the results of Canadian aid more than three years after a devastating earthquake struck the country. In an interview with The Globe and Mail on Wednesday, Mr. Paradis said he spoke frankly with Haitian officials during the visit about some of the challenges the country faces.
“What I said there to the government, and I said this with insistence, [is] that they have to make sure that the political actors are taking care of their issues. There are issues that have to be dealt with to make sure that it doesn’t impede development in the future,” Mr. Paradis said.
Canada is particularly concerned about lengthy delays in holding senatorial and local elections, he said. Haitians were initially expected to vote for one-third of the country’s senators in late 2011, but those elections have still not occurred and the continuing delays threaten to destabilize the political process.
Internal documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show the former Canadian International Development Agency planned to significantly reduce aid to Haiti, indicating last fall that Canada had fulfilled its post-earthquake commitments and CIDA was ready to scale back future assistance to about $90-million per year. By comparison, Canada gave a total of about $205-million to Haiti in the year ending March, 2012.
It’s not clear whether the $90million would be for the entire Canadian commitment or just the programming run by the former CIDA.
Mr. Paradis said on Wednesday that no decisions will be made about the level of future aid for Haiti until the government’s review is complete. But he noted that he saw significant signs of progress on his recent trip, including housing for thousands of people who were living in tents in a public park in Port au Prince after the earthquake. “Haitian people are very thankful [for] Canada’s efforts. We’ve been a critical player in this,” Mr. Paradis said.
He said Haiti remains a priority for Canada, adding that it was important for him to see signs of progress on his trip because “a lot of questions have been asked here, on the domestic point of view, which are legitimate questions.”
Mr. Paradis is the former minister of industry but was moved to the international development and Francophonie portfolios in a cabinet shuffle this summer. He will be responsible for helping to merge the former CIDA with Canada’s foreign affairs and trade portfolios, a shift that began this year after the government announced the creation of a new Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.
François Gérin-Lajoie, head of a Canadian education group called the Paul Gérin-Lajoie Foundation, said non-governmental organizations that work in Haiti were informed last fall that Canadian funding to the country would be scaled back. While some individual projects have shown good results, Mr. Gérin-Lajoie said overall progress has been weak in Haiti for a variety of reasons. Both donors and Haitian officials have changed their priorities at different times and international donors are concerned about transparency and the pace of reform in the Haitian government, he said.
“There’s so many hidden decisions, that it makes the international community very skeptical,” he said. “And on that, for sure, it’s difficult to see what was the progress in that matter.”
Foreign donors to Haiti have been criticized for channelling development aid through nongovernmental organizations instead of the Haitian government.
Haiti’s ambassador to Canada, Frantz Liautaud, said in an interview last week that his government should not be blamed for the country’s limited progress because, “The reality is that you cannot be accountable for programs that you don’t run.” However, Mr. Liautaud said that he was encouraged by Mr. Paradis’s trip to Haiti and the fact that Canada still considers the country to be a priority.