Canada has promised $ 60 million to help Haiti Fight the brazen criminal gangs, with the majority of the financing dependent United nations Support of an American plan to expand a police mission to a gang suppression.
“We have to work together on regional peace and regional security,” said Foreign Minister Anita Anita on Tuesday at an event that she organized with her Haitian counterpart at the United Nations.
Haiti has been equipped with violence and political chaos since 2021 and armed gangs control a large part of the country. Canada has targeted members of the Haiti Economic Elite with sanctions and argues that they have worked with gangs that collect instability throughout the country.
In June 2024, Kenya started a mission that was supported by the UN, which aimed to strengthen the Haitian police and fight the Haitian police with the aim of creating peace and elections.
Canada helped the mission mainly by coordinating international help, surveillance and training.
This week, the administration of US President Donald Trump is urging the UN Security Council to replace the mission with a much larger and better financed gang suppression.
Anand informed the meeting that she organized together on Tuesday that the proposed “renewed and improved security mission” was crucial for the reopening of schools and the end of a hunger crisis that is due to widespread violence and theft of property by gangs.
She said Canada was ready to spend $ 40 million to support this mission if it is taken over by the United Nations.
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Anand also announced 20 million US dollars for maritime security in the Caribbean to stop the weapon and drug flow in and through Haiti.
Canada has already promised 80 million US dollars for Kenya’s current police mission.
“As the second largest financial employee of the mission, we are clearly committed to their success and count on other partners who also strengthen their support,” said Anand.
“Since the resolution currently proposes five times the size, financing, personnel and equipment, your needs will be greater than ever.”
This week, Kenyan President William Ruto said that the current mission has tried to be successful with only 40 percent of the 2,500 security personnel for whom they were designed.
Anand said that Haitis transitional government will find it “increasingly difficult” to receive international support if it has no “concrete progress … free elections” and “economic reforms to promote competition on the domestic market”.
At Parliament Hill, the MPs pushed officers on Tuesday in the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, whether Canada could send troops to Haiti as part of the new UN mission.
Mark Richardson, a general director of the global matters of Canada, the general director of the Caribbean, said that it is “too early” to have these conversations.
The conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar asked the officials what Canada was doing to prevent the distraction of Canadian help that the UN has sent to reach the gangs of Haiti. He suggested that oligarchs who support gangs were also enriched by foreign help.
“The economic elite … has been created by AID distraction in the past ten years. In many ways, people who have benefited and maintained their power positions have done this at the behest of the gangs that they take care of,” said Majumdar.
He asked if Canadian help was being redirected in gangs since Ottawa began to react to the security crisis.
“There were no cases in relation to the abuse of Canadian resources that I have known since 2022,” said Ian Myles, Executive Director of Global Affairs Canadas Haiti Division.
He said Canada had “a high degree of trust” in the accountability and investigation mechanisms that the United Nations uses to ensure that the money is not being redirected and has a positive effect on the ground.
The MEP of Bloc Québécois, Alexis Brunelle Duceppe, said in French that there should be “political pressure from the Canadian government on our American neighbors” to stop the export of American weapons into the Caribbean.
“The problem comes from the United States,” he said.
Myles replied that the United States did not contest this problem and that American officials are exposed to a complicated situation to stop gun flow.
Several Caribbean leaders raised the problem of American weapons at a summit in Ottawa, which was organized by the Caricom group of countries in 2023.
Liberal MP Ahmed Hussen, chair of the committee, said that he was concerned about gangs that use social media to strengthen and terrorize people, “and cited an example that illustrates the depth of violence in Haiti.
“There is a video of a beheading by the warlord, a civilian live on Facebook,” he said. “And it’s not once, it’s not twice – it’s a few times.”
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