Canada’s imperialist foray into Haiti

Our government’s efforts in this famously poor Caribbean nation mirror those of America in Iraq

by Michael Nenonen <mnenonen@republic-news.org>

There’s something noticeably absent from the shelves of even Vancouver’s more progressive bookstores. While it’s easy to find books on American imperialism, books analyzing Canada’s imperial ambitions are in short supply. This absence mirrors the conscious avoidance of such an analysis by Canada’s major media. While the CBC, for instance, is willing to critically scrutinize America’s involvement in Iraq, the network downplays Canada’s actions in Afghanistan and Haiti. When Canada’s role in these countries is mentioned at all, it’s portrayed in ways befitting Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “The White Man’s Burden.”

Our media typically depicts Canada as a virtuous benefactor of savage and tormented peoples, a benefactor whose “peace-keepers” dutifully carry out what Paul Martin calls our “Responsibility to Protect.” Ignored are the Canadian economic interests our military interventions serve, as well as the evidence of our involvement in overseas atrocities. This presumption of national innocence isn’t confined to our books and news outlets; it’s widespread throughout Canadian culture. As a result, while it’s easy for Canadian progressives to examine American wickedness, it’s much harder to uncover the machinery of Canadian malfeasance.

Given all this, I was pleased to stumble upon Yves Engler’s and Anthony Fenton’s book, Canada in Haiti: Waging War on the Poor Majority (2005) at the People’s Co-op Bookstore on Commercial Drive. While the book is slender—I doubt that it’s more than 25,000 words long—it contains exactly the kind of analysis I’ve been looking for. It also details the emergence of a radically new strategy for destabilizing and overthrowing sovereign states.

By all indicators, Haiti’s democratically-elected Lavalas party enjoyed the support of the vast majority of Haitian people. This isn’t surprising, as President Jean-Bertrand Aristide appeared committed to reforms benefiting the poor. These reforms threatened the interests of the wealthiest 1% of the Haitian population, as well as the interests of corporate elites in Canada, France, and the US. These countries—with the full support of the United Nations—took action to ensure that Aristide would be ousted and that Haiti would once again submit to a neo-liberal economic program.

In previous decades, the United States has achieved similar ends in the Caribbean and South and Central America by using the CIA to gain control over the state and governmental apparatuses of target nations. In Haiti, the imperial governments pursued a far more sophisticated strategy aimed at infiltrating every level of civil society, thereby co-opting the normal centres of resistance to foreign domination. They did this by funding scores of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that worked to undermine Aristide’s rule.

USAID and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) were major funders of such NGOs, which, by 2004, provided 80% of Haiti’s basic services. NGOs opposed to Aristide were the sole recipients of CIDA dollars. The NGOs organized demonstrations against the government, called for general strikes, and even spread a story about a massacre of 50 people by government forces on February 11, 2004—a massacre that left behind absolutely no forensic evidence, and which most reporters and human rights organizations believe never took place.

The authors use a hypothetical situation to convey the insidiousness of this strategy: “Imagine a plan to provide Canadians their education, healthcare, water, and welfare through private foreign-government-funded charities, corporations, and wealthy individuals. How would most Canadians react to this proposal? How about if these same private charities provided funds to opposition parties and supported the armed takeover of Parliament? Could they be regarded as coherent if they justified these acts in the name of building democracy? It is safe to say that most Canadians would view this as an insane plot to return the country to 19th-century conditions. Yet, in Haiti, supposedly progressive NGOs from Canada and other countries have promoted just this sort of ‘democracy building.’”

At the same time that foreign money was pouring into the coffers of anti-Aristide NGOs, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank cut $570 million of financial aid to the country. The government was starved while the influence of the NGOs skyrocketed.

Haiti’s paramilitary rebels seemed to enjoy a close relationship with the imperial powers. Paul Arcelin, the man who helped coordinate Guy Phillipe’s insurgency, was well-known in Canadian and American right-wing circles, and he was able to secure a meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew in early February 2004, just as the insurgency was getting started. In the early weeks of the insurgency, Aristide pleaded for international assistance, but Canadian and US forces waited until February 29 to take action. While Canadian soldiers “secured” the Port-au-Prince airport, US soldiers escorted Aristide and his security staff onto a jet and took him out of the country. The imperial powers claim that Aristide departed willingly; Aristide says that he was forced from office. Rather than being taken to nearby Miami, Aristide was transported to the Central African Republic. A UN force took charge of the country. Canada, France, and the US appointed an interim government, ushering the rebels into power.

The rebel forces were led by people with lengthy records of human rights violations, and they quickly began a bloody purge of Lavalas politicians and supporters. Breaking a 13-year arms embargo, the Bush administration sold millions of dollars worth of arms to the new government. Foreign aid once again began flowing into Haiti in order to stabilize the new regime. Haiti’s army, which was notorious for its persecution of Haiti’s poor, had been disbanded in 1995. Canada was directly involved in the re-integration of ex-soldiers into Haiti’s police forces, allowing them to resume the role that had won them the hatred of the Haitian masses. The UN mission in Haiti proceeded to provide logistical support to “police operations” involving arbitrary arrests, rapes, extra-judicial executions, and the murderous repression of pro-Aristide demonstrations. There’s evidence that thousands of Haitians, including many children, have been killed in the ensuing political violence—violence that hasn’t yet subsided.

The imperial powers have reaped numerous benefits from the coup.

Following Haiti’s war of independence in 1804, France had demanded 150 million francs from the new and impoverished country—money that would compensate slave-owners for their lost “property.” With the threat of invasion hanging over their heads, Haiti’s rulers submitted to this extortion. In current funds, this money would equal $22 billion. Aristide had demanded return of this ill-gotten money to Haitian shores; these demands were dropped following the coup.

No sooner had the new regime come to power than it began undoing Aristide’s reforms. Sweatshops began multiplying across the Haitian landscape. Public services were privatized. Haiti’s economy was handed over to foreign corporations. The Canadian mining companies KWG Resources and St Genevieve Resources, for example, made a deal with a Haitian businessman to exploit Haiti’s lucrative mineral deposits, while Montreal-based Gildan Activewear is planning to move its Honduran El Progresso plant to Haiti to avoid repercussions for workers’ rights violations. The cheap labour available in Haiti serves to depress wages throughout the region, as companies can now respond to labour’s demands by threatening to relocate to this downtrodden nation.

Canada seems prepared to take a leading role in Haiti: “According to a FOCAL plan for Haiti’s future, commissioned by Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, the country’s different ministries would fall under Canadian oversight. Quebec’s ministry of education, for instance, would oversee Haiti’s education system. . . . The FOCAL plan puts Haiti’s environment ministry under Canadian federal government supervision.”

Since Canada was one of the major players in the coup, Canadians bear a special responsibility to ensure that Aristide is returned to power and allowed to complete his full term free of foreign domination. I agree with the authors: “There are numerous ways that Canadians can make a difference, from phoning MPs, to organizing meetings, demonstrating and occupying ministers’ offices. Canadians can also arrange delegations to Haiti and help organizations that are taking great risks to document human rights abuses.” As Canadian citizens, Haiti’s blood is on our hands; it’s time we washed them.

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