Foreign Affairs and International Development

Opening remarks

Good morning. My name is Mark Richardson, and I am the director general of the Central America and Caribbean bureau at Global Affairs Canada. As the chair said, I'm joined by my colleague Ian Myles, the executive director of the Haiti division. Today, I will provide an overview of the situation in Haiti as well as Canada’s response. The situation in Haiti is dire. Since the assassination of President Moïse in 2021, the country has plunged into a deep and multi-faceted crisis. It is now at a critical point as gang violence and chaos continue to escalate. Despite the courageous efforts of the Haitian National Police and the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support Mission, or MSSM, gangs now control over 90% of the capital and are expanding their hold to other parts of the country. The gangs are exceptionally well funded and equipped through kidnapping, extortion and drug and weapons trafficking. They have become increasingly brutal. They recruit children and use sexual violence, massacres and intimidation to assert control. More than 8,700 people have been killed since 2024 alone. The political situation is similarly challenging. The mandate of the transitional presidential…

Opening remarks

Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me through the mask. I'm afraid I came down with a cold, and I don't want to share it. Mr. Chair, the situation in Haiti has been complex since the country got its independence in 1804. Without going too much into history, it's been the history of a very small elite controlling economic and political power. That's been true to the present day. The origins of the gangs are mostly in terms of armed thugs, essentially, who were put in place by those same elites, initially to compete with each other over control of territory, control of markets and control of regions. To put it simply, the gangs themselves realized at some point that they were the ones who had the guns. With the political turmoil with the assassination of the president and the subsequent turmoil, there was a political vacuum, and the gangs took advantage of that. The status quo primarily benefits those gangs right now. I think the political and economic elite feel very vulnerable right now because of this situation. The gangs are becoming quite wealthy because of the extortion opportunities, the drug-trafficking opportunities and the arms-trafficking opportunities. The…