Canada contributes to Haitian apocalypse

Canada contributes to Haitian apocalypse
Publish Date: December 22, 2008
I congratulate you and your feature writer Roberta Staley for reporting on the deplorable conditions in Haiti today [“Haiti’s road to ruin”, December 11-18]. I do wish the writer had probed more deeply her suggestion that foreign interference shares some blame for the situation.

Over the past 32 years, the Haitian people have fought courageously to establish progressive government that would tackle the country’s poverty and underdevelopment. First, they overthrew the U.S.–backed Duvalier family dictatorship in a popular uprising in 1986. Then they elected socially progressive governments three times—in 1990, 1995, and 2000. The 1990 and 2000 governments were overthrown by force and violence, with indispensable international backing and bankrolling.

Canada supported the second overthrow, in February 2004, contributing 800 soldiers to the dirty deed. It also joined in the ban on foreign aid that followed the second election to the presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in 2000. That ban was accompanied by a fierce propaganda war falsely accusing Aristide’s government of human-rights violations.

The true story was that Aristide was unwilling to sacrifice the population’s urgent needs to the demands of the foreign financial institutions and agribusinesses that bleed Haiti dry.
Canada remains a central participant in the UN–sponsored military and police mission in Haiti. The mission spends an astounding $600 million per year, all the while delivering next to nothing in social and economic development.

As I observed while in Haiti last year, the population deeply resents the refusal of the UN and the big three overlords—the U.S., France, and Canada—to do anywhere near what is needed to tackle the near-apocalyptic conditions in the country.


> Roger Annis, Haiti Solidarity B.C. / Vancouver

It was really a surprise to many haitians to witness Canada's involvement in this crime against the haitian people.Yet the Preval/Pierre Louis government just award a contract to a Canadian company to exploit the gold and silver mines in the Northern part of the country.I never thought one day that Canada will participate in the overthrow of a legitimate government.This will stay as a shameful act in the history of Canada.

Nothing the French do in regard to Haiti can be a surprise to haitians,for we know very well their hypocrisy.We remember the way they arrested Toussaint Louverture ,and the hold-up they perpetrated against the haitian people with the complicity of their spy Jean Pierre Boyer .But nobody would think that the canadian government will be a participant in such a misdeed.

As for the americans there is no surprise.We know very well their involvement in these horrible assassinations attempts of some foreign leaders.However it is unfortunate that in the 21st century these crimes are still perpetrated by some american governments presided by some Cow boys who think the world is the wild west in the name of this charitable and compassionate people of the United States.The time has come for change in the approach of the american government toward other countries.It is no accident that Hugo Chavez, Raoul Castro,Evo Morales ,Daniel Ortega. are the leaders that the people of South America are electing to govern their countries.Unless the american people elect more progressive americans to govern their country ;we will see the decline of the United States as a world economic power..