Canada and Caribbean leaders talk Haiti, climate change in summit

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and leaders of the Caribbean Community kicked off a two-day summit in Ottawa on Wednesday, launching a first-ever strategic partnership that they hope will enhance their commercial relationship and provide the vulnerable small island states of the region with a strong ally as they tackle major global challenges.

“Today’s engagement provides another opportunity for dialogue on strategies to further strengthen our cooperation,” said Carla Barnett, the secretary general for the 15-member regional bloc known as CARICOM. “Persistent socioeconomic challenges continue to intersect with our common goals in foreign policy, trade, security and development. Effectively addressing these global challenges requires focused global efforts founded on global solidarity and driven by collective action.”

This is the first time the two are meeting in Canada for a summit. The gathering marked the second time in eight months that Trudeau and the Caribbean heads of government and state have met face to face. Their last meeting was in February in Nassau, Bahamas, where the crisis in Haiti was a major discussion point.

“Over the years Canada and the Caribbean Community have built an enduring partnership and friendship. We share strong ties between our peoples,” Trudeau said in his welcoming remarks. “As strategic partners, as friends, if we want to protect our people, if we want to deliver for our people we have to work together.”

READ MORE: Caribbean organizations want U.S. help on climate change

Among the issues on the agenda over the next two days: climate change and resilience, access to finance, reform of international finance, regional security, Immigration, trade and investment and the situation in Haiti.

“Mr. Prime Minister, more than ever before, Haiti needs us,” Dominica Prime Minister and CARICOM Chairman Roosevelt Skerrit told Trudeau.

Skerrit said hemispheric security and the multifaceted crisis in Haiti will feature prominently in their discussions. The bloc has been involved in trying to broker a political agreement between Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who is in attendance in Ottawa, and members of the country’s opposition and civil society. So far, they have not been able to come to an agreement..

In February, after it became clear that Canada would not be taking the lead on sending an international armed force into Haiti, CARICOM announced that it would focus its efforts on assisting the Haiti National Police rather than sending in troops.

Months later, after lobbying by both U.S. officials and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who attended CARICOM’s 50th anniversary celebration in Trinidad in July, the community reversed course. Caribbean leaders were among those who endorsed a resolution penned by the United States and Ecuador at the U.N. Security Council approving a Kenya-led deployment of forces into Haiti. Several Caribbean countries are among the nations that have volunteered to help field the operation.

“We are encouraged by the recent U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing a multinational security mission to help address Haiti’s security challenges and create conditions for long-term stability and personal preparedness,” Skerrit said, as he turned to Trudeau and added, “do what you must for the people of Haiti.”

Outside of the crisis in the community’s largest member state other pressing matters will be discussed, Skerrit and Barnett said. That includes the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the region’s tourist-dependent economies, the war in Ukraine, which is raising food prices, and the ongoing impact of climate change. Also of concern is the ongoing crisis in the Middle East following the Hamas attacks against Israel.

“CARICOM has joined the responsible members of the international community in calling for an end to the hostilities. It is our hope that all parties will work together for a lasting solution to the cycle of violence,” Skerrit said.

Trudeau acknowledged that their gathering was happening against a backdrop of “great turbulence following the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas.”

“The conflict in the Middle East is reverberating around the world,” he said, adding that Canada is closely monitoring the situation.

“Recent years,” the Canadian prime minister later added, “have demonstrated how interconnected we all are. The pandemic was a health crisis. But it was also a crisis that affected supply chains and economies. The war of Russia and Ukraine has increased inflation and led to food insecurity. And this month, the terrorist states of Hamas have led to a lot of fear and uncertainty in communities across the globe.”

The group’s first closed-door session focused on Caribbean nations getting better access to finance and capital in the face of more extreme climate events threaten to wipe out their economies while plunging them deeper into debt.

Developing and middle-income countries need better access to finance, Trudeau said, especially in cases of catastrophe, health crises and to be able to maintain growth.

Canada, he said, supports efforts for reform of the international financial architecture, including using capital more efficiently, making low-interest financing available and “mobilizing private capital because we know public financing alone isn’t sufficient.”

“Canada has joined international partners in calling for major creditors, both public and private, to offer climate resilient debt clauses that pause debt repayments for vulnerable countries in times of crisis or catastrophe and Canada will now offer climate resilient debt clauses... in all new sovereign lending,” he said. “Governments absolutely must be able to support people in times of crisis and they must have the financing they need to build a better future.”

At the heart of the issue is that despite being considered middle-income countries on paper, Caribbean nations say they face huge challenges from both climate change and the refusal of development financial institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to give them access to low-cost money to respond to the crisis and to rebuild.

In an impassioned please, Barbados Prime Minister, among other things, called for an end to surcharges in an environment of high interests rates, telling the financial institutions: “We cannot ask people to pay interest rates when they’re supposed to be feeding people in the aftermath of a crisis.”

Mottley is currently leading a global discussion on the reform of the world’s multilateral finance institutions, which has been dubbed the “Bridgetown Initiative.”

“Our countries have become highly indebted, not because of corruption or profligacy, but because of the complexity of governance that we face, ranging from environmental threats to the consequences of a transition to a liberalized trading environment over the last 30 years that saw the diminution of our agricultural and manufacturing sectors when others could equally sustained there’s through mechanisms that were grandfathered,” Mottley said. “The victim hood of rules that are imposed on us are not of our own making, cannot continue.”

Frustrated by the lack of progress over financing and reforms to better assist Caribbean countries and other small island states, Mottley challenged her colleagues and Trudeau to not let the gathering become another one in which discussions do not amount to action.

“We come to these meetings and we are not getting the needle moving because of the absence of political will. Political will that is focused on domestic politics, political will that is focused on geopolitics,” she said.

Canada, she said she believes, has the power to help the region speak to “the remaining few countries who are blocking progress at the World Bank and at the IMF. And I also believe that we have to have the courage to say that the common framework for the treatment of debt is not working.”

“I really do believe that if ever there was a time for us to stop talking and [start] acting, it is now,” she said. “Giving us the oxygen without the capacity to execute will not get us to the finish line safely.”