Violent gangs, a political impasse and desertion: What Canada’s new envoy faces in Haiti

Canada’s new ambassador in Port-au-Prince is no stranger to Haiti’s vexing challenges. But a lot has changed —and much hasn’t — since André François Giroux help to coordinate his country’s efforts at the United Nations to help train the Haitian police back in the late 1990s.

Today, the job goes beyond reading files or U.N. reports from a remote location, and involves making the rounds through Port-au-Princes’s gang-ridden streets while trying to decipher fact from fiction in a country where things are not always as they seem.

Giroux, who recently arrived in Port-au-Prince after being appointed as Canada’s new ambassador to Haiti in September, says he’s up for the challenge. So far, he has no regrets about giving up a posh posting in Sydney, Australia, where he still had a year left as consul general, for the troubled Caribbean nation that Canadian citizens are urged to avoid due to threat posed by kidnappings, gang violence and the potential for civil unrest.

“I’m thrilled and honored and very humbled by the opportunity,” said Giroux, adding that while Haiti is a major source of Canadian aid, Ottawa has spent the last three decades “really trying to help in moving” Haiti forward.

“But you know, the situation has always been complicated,” he said. “Canada definitely has been stepping up to the plate. It’s a very important relationship for us. And, I just love a challenge.”

Giroux replaces Ambassador Sébastien Carrière, who left in August after his two-year posting ended.

“I know I have big shoes to fill,” Giroux said, adding that when he agreed to come onboard, he knew that he would be “well supported,” given the focus the country is getting from his government.

“I can tell you I may be the face of the relationship but there’s a whole army behind me, supporting Haiti,” he said.

READ MORE: Across the Americas, crises roil without U.S. ambassadors on the ground

Like his predecessor, Giroux will be tasked with steering Canada’s foreign policy amid an ongoing Haitian political impasse that still has not provided a clear path for holding long overdue elections, and dealing with widespread gang violence. The violence, which has been escalating in recent months, has turned most of the capital into a no-go zone as heavily armed gangs target schools and hospitals, pillage police stations and entire neighborhoods, and rape and kidnap with impunity.

He must also balance what at times is a fraught relationship between his government and Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has led the country since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and groups that want him out.

“I’ve been doing a lot of … listening to the views from all segments of society since I’ve arrived here,” Giroux said. “You sometimes leave the room thinking, ‘Where is the area of agreement here? Because some of the positions are so opposite.”

As Haiti’s violence continues to spiral out of control, Canada has tried to carve out its own identity in respect to its foreign policy toward the country, one that is independent of the United States.

While many Haitians have long held the belief that Canada takes its policy cues from Washington, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been challenging that notion as he rebuffed U.S. pressure to put boots on the ground in Haiti.

In various public forums, Trudeau has highlighted the fact that Canada is imposing sanctions—28 to date— against members of Haiti’s political and economic elite whom his Liberal government believes are contributing to the gang violence, while the United States is lagging in its blacklisting.

Despite such sanctions, gang violence continues to escalate. Last week a gang alliance in the country’s largest slum, Cité Soleil, fired its assault weapons at a hospital where a baby died before being delivered and babies on oxygen had to be evacuated in a hail of flying bullets.

It was the latest violent clash in the country, where gang violence has now internally displaced more than 200,000 people, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration.

In July, Kenya offered to lead a security force into Haiti and last month, nearly a year after Henry’s government asked for the deployment of such a force to help its police take on gangs, the U.N. Security Council authorized a Multinational Security Support Mission to the country. The effort, however, remains blocked by the High Court in Nairobi, which last week extended a ban on the deployment of Kenyan security forces to Haiti until it could hear a challenge in late January.

Ottawa, Giroux said, hasn’t made a “decision one way or another” about Canada’s contribution to the Kenya-led security mission. But Canada, he said, feels strongly that $100 million Canadian dollars in aid Trudeau announced earlier this year for the Haiti National Police “is definitely a complement to the efforts that the force will be bringing.”

“Our view is that we’re very supportive of the force, it’s needed but it’s not going to be here forever and we want to make sure that the force is there to support the police, not substitute itself to the police,” Giroux said. “So there is a decision to be made on the Canadian contribution to the force but in parallel, we will carry on with our support to the [police].”

Those efforts, he said, include purchasing equipment and reconstructing police stations that were destroyed by gangs. It also includes having members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police train members of the Haitian national police, which has seen a staggering loss of officers since the beginning of the year.

While a U.N. report earlier this year on the departures didn’t provide a breakdown of why officers were leaving, diplomats in Haiti believe a large contributor is migration, with officers fleeing to Canada and to the United States, the latter made easier by a two-year humanitarian parole program. Launched in January, the program allows individuals from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela to legally migrate to the U.S. as long as they have a financial sponsor.

The challenges the brain drain poses is not lost on Giroux, who was once involved in Haitian police training efforts by Canada when the country sat on the U.N. Security Council in the late 1990s.

In addition to helping to rebuild the police force, Canada is also pushing for a political consensus. Last month, Trudeau delivered “a very strong message” to Henry about the need to share power as he and other Caribbean leaders met in Ottawa for a summit.

“I believe those messages were received,” Giroux said. “There have been some major concessions. I think the prime minister has demonstrated his willingness to share power. Now I think it’s for the members of the various opposition parties to grab that hand that is being extended and do it for the good of the Haitian people.”

Despite those concessions, some of the political and civic leaders who have been negotiating with Henry are demanding his resignation as a precondition for talks.

Giroux said he remains hopeful of a breakthrough .

“Nothing is simple here and unanimity is never going to happen,” he said. “Our view is you need critical mass, you need minimal consensus and I don’t think it’s out of reach.

“Everybody is complaining about the lack of legitimacy, the lack of constitutional order, the lack of this, the lack of that,” he added. “But the reality is the only way you can really restore this is by having elections.”