Canada has pledged $60 million to help Haiti fight back brazen criminal gangs, with most of the funding contingent on the United Nations supporting an American plan to expand a police mission into a gang-suppression force.
“We have to work collectively toward regional peace and regional security,” Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday at an event she co-hosted with her Haitian counterpart at the United Nations.
Haiti has been racked by violence and political chaos since 2021 and armed gangs control much of the country. Canada has targeted members of Haiti’s economic elite with sanctions, arguing they have collaborated with gangs sowing instability across the country.
In June 2024, Kenya launched a mission supported by the UN aimed at empowering the Haitian police and fighting back gangs, with a goal of establishing peace and permitting elections.
Canada has helped the mission mostly by co-ordinating international aid, surveillance and training.
This week, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing the UN Security Council to replace the mission with a much larger and better-funded gang suppression force.
Anand told the meeting she co-hosted Tuesday that the proposed “renewed and enhanced security mission” is crucial to reopening schools and stopping a hunger crisis that stems from widespread violence and property theft by gangs.
She said Canada is ready to spend $40 million to support that mission, if it’s adopted by the UN.
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Anand also announced $20 million for maritime security in the Caribbean aimed at stopping the flow of arms and drugs in and through Haiti.
Canada has already pledged $80 million for the ongoing police mission led by Kenya.
“As the mission’s second-largest financial contributor, we are clearly committed to its success and we count on other partners to also step up their support,” Anand said.
“As the resolution currently proposes a fivefold increase in size, funding, personnel, and equipment, their needs will be greater than ever.”
This week, Kenyan President William Ruto said the ongoing mission has struggled to succeed with only 40 per cent of the 2,500 security personnel it was designed for.
Anand said Haiti’s transitional government will find it “increasingly difficult” to get international support if it doesn’t have “concrete progress … toward free and fair elections” and “economic reforms to foster competition in the domestic market.”
On Parliament Hill, MPs pressed officials Tuesday at the House foreign affairs committee on whether Canada might send troops to Haiti as part of the new UN mission.
Mark Richardson, a Global Affairs Canada director general for the Caribbean, testified that it is “too early” to have those conversations.
Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar asked officials what Canada is doing to prevent the diversion of Canadian aid sent through the UN from reaching Haiti’s gangs. He suggested oligarchs supporting gangs have also been enriched by foreign aid.
“The economic elite … were created by the aid diversion over the last decade. In many ways, people who have been profiting and maintaining their positions in power have done so at the behest of the gangs that supply them,” Majumdar said.
He asked whether Canadian aid is being diverted to gangs since Ottawa started responding to Haiti’s security crisis.
“There have been no instances, in terms of misuse, of Canadian resources that I’m aware of since 2022,” testified Ian Myles, the executive director of Global Affairs Canada’s Haiti division.
He said Canada has “quite a high degree of confidence” in the accountability and investigation mechanisms the UN employs to ensure aid money isn’t diverted and is having a positive impact on the ground.
Bloc Québécois MP Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe said in French that there should be “political pressure from the Canadian government on our American neighbours” to stop the export of American guns to the Caribbean.
“The problem is coming from the United States,” he said.
Myles responded that the U.S. has not denied this problem and American officials face a complicated situation in trying to stop the flow of arms.
Multiple Caribbean leaders raised the problem of American guns at a summit Ottawa hosted in 2023 of the CARICOM group of countries.
Liberal MP Ahmed Hussen, committee chair, said he was concerned about gangs using social media “to amplify and terrorize people,” citing an example that illustrates the depth of violence in Haiti.
“There’s a video of a beheading by the warlord, of a civilian on Facebook Live,” he said. “And it’s not once, it’s not twice — it’s a number of times.”
© 2025 The Canadian Press
