Montreal to Teach Haiti Corruption, Poor Governance

Henry Aubin decries his city's well-intentioned, unintentionally ironic development efforts.

Stephen Harper should mark the one-year anniversary of his visit to Haiti last February by returning to the country next month, says the Toronto Star’s James Travers. “Beyond silencing uncharitable suggestions about the self-promotional benefits of his earlier visit, it would give the Prime Minister a chance to put Haiti’s limited, post-quake recovery into perspective while re-committing Canada to the long haul.” Travers gives Harper credit for “extending the reconstruction timeline beyond the four-year political cycle that so often cripples long-term progress” and revisiting Haiti would remind Canadians and Haitians that our country will stick by the troubled country in the long-term. Which hopefully we will.

In the Ottawa Citizen, Oxfam’s Robert Fox says the proper way to think about reconstruction efforts in Haiti is not that they are going slowly, but that they haven’t even begun. He urges the international community to keep their foot on the gas, and despite corruption-ridden elections last November that have added political turmoil to the country’s problems, Fox says “we cannot use the current political stalemate … as an excuse for inaction.” Fair, but it’s hard to see how any progress can be made until there is stable, legitimate government to focus efforts. In absence of a stable government, the only other organization that can harness all the aid groups and money flowing into the country is the UN, which could never lead efforts because it is reviled by many Haitians who blame its peacekeepers (rightly, it turns out) for the recent deadly cholera outbreak.

In the Montreal Gazette, Henry Aubin is at once proud and baffled that Montreal is sending a contingent of city employees to help with reconstruction efforts. Proud because it’s the right thing to do, but baffled because, well, since when do Montreal municipal employees know how to run a city? “Montreal, capital of immobilisme, is casting itself as an international expert on getting things done,” he writes. “It's as if Toronto presented itself as an international expert in snow clearance.” The lanes look pretty clear on Yonge Street today, by the way, but you get his point.