Biden visits Canada Amids Violence and Political Instability

President Joe Biden, who will be making his first official trip to Canada since taking office in early 2021.

For many months, daily life in Haiti’s capital has been marked by widespread violence and deepening political instability since powerful armed gangs seized control of the streets of Port-au-Prince.

“The still-unfolding crisis is expected to figure prominently in discussions this week between Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and United States.”

Washington has been pushing Ottawa to lead a multinational armed force in Haiti, and Biden is expected to seek an answer from Trudeau on whether Ottawa intends to take up the mission during his visit to the Canadian capital on Thursday and Friday.

Haitian-led Solution
But experts say Canada is not ready to lead such a deployment, instead supporting what it calls a “Haitian-led solution” to the country’s political crisis while also advancing a sanctions regime and increased assistance to the Haitian National Police.

Canada is “not going to get pushed – even by a very strong, powerful neighbour like the US – into doing something it doesn’t want to do here.” A professor of international development at the University of Ottawa and an expert on Haiti, Stephen Baranyi, said

He said Ottawa’s strategy is based on an assessment that Trudeau and other officials have stated publicly, “that past interventions have failed, that a new approach is needed and at the centre of that has to be a respect for and support for this idea of Haitian-led solutions.

“That’s been a sensible position, but we have to acknowledge that the dilemmas arising from that approach are becoming sharper and sharper,” especially as the security situation continues to deteriorate in Port-au-Prince, Baranyi said.

At the time, a powerful gang coalition had maintained a weeks-long blockade on the main petrol terminal in Port-au-Prince, causing water and electricity shortages, forcing the closure of health facilities and severely disrupting movement in the city.

Aljazeera /Shakirat Sadiq