The Dominion - Yves Engler

The Profit Behind the Myths

dru — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 08:00:00 +0000

New documentary refutes "benevolent" Canada

A major obstacle for anyone organizing to "right" a Canadian foreign policy "wrong" is the widely held notion that this country acts benevolently on the world stage. "Myths for Profit," a recently released documentary written and directed by Amy Miller, challenges this assumption head-on.

A summary of the film reads: "The Canadian government and the military would like us to believe that we are altruistic peacekeepers helping people around the world. But is this accurate?"

After exploring how Canadians see their country, "Myths for Profit" provides an entertaining history of NATO and a brief description of Canada's peacekeeping role in the Suez crisis. The film also delves into the role played by government agencies, such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Export Development Canada (EDC), in advancing investors' interests abroad. With helpful graphics, the film discusses the Canadian arms industry, pipeline politics in Afghanistan and some of the social and ecological devastation wrought by Canadian foreign investment.

The movie is probably at its best regarding Canada's bombing of Serbia in 1999. Under the auspices of "humanitarian intervention," Canadian military jets dropped hundreds of bombs on the country, destroying infrastructure and killing civilians.

The film is not without political limitations. It discusses the drawbacks of tied aid at length, but barely mentions how Canadian aid supports US-led military endeavours and has been used to keep poorer countries within the Western sphere of influence. Aid, the film might have made clear, is largely a tool to advance geopolitical interests defined by the global elite.

When discussing the Suez crisis, popularly understood as the beginning of "peacekeeping," "Myths for Profit" could have detailed Washington's support for the UN mission, put forward by Lester B. Pearson. A better understanding of Suez would convince viewers that peacekeeping (usually) advanced Washington's interests during the Cold War, a point made in "Myths for Profit."

The political objective of the film may be too broad for an hour-long documentary, a medium that doesn't lend itself to depth. It is not clear whether the uninitiated viewer will follow all of the movie's transitions, from NATO to peacekeeping and through the reconstruction industry to Canadian mining operations abroad.

Despite these weaknesses, "Myths for Profit" is an important resource for those working for a more just Canadian foreign policy. It asks the right questions and provides a number of answers.

For a documentary with no major institutional financing, its technical quality is impressive. Often quite funny, the film's images and comics make for a highly entertaining documentary.

"Myths for Profit" is being shown across Canada during March and April.

Yves Engler is the author of the forthcoming The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. To help organize a talk as part of a book tour in May or June, please e-mail yvesengler [at] hotmail [.] com.

Myths for Profit

Missing Diplomats' Mine Visit still a Mystery

dawn — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Fowler and Guay were in the eye of the resource-war storm when abducted in Niger

MONTRÉAL–In mid-December, Robert Fowler, a career Canadian diplomat who is currently the United Nations' Secretary General's Special Envoy to Niger, and his aide Louis Guay, an official at Foreign Affairs, were abducted in Niger.

They were kidnapped hours after visiting a mine operated by Montréal-based mining company SEMAFO (Société d'exploitation minière-Afrique de l'Ouest).

"Louis [Guay] called me and said he was going down there on a UN mission and that he heard the mine was a Canadian success and he wanted to report this back to Canada," Benoit La Salle, the president and CEO of SEMAFO, told the National Post.

There are few other confirmed details regarding the kidnapping. Agence France Presse reported that the UN and the governments of Canada and Niger have all become extremely secretive about the kidnapping. The UN initially denied that Fowler was on an official trip, but later a spokesperson contradicted the initial statement, admitting that in fact he was on official business.

This difficult and sensitive event raises oft unaddressed questions about relations between Ottawa and Canadian resource corporations operating abroad.

Why was a UN envoy, sent to deal with a conflict largely over natural resources, visiting a Canadian-operated mine?

Guay, who organized the last-minute trip to the mine, was involved with the privatization of a massive gold deposit now operated by Goldcorp and Barrick Gold in the Dominican Republic.

The mine Fowler and Guay visited on December 14th is run by a company with ties to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

SEMAFO is an outgrowth of La Salle's work for Plan Canada, a subsidiary of Plan International, "one of the world's largest development organizations, working in more than 65 countries worldwide on critical issues affecting millions of children."

Plan Canada is funded by CIDA. In July, La Salle told an interviewer that SEMAFO "was created in 1995 during my first visit to Burkina Faso as part of a mission with the NGO-Plan. I am the president of the administration council of Plan Canada and a director of Plan International. So, after the Plan organized visit to Burkina Faso provided me an opportunity to get close with national authorities, I decided to create SEMAFO to participate in the development of Burkina Faso's mining industry."

In another interview, La Salle said "[in my position at Plan] I was able to meet [African] presidents, prime ministers and functionaries" with whom he now does business.

It appears that La Salle has put his political contacts to good use. An April 2007 Montreal Gazette business article headlined "Local Miner a Major Force in Niger," reported on the close relations between SEMAFO and Hama Amadou, then Prime Minister of Niger.

"We work very closely with [then Prime Minister Hama Amadou]... We're part of his budget every year. He knows us," La Salle told the Gazette.

La Salle then described how the prime minister helped his company break a strike at the mine. "We went to court, we had the strike declared illegal and that allowed us to let go of some of the employees and rehire some of them based upon a new work contract. It allowed us to let go of some undesirable employees because they had been on strike a few times," he said.

Prime Minister Amadou was later arrested on corruption charges stemming from an unrelated incident, and is awaiting trial.

SEMAFO is not the only Canadian resource company that has in Niger.

Calgary-based TG World Energy "hired Mr. [Jean] Chrétien last year [2004] to help it get out of a pickle in the impoverished African nation of Niger," reported The Globe and Mail.

TG's rights to explore 18 million acres of Niger's wilderness for oil and gas were revoked by the government, which believed that TG hadn't invested
enough in prospecting.

Niger then awarded the concession to a subsidiary of the China National Petroleum Corp. The Calgary company sued Niger's government and went to arbitration with the Chinese firm through the World Bank Group's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

"[TG] also asked Mr. Chrétien to intervene," reported the Globe. During a trip to Beijing, Chrétien spoke with officials from China National Petroleum and then flew to Niamey, Niger’s capital, and arranged a meeting between TG and Niger’s president.

Chrétien's lobbying led to a new agreement between TG World, Niger and the Chinese, which saw the Canadian company's stock price increase from eight cents to more than $1 per share within a year.

None of this sort of Canadian "diplomacy" is unusual, and is in fact standard across Africa.

Within 13 months after leaving office, Chrétien had made business-related visits to Gambia, Nigeria, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Describing political lobbying on behalf of Canadian mining corporations in the Congo, journalist Maurice Carney told Democracy Now! that every Prime Minister since Pierre Trudeau (Clark, Mulroney, Chrétien, Martin) "has left office and profited from the natural resources of the Congo while the Congolese people suffer."

Many agree that there is something distasteful about former public officials exchanging their political contacts and prestige for a buck. But the lobbying work of former politicians is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to public officials' support for Canadian business in Africa.

Canadian embassies and trade missions are largely focused on advancing Canada's corporate interests.

A 2004 KAIROS Canada report entitled Africa's Blessing, Africa's Curse notes: "Canadian diplomatic missions in Africa spend much of their time making sure that mining companies and host governments are brought together and the companies are much praised by Canadian officials."

Although the abduction of two UN officials made headlines, the unaddressed questions about relations between Ottawa and Canadian haven't been adequately explored.

Based in Montreal, Yves Engler is the author of the forthcoming The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy.

Niger road

Tar Sands and the American Automobile

dru — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:16:46 +0000

Heavy crude largely heads south to fuel American cars

The following is an edited excerpt from a forthcoming book by Bianca Mugyenyi and Yves Engler, tentatively titled Stop Signs: A road trip through the USA to explore the culture, politics and economics of the car.

Across the globe, sprawling auto-dependent development is pushing oil extraction into increasingly sensitive environments. Far from the “light sweet crude” of the Niger Delta, the heavy oil trapped in Alberta’s tar sands is among the filthiest sources in the world; with up to three-quarters of the final product destined for the US market, tar sands oil extraction has been labelled the most destructive process known to mankind. Viewed from above, the tar sands are as picturesque as a pair of dirty lungs and the stench of tar can be smelled for miles. Amid a tangle of pipes, waste ponds and smoke, an environmental demolition derby of 50 ft, 300-tonne monster trucks roam a wasteland riddled with 200-foot-deep open pits. Gouged out with dinosaur-sized claws, Athabascan oil is mined, not pumped.

Describing the tar sands as “hideous marvels,” Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson writes: “They are terrible to look at, from the air or from the ground. They tear the earth, create polluted mini-lakes called tailing ponds that can be seen from space, spew forth air pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and emit greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide."

“They are voracious users of freshwater,” continues Simpson. Extracting the bitumen (crude oil) from the thick and sticky mix of clay, sand and water is no easy feat and for every barrel of oil extracted, somewhere between two and four-and-a-half times as much water is needed to thin-out the mixture and separate the bitumen from the sand. To obtain this staggering volume of water, whole streams and rivers in the region have been drained and diverted. We don’t need Erin Brockovich to tell us something is wrong with the water; sucked out for the extraction process and then spat out again, most of it ends up contaminated with acids, mercury and other toxins. This wastewater has left Northern Alberta studded with toxic dumping pools, better known as ‘tailing ponds.’ Not only are the tar sands being blamed for Western Canada’s first ever bout of acid rain, the residues pumped into the Athabasca River have increased cancer rates downstream, particularly among First Nations communities dependent upon the waterway. The history of oil extraction has always been the history of suffering and the tar sands are no exception.

To produce a single barrel of oil, the tar sands extraction process requires two tonnes of sand. In 2003, Alberta’s Environment Ministry reported that 430-square kilometres of land had been “disturbed” for the oil sands. By summer 2006, that number had reached 2,000-square kilometres, nearly a five-fold increase in three years(even though only two per cent of the oil sands--now hailed as one of the world’s largest reserves--had been developed).

Thousands of acres of trees have already been clear-cut to make way for tar sands mining and if current plans unfold, a forest the size of Maryland and Virginia will be eliminated. The decline in forests has led to a major reduction in both the region’s grizzly bear and moose populations, with oil exploration also harming prairie birds and other animal life.

The environmental mayhem so far described is the tip of the iceberg. The tar sands represent the biggest increase in Canadian carbon emissions, with every barrel of synthetic oil produced releasing 188 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. Comparing the greenhouse emissions of a conventional barrel of crude to a barrel of tar sands oil, a New York Times article noted that, “A gallon of gas from oil sands, because of the energy-intensive production methods, releases three times as much carbon overall as conventionally produced gasoline.” The oil sands are located in and around Fort McMurray (aka Fort McMoney), a region with a population of 61,000. By 2015, Fort McMurray is expected to emit more greenhouse gases than all of Denmark.

Describing “the rush into the oil sands” a Wall Street Journal analyst writes: “For years, environmentalists have argued that higher gasoline prices would be good for the Earth because paying more at the pump would promote conservation. Instead, higher energy prices have unleashed a bevy of heavy oil projects that will increase emissions of carbon dioxide.” Rather than deter exploration, rising prices have led to increasingly unconventional and hazardous oil exploration exemplified by the Alberta tar sands.

The tremendous energy required to bring the sand to the surface for separation is largely provided by natural gas. (Oil sands consume about 500 million cubic feet of natural gas a day, an amount likely to increase to 1.25 billion cubic feet daily by 2016. The process is so inefficient that the natural gas required to produce one barrel of tar sands oil could heat a family home for two to four days. This process uses a relatively clean fuel to assist in the production of a dirtier one, prompting oil analyst Matt Simmons to describes the process as “making gold into lead.”

With over a hundred billion dollars projected in oil sands investments between 2006 and 2016, the industry is looking for a long-term, cost-effective energy source. High natural gas costs have the tar sands companies thinking big and looking north.

Not everyone is happy about this increasingly sticky situation. “Don’t ruin our land to fuel the US gas tank,” demanded Grand Chief of the Deh Cho in response to the proposed Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline, which, if built, would ship natural gas almost exclusively for use in northern Alberta oil extraction.

The natural gas pipeline seems almost benign compared to some of the ideas being floated by some oil companies who are described in the National Post as “warming to the idea of nuclear power as a source for their massive energy needs.” This is not the first time nuclear power has been proposed to liberate crude oil from the tar sands. In 1959 California's Richfield Oil drew a plan approved by the US Atomic Energy Commission to separate bitumen from sand by detonating a nine-kiloton atomic bomb. It was argued that the heat and energy created by an underground explosion would free the oil from the sand, but after the success of initial tests in Nevada, the idea was shelved due to concern among Canadian officials over the use of the A-bomb.

Cars at Shift Change

Recognition and little else

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:27:46 +0000

Canada's Anti-Venezuela Diplomacy

Venezuela is vying for a seat on the UN Security Council. photo: UN

Since Venezuela elected a government led by Hugo Chavez in 1998, the South American country has frequently been on the receiving end of US-backed attempts to destabilize its government. Some say Canada has tacitly or openly supported the US campaign to replace the government of Venezuela.

In January of 2005, Foreign Affairs officials invited Maria Corina Machado to Ottawa. "While the Government of Canada recognizes the legitimacy of the democratically elected government of Venezuela," the invitation explained, "Súmate's visit to Canada will provide a useful opportunity to hear about the human rights situation in Venezuela from a different perspective."

Why was it necessary to note Canada's recognition of Venezuela's government? Machado is the head of Súmate, an organization that is nominally an NGO, but has been at the forefront of anti-Chavez political campaigns. The NDP has called on the government to invite Chavez for an official visit, but the president was passed over in favour of the leader of the US-funded opposition group.

Súmate was most recently at the head of an unsuccessful campaign to recall Chavez through a referendum. Before that, however, Machado's name appeared on a list of people endorsing a 2002 military coup that took Chavez prisoner and imposed a new, unelected government in Venezuela. The coup only lasted two days, before popular demonstrations and a split within the army forced the return of the elected government. But, that proved time enough to incur strong condemnation of the coup frommost Latin American and Caribbean countries -- and for the US to announce its recognition of the short-lived government. Canadian diplomats were silent.

Now, Machado faces charges of treason; if convicted, she could spend as long as 28 years in prison for her involvement in the coup. She denies signing the now-infamous Carmona Decree, which suspended the elected government, and annulled land reforms and increases in royalties paid by oil companies passed by the Chavez-led government. Machado now claims she only visited the presidential palace during the coup and entered her name on a sign-in sheet.

Súmate receives as much as six per cent of its funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, an arm's-length satellite of the US State Department and USAID.

Canada has also supported Súmate.

According to disclosures made in response to a question by NDP Foreign Affairs critic Alexa Mcdonnough, Canada gave Súmate $22,000 in 2005-06. Minister of International Co-operation Jose Verner explained that "Canada considered Súmate to be an experienced NGO with the capability to promote respect for democracy, particularly a free and fair electoral process in Venezuela."

After meeting with NGOs, officials and members of Parliament in Canada, Machado went south, where she was granted an hour-long meeting with George W. Bush and met with other officials and NGOs.

Canada has also taken sides in the diplomatic row between the US and Venezuela over the Western Hemisphere Security Council seat vacated by Argentina. The US is backing Guatemala, while Venezuela is seen as a protest vote by developing countries fed up with US policy.

Some observers have called the US backing of Guatemala a bizarre choice, given the country's dismal human rights record. Before voting began on October 16, 90 NGOs from Guatemala sent a letter to members of the UN General Assembly opposing Guatemala's candidacy.

"Guatemala has allowed, and occasionally has contributed to, the deterioration of the situation of human rights and the proliferation of violence, again making these issues a matter of profound concern for the international community," the letter read.

A second letter, signed by Guatemalan human rights groups and two hundred prominent figures, explained that "little has been done to combat impunity and strengthen the judicial system to prevent the reoccurrence of genocide, crimes against humanity and serious human rights violations carried out during the conflict."

US diplomats have been pushing other countries hard to vote for Guatemala. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, for example, announced in early October that Chile would vote for Venezuela. After pressure from Washington, Chile backed off, deciding to abstain in the charged Security Council vote. The Los Angeles Times reported that the US had sold fighter jets to Chile, but Chilean pilots "will not be trained to fly them if the government supports Venezuela's bid." Evidence points to similar diplomatic pressure in other countries that might consider voting for Venezuela.

In the face of this pressure, many governments have continued to support Venezuela. The 15-member Caribbean Community, for example, has thrown its support and 14 General Assembly votes to Venezuela.

What would a Venezuelan Security Council seat mean? According to Venezuela's UN ambassador, it would give impoverished nations "an independent voice needed on the Security Council to fight against the power of money."

While Venezuela would not be able to veto any resolutions, it would have an effective platform from which to criticize US interventions in places like Iran, Iraq, Korea and Israel. Given the myriad of double standards enshrined in US foreign policy on human rights standards, war crimes, possession and use of weapons of mass destruction and violations of sovereignty, Venezuelan diplomats would not lack opportunities to embarrass the US.

By contrast, no observers are suggesting that Guatemala would be a critical voice. Given a lack of awareness of Canadian diplomacy inside Canada, and taking into account American pressure, that makes the small Central American country a safer place for Canada to place its support, for the moment.

Critics say Canada has tacitly or openly supported the US campaign to replace the government of Venezuela. Yves Engler asks why.

Haiti and the Globe

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 08:02:16 +0000

Facts, research missing in action

Demonstrators in Cap Haitien demanding the return of Aristide. The banner reads: "Operation Baghdad is a plot by Group 184 to put an end to Lavalas. They will Fail!" Engler says that Canadian reporters have uncritically reported that "Operation Baghdad"--the alleged name given to the beheading three police officers--was a committed by Aristide supporters. Photo: HaitiAction.net

The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, finally decided to report on Canadian operations in Haiti. In Saturday's paper Marina Jimenez wrote about Canada's ongoing role in the hemisphere's poorest nation.

But did Jimenez look into the veracity of Paul Martin's claim that there are no political prisoners in Haiti? Did she discuss why Canada has released aid--and demanded other governments do likewise--to a regime with absolutely no democratic legitimacy? (This only two years after refusing aid to Haiti's democratic government based on claims of electoral irregularities in seven of 7000 elected positions.)

Did Jimenez focus on Canada's connection, as head of the United Nations police force, to the increasingly murderous Haitian police, who target poor youth and even journalists who witness their misdeeds?

Surely a responsible journalist owes it to her readers to check out "facts" before citing them or at least to report conflicting versions of what is going on.

No. While Jimenez at least quoted a Haitian saying "you, the Canadians, the French and the Americans... sent Mr. Aristide into exile" the article mostly focused on the tough job facing a brave Quebec City police officer who volunteered to help out. (This is one of the few times I have seen the mainstream media report that Haitians believe Canada helped overthrow their elected government, even though on a recent trip there every Haitian I interviewed said as much.)

Surely a responsible journalist owes it to her readers to check out "facts" before citing them or at least to report conflicting versions of what is going on. Instead Jimenez writes that Aristide "from his South Africa exile" is "funding" and "directing" a "war." She reports about an "Operation Baghdad" (also used in the front-page teaser) that is supposedly a pro-Aristide campaign to murder police officers, but makes no mention that independent observers say this is an invention of the interim government. Or that on December 16 in Cap Haitien more than ten thousand pro-constitution demonstrators marched behind a banner claiming "Operation Baghdad" was a plot created by the pro--coup forces to demonize Lavalas supporters.

Nowhere in the 2500-word article is it mentioned that the Caribbean community recently reaffirmed its rejection of Haiti's current government until elections are held. Nor did Jimenez, or the rest of Canada's mainstream media, report on the recent murder of Haitian journalist Abdias Jean. According to Reuters and the Associated Press--news services that Canadian media use regularly--Haitian National Police killed Jean after he witnessed the police execute three people in the slum of Village de Dieu.

These killings come on the heels of an exhaustive human rights report by the University of Miami School of Law Center for the Study of Human Rights confirming the brutality of the installed Gérard Latortue regime.

Don't reporters at the Globe and Mail do at least some minimal background research before they go off on a foreign assignment? If Jimenez had read the University of Miami report she would have known about the growing role of former military thugs within Haitian police ranks. The report includes an interview with Andy Apaid, an American sweatshop owner and head of Group 184, a Canadian and U.S. funded organization that was instrumental in overthrowing the elected government. Apaid discusses his patronage of a gang that terrorizes Lavalas supporters in Cite Soleil. The report, which focuses on U.S. involvement in Haiti, also documents Canada's role in undermining Haiti's elected government through strategic funding of a "human rights" organization. It also reveals that the second highest official in the current "justice" ministry is currently on the payroll of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and has been for more than four years. This is the ministry that is ultimately responsible for over 700 political prisoners and an unknown number of random killings by the Haitian National Police.

The mainstream media seems almost totally unwilling to highlight Canada's connection to the coup and aftermath of violent political repression. After my return from Haiti I sent an opinion to most of the major papers in the country. Even though the article was politically tame, well edited and of proper length no paper was interested. The foreign affairs editor at the Toronto Star wavered on a news piece I submitted a couple of weeks ago and then told me the paper already has a free-lance journalist, Reed Lindsay, there. I like Lindsay's work but his reporting barely touches on Canada's involvement in Haiti (he is from the U.S.). When I sent the same news article to Paul Knox, the foreign editor at the Globe and Mail, he told me he couldn't use it "as it has a lot of commentary and opinion woven through it."

I find this ironic after reading Jimenez' article. Is there no "commentary" in a story that focuses on a brave Canadian police officer who only wants to help Haitians? When an American reporter goes to Iraq and writes a laudatory profile about a brave Marine doing his job we see the "point" of the article as justifying an illegal U.S. invasion. But, of course in our case, it is "commentary" only when a story challenges the dominant assumption of Canada as a force for good in the world.

Canada's role in Haiti needs to be exposed to a wide audience. Haitians need the left voices already within Canada's dominant media – Naomi Klein, Linda McQuaig and Rick Salutin come to mind – to use their precious space to expose the Liberal government's criminal actions in Haiti. The media's culpability in Haiti's destruction also provides a stark reminder of the importance of a left media. We need to support progressive media by passing articles along, publicly promoting it and most of all providing left media with the financial resources necessary to expand. We need to build a climate where corporate (and CBC) media lies and omissions can't hide the killing of thousands of our fellow human beings.

Returning from Haiti, Yves Engler looks at the Globe and Mail's coverage of Haiti and finds that key facts are missing.

The Canadian Left is Failing to Stand Up for Haiti

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 18:06:24 +0000

Haitians are risking their lives to fight an illegal regime that Canada supports

At the end of February, Haiti was front-page news. The Globe and Mail's Paul Knox was there and CanWest's eleven daily papers ran stories from the Montreal Gazette's once progressive Sue Montgomery. Both reported on Aristide's authoritarianism, drug connections and "thuggish" supporters, known as the Chimeres. Neither gave much credence to other side of the story and now that Aristide is in exile in South Africa, the Canadian media has lost all interest.

So, what's going on?

No one from Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party is part of the interim government, even though it is by far the most popular political party in the country. The Gerard Latortue regime, which was appointed by the occupying force's council of "wise men", has defied the constitution by refusing to hold elections within ninety days after the presidency became vacant. None will be held until some undetermined time next year, giving the government and paramilitaries sufficient time to thoroughly repress Lavalas.

And that's what they've done, according to Amnesty International.

"While the authorities have moved swiftly to arrest members of former President Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party, they have not acted with the same commitment against, for example, those accused or convicted of perpetrating grave human rights violations, some of whom played a prominent role in the recent insurgency," an Amnesty report concluded. The unsavory lot of murderous narco-traffickers, including Guy Phillipe, still openly carry weapons in major cities like Cap Haitien, Gonaives, and Hinche. The Miami Herald reports that "rebels control some towns, police some towns and the two sides share control of others."

The Canadian media's silence regarding police and rebel collaboration is striking since prior to Aristide's ouster, it was full of ominous accounts of the politicization of the police force. Yet now with Aristide gone and Canadian troops supporting Haiti's police, our media ignores their crimes, which include the torture and execution of five Aristide supporters in March, according to Amnesty. Haitian police also fired on a pro-Aristide march in May, killing at least one person and allowed former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune's home to be ransacked. He is now in prison with at least seven other pro-Aristide ex-officials.

Coalition forces aren't merely turning a blind eye towards the paramilitary "rebels" and police repression, they are actively participating in the repression. U.S. troops shot dead at least six Haitians between March 7-12 in Port-au-Prince, and, Amnesty reported, "investigations into these killings have apparently not been undertaken." On May 10, coalition forces raided the home of Annette Auguste, a popular folk singer and Lavalas activist, killing her dog and arresting twelve people.

The economic situation has also deteriorated since the coup. Immediately after Aristide's ouster millions of dollars worth of property was looted and destroyed, much of it by infuriated Aristide supporters who blame the one percent of the population that controls nearly half the country's wealth for Aristide's removal. More significantly, the price of rice has doubled since Aristide's forced departure, worsening life for the poor majority who rely on rice for subsistence. The cost of rice has increased for a couple of reasons including a slight rise in world prices and some disruption of supply routes. But most important Aristide's regime helped stabilize prices and according to Berthony F.A. Mercier, 50, who paints signs in Port-au-Prince, "the people who sell the rice are the people who kicked Aristide out."

The news isn't all bad. After last week's meeting, the Caribbean community (CARICOM) still refuses full relations with the illegitimate Latortue administration, even under intense U.S pressure. This honorable position needs defending.

But what has the Canadian left done? Not much good.

During the federal election debates, Paul Martin and Gilles Duceppe agreed that Canada's involvement in Haiti was a success. The NDP's Jack Layton didn't object, wasting an opportunity to provide an alternative view of Canada's role in the troubled nation. Does he really agree with replacing an elected government by force of foreign troops? If so, who speaks for those opposed to Canada's Haiti policy?

It's for those who believe in self-determination to support the thousands of Haitians risking their lives for the restoration of democracy. It's the least we can do after all the harm our troops and media have done.

In a rare exception to the Dominion's de facto lack of opinion articles, Yves Engler argues that Haitians are risking their lives to fight an illegal regime that the Canadian government is propping up.