“It’s chaos, total chaos,” Paul Toussaint’s cousin, who lives in Haiti, tells him over the phone.
Toussaint regularly checks in on his family members who still live in the country. The thought of Haitians fleeing his native country is a sad thought for Toussaint, who has made Quebec his second home, but after Haiti declared a state of emergency as the country fell further into the grip of gangs, he hopes to bring his mother to Canada, out of harm’s way.
Despite a newly imposed curfew, heavily armed gangs tried to seize control of Haiti’s main international airport yesterday, exchanging gunfire with police and soldiers. Over the weekend, gang members overran the country’s two biggest prisons and freed thousands of prisoners.
The situation has deteriorated since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021.
Still, Toussaint has held Haiti close to heart. In his restaurants, the chef celebrates Haitian culture, but the recent escalation in violence has made it harder to be cheerful.
He and his two children last visited his mother in Jacmel — southwest of the largely gang-controlled capital of Port-au-Prince — last December, but now she wants him to stay away until it’s safe.
Like other members of Quebec’s Haitian community, Toussaint is doing what he can to support his family at a distance. He sends his mother money to buy life’s necessities, but other Haitians aren’t so lucky. Parts of the country are blocked off, and money is harder to come by, making it difficult to access food and other staples.
Even more frightening is the constant fear of losing a family member to violence, something that weighs heavily on Montrealers with Haitian roots like Catherine Buteau.
She speaks with her family every day, but when she woke up yesterday she realized she hadn’t spoken any of them in the last 24 hours. Her mind automatically jumped to the worst-case scenarios, worrying if they had been killed.
It wasn’t far-fetched. Last year, her uncle was kidnapped.
“I’ve just given birth and my mom always asked for pictures of my babies, and I realized that she hadn’t texted since the day before,” said Buteau.
“My mom’s a doctor who works in a hospital and she hasn’t been able to go this week … She has to listen to the news and sort of see if it’s safe to get out of the house,” she said, adding that going out to get groceries can lead to tragedy.
When family members venture out to collect money wired to them at the bank, they are putting themselves in danger, she says, a sad reality that the Haitian community has become familiar with.
Although Buteau had been hopeful that Haiti could recover, lately, she has been thinking of asking her family to leave the country.
Marjorie Villefranche, executive director at Maison d’Haïti, says supporting relatives in Haiti and communicating with them has become increasingly challenging as the violence continues to destabilize the island nation.
“It’s very difficult to send money [to people] in the country because nothing is working. So, we still have difficulty helping the population over there,” said Villefranche.
“It’s getting worse and worse, and we don’t know who is in charge of that country because it seems that no one is in charge,” she said.
Despite the turmoil, Villefranche is hopeful the situation on the ground can improve if solution-minded leaders the population believes in are given the chance to take charge.
Getting family out of harm’s way
Frantz André, spokesperson and co-ordinator for the Action Committee for People Without Status, has been hearing a lot of distress and anguish from members of the city’s Haitian diaspora trying to get family members out of Haiti.
André welcomes Canada’s decision to bypass Quebec’s immigration cap and speed up family reunification. He isn’t sure how many Haitians will be included in the thousands of immigration spots that will now be opened but fears more people will remain in danger as Quebec tangles with Ottawa over immigration.
“I have two families that have lost their children while they were recognized to be able to come to Canada,” said André.
Watch | Montreal’s Haitian diaspora asking for help:
Frantz André, a spokesperson and co-ordinator for Action Committee for People Without Status, says he’s received several calls from members of the Haitian diaspora in Montreal asking for help. Many are wondering how to get their families to Canada. A 72-hour state of emergency was declared on Sunday night after inmates escaped from two prisons in Haiti.
Power vacuum
Chalmers Larose, a professor of international relations at the Université du Québec à Montréal, says the assassination of Moïse empowered the gangs and led to the rising power of current Haitian President Ariel Henry, who was supported by Canada and the United States.
“As of 2021 we have a complete vacuum of power in Haiti. So we don’t have a president. We don’t have a parliament and then the judiciary is completely in disarray,” he said.
What role does Canada — if any — have a role to play in stabilizing the situation?
In the past three decades, Canada, as well as other countries, have contributed to international efforts to bolster security in Haiti — actions which completely failed to prevent the current crisis, according to Larose.
In the long term, engaging with Haiti as an economic partner and investing in it, he says, would be more beneficial for the country than treating it as simply a place for humanitarian aid and non-governmental organizations.