Cana­dian aid is very impor­tant to Haiti. Canada will give more than a half a bil­lion dol­lars to Haiti in the span of five years. It’s a lot, but Haiti is a coun­try that needs “every­thing” and very few Cana­di­ans are aware of the great amount of work that is done there.

Writer Laura Pay­ton has a long piece in the Canada’s Ottawa Cit­i­zen tries to explain the work of aid to Haiti.

Out­side gov­ern­ment cir­cles, few peo­ple are aware of the work Canada is doing in Haiti, says Carlo Dade, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Cana­dian Foun­da­tion for the Amer­i­cas (FOCAL). “With­out us, a lot of chil­dren wouldn’t get fed every day.”

With­out Canada, there are a lot of things that wouldn’t get done.

Brazil, the U.S. and other coun­tries in the Amer­i­cas are also bene­fac­tors to the trou­bled island nation.

Last week, in a sta­tus report on the coun­try, the UN Secu­rity Coun­cil expressed “cau­tious opti­mism.” For­mer U.S. pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, a UN envoy, said, “I am con­vinced that Haiti has a remark­able oppor­tu­nity to escape the chains of its past.”

Every­one inter­viewed about secu­rity, aid and devel­op­ment work in Haiti agrees on one thing. Asked what the coun­try needs most, their response was unan­i­mous and emphatic: “Everything.”

Haiti is the poor­est coun­try in the west­ern hemi­sphere. Its pop­u­la­tion is just more than nine mil­lion, crammed into an area roughly one-third the size of New Brunswick. Per capita GDP was only $1,300 U.S. last year (Canada’s was $39,300 U.S.). Eighty per cent of Haitians live below the poverty line, more than two-thirds of the pop­u­la­tion don’t have a for­mal job, and just more than 52 per cent can read. With­out proper san­i­ta­tion, infec­tious dis­ease rates are high. Food is so scarce there were riots in 2008 when prices rose.

While it was once rich, that wealth was built on the backs of slaves. The French who col­o­nized Haiti brought in nearly half a mil­lion slaves, who over­threw them in a revolt in 1804.

Two hun­dred years later, Haitians are still wait­ing for sta­ble, demo­c­ra­tic government.

Haiti is perched on the west­ern third of His­pan­iola Island, which it shares with the Domini­can Repub­lic. When planes fly over, pas­sen­gers can see the bor­der: the Domini­can side is lush and green, while the Hait­ian side is dull and brown. Ram­pant defor­esta­tion — to make char­coal so peo­ple can cook with­out elec­tric­ity — wors­ens the nat­ural dis­as­ters that hit the island every year, allow­ing flood­ing and land­slides to flow unabated. In 2008, for exam­ple, four hur­ri­canes killed 800 peo­ple, left thou­sands home­less and caused $1 bil­lion in damage.

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