‘Our interest is helping to build strong local government’
Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana Charles Court is currently wrapping up his three-year tenure before returning to Ottawa, Canada, as the Director of Operations for the Reconstruction of Afghanistan. Prior to his arrival in Guyana he served as Canada’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s headquarters. He leaves Guyana early next month.
In an interview with Miranda La Rose for the Sunday Stabroek recently he said that among other things he would miss Guyana’s remarkable climate and its fresh fruits. Over the past three years he has enjoyed the “freshest mangoes, tastiest pineapples” and a variety of other fruits and local products. An edited version of the interview follows.
Sunday Stabroek: Can you tell me about your tenure in Guyana and what you have achieved?
High Commissioner Court: I arrived in Guyana eight days ahead of the 2006 general elections and obviously the election was everybody’s main concern… We were happy that the elections were peaceful. I think the international community involved found the process to be generally to international standards. The results were pretty clear with an exception or two that have found their way into the courts. That was I think a good start.
In the intervening years we had a number of ongoing issues. We tried to increase our focus on the economic relationship. Canadian companies have been significant investors in Guyana for many years certainly since Guyana began to recover economically in the late eighties and nineties. We have worked with Canadian companies and the Government of Guyana to try to improve the investment climate. Of course right now we are into a world wide recession which has had an effect both on Canadian investment in Guyana and the economy here. The impact of the recession on the mining sector worldwide has been quite significant. This is true with Guyana and it is true for Canadian companies interested in the mining sectors in Guyana. We have seen a few companies disappear and a few survive. The overall level of investment in Guyana has stayed constant. Canadian companies look forward to moving on from mostly exploration activities to more extraction in the next year or two. This is good news. I’ve never met a group of people who are more optimistic, dedicated than the people involved in the mining sector because they just keep coming… This is admirable…
The other area where we’ve been busy from the High Commission’s point of view continues to be in the area of governance. We’ve worked with the local government through the CIDA-funded programme to help strengthen the capacity in the local government structure in Guyana. That project wound up a year or two ago but the benefits will remain…
I think the third area which I had been focusing on during my time here has been Canada/Caricom relations. I am also accredited to Caricom. Prime Minister Harper two years ago made it clear that relations with the Americas and the Caribbean was one of his government’s top foreign policy priority. He announced at that time that he would run a CDN$600 million ten-year development programme for the region. People noticed, not always correctly, but noticed that in February Canada’s minister with responsibility for the Official Development Agency (ODA) announced further development assistance in which Canada would focus on 20 target countries. One of those, though not a country, is the Caribbean region. This represents an important focusing of Canada’s international development effort and Guyana is very much a part of the Caribbean.
We are now developing programmes that would impact the region in key areas. Economic development is definitely one of the focuses, that covers a wide range of activities. For example we’re busy developing a project that will boost technical and vocational education across the Caribbean region including Guyana because we all realize there is a shortage of skilled people across the region…
SS: Is this in response to curbing the region’s brain drain?
HCC: There is a recognition when you talk to officials in ministries across the region that the educational system did not manage to keep up with the demand for technically trained workers. Our main objectives is to help improve that situation. I think that economic development, that is one of the overarching objective of the programme is the key to reversing the brain drain. Generally people prefer to stay home if they find rewarding employment and they are confident of the future and the future of their children.
SS: Is Canada willing to provide assistance to Guyana in the conduct of the local government elections?
HCC: We haven’t been asked… In fact I think it would be a good sign if these elections could be conducted in Guyana without outside help because it would show that the democratic process in Guyana is sustained and can stand up to scrutiny. Elections, thankfully in our part of the world, are carried out as matter of course and that is the way it should be… What you are voting for is another issue. It is important to try to have a comprehensive forward looking reform of the local government process to address clearly things like funding that is reliable to get local government in a better position to collect the revenue; to be able to look forward to financial assistance from the central government based on clear considerations, clear criteria and a clear formula. Local governments, provinces, municipalities in practically all jurisdictions in the world rely on the senior levels of government to top up their financial assistance. Local government legislation has been presented and slated to be discussed in committee. We hope and watch that process… It was the former Chancellor of the House of Representatives of the United States who said that “All politics is local politics.”
One of the other projects we are looking at under the CIDA programme across Caribbean is a local government forum. We are looking at this in association with municipalities in the Caribbean. Our interest in local government helping to build capacity and strong local government.
As neighbours of the Caribbean and Latin America, one of the Government of Canada’s priorities is an increase in political dialogue. We were happy that the Secretary of State visited Guyana in February. It was the first ministerial visit in years. Hopefully he would be back in the country in the future. We are looking at the Canada/Caricom Heads of Government meeting some time this year.
SS: What is the status of the talks on Caricom/Canada trade relations?
HCC: The Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union covers a very wide range of issues. They do it in the European way that grows out of a type of relationship between the EU and the ACP (African, Caribbean Pacific) countries that really doesn’t have any comparison to the type of relationship over the years that has existed between Canada and the Caribbean. So when it comes to the basics we will apply the rules of the World Trade Organisation and international trade. So I think it is reasonable to say that once you provide openings to one trading partner, eventually you have to provide the same to another. But you’ve got to keep scales and things in mind. Already the vast majority of Caribbean countries export to Canada duty free. What the Free Trade Area would do would be to extend that duty free access somewhat. We are also talking about conditions of investment, tourism and services and assistance related to trade. In other words how the assistance could be implemented in the agreement.
SS: Like the EPA, is it trade with a development component?
HCC: No. This is something where we have a different vocabulary between Canada and Caricom. There are a couple things that have to be clarified. One is that Canada has developed over the past few years a number of free trade agreements with developing countries in Central America. In fact the free trade agreement with Peru was signed a (few weeks) ago. It provides a good template of how assistance is related to trade through our trade agreements, which is separate and distinct from development assistance. We firmly believe that it would be detrimental to the development assistance part in our relationship to try to walk that into a legally binding trade agreement. In developing our development programme we are putting together a large regional development programme now. It has trade related components in it. For example, we are big supporters of the implementation of the Caricom Single Market and Economy. For the past several years we have supported the institution of the regional negotiating mechanism. How that will continue under the new governance arrangement is something that would have to be worked out. We would be looking at helping governments adjust to a free trade regime as it affects their ability to collect revenue, which is a major legitimate concern. But all sorts of issues we would want to work on while negotiating the trade agreement. We don’t want to wait until the trade agreement is done to do that. In fact CIDA officials (were) in town this week to start putting the flesh on the bones of the development programme even though the trade negotiations are yet to start.
We have agreed that our Trade Minister Stockwell Dey would meet with his Caricom counterpart before they begin the negotiations…
SS: On the issue of deportees, is Canada working on any resettlement programme in the region similar to what the US is currently undertaking with Guyana?
HCC: There are two parts to the answer. One is to get the problem in perspective. When Richard Scott of the IOM was in town to sign the initial agreement for the Guyana/US resettlement pogramme some interesting figures were presented. Over a period from 1996 to 2007, the United States returned 1,528 criminal deportees. Roughly 150 a year or 12 criminal deportees a month. The number of Guyanese with criminal records in Canada currently awaiting removal for a long time is 58. So we are talking about numbers on totally different scales. For all of 2008, Canada had 10 persons with criminal records awaiting removal. The total for 2008 awaiting removal was 148. We have made progress on the removal of people with the Government of Guyana and virtually 90% of those are related to immigration issues, people denied refugee status, people who have overstayed their visas, and people who have travelled with false documents. We had much better cooperation with the Government of Guyana over the past several months in those cases. In fact, in the majority of cases we’ve seen a significant reduction in the number of people awaiting deportation based on that cooperation. That’s good. There remains that group of 58 for which we need a solution… hopefully we can do that very soon.
On the issue of resettlement, we did engage with a local non-governmental organization that had shown interest in working with deportees to deal with a problem which we recognise would be significant. We helped that organisation get on its feet; it continues to do some good work. We would hope that the Government of Guyana take the approach with the IOM which the Americans have engaged to try to make some facilities available to deportees on the whole. It is not just Canada and the US that are involved. There are a number of other countries that are engaged on the issue of deportees with the Government of Guyana. This is an issue that has been with us for a number of years. It is costing the Canadian taxpayer a lot of money to keep tracking people who should not be in Canada. We look for cooperation in solving the problem.
SS: How big a problem is drug trafficking and human trafficking between Guyana and Canada?
HCC: There have been a couple of significant cases for drugs seized either in Canada or destined for Canada. The drug trade is an international problem. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are in regular discussion with the Guyana Police Force about issues related to trafficking in drugs in Guyana that wind up in Canada. We have in the past year provided training to drug investigators from across the Caribbean region. The largest single group trained was from Guyana. We would be increasing our cooperative effort with the Caribbean and Latin America as a whole in law enforcement in general. Drug trafficking is one of the major areas. Human trafficking is one of our concerns. Immigration officers throughout the region are alert. We have an active programme of maintaining the integrity of our documentation system so that people do not travel with false documents. Just recently the meeting of heads of special branch officers took place in Guyana several weeks ago. It is part of our practical cooperation programme. We try to keep tabs on the so-called backtrack. It is a major activity…
SS: A lot of people have been complaining of the refusal of visitors visas to Canada. Why the high rate of denial?
HCC: I don’t know what the refusal rate is. One has to consider the fact of fraud-related entry into Canada. We try to be very fair. We do undertake research and investigation of applications to ensure that the information they are presenting is factual. Quite often the information given is not. When that’s the case there is no option…
