Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has asked Cana­da to help Cari­com and Trinidad and To­ba­go com­bat crime, with a fo­cus on erad­i­cat­ing the il­le­gal firearms and am­mu­ni­tion trade and bol­ster­ing se­cu­ri­ty across the re­gion.

Dr Row­ley made the re­quest dur­ing the open­ing of the three-day Cana­da-Cari­com Sum­mit in Ot­tawa, Cana­da.

The Prime Min­is­ter was lead­ing a re­sponse to Ses­sion Three, ti­tled “Haiti—Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty”, when he re­count­ed the hor­rors as­so­ci­at­ed with il­le­gal firearms and blood­shed to sev­er­al lead­ers, in­clud­ing Cana­da Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau.

Row­ley said, “In re­cent times, we have seen an ex­plo­sion in the use of il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion on a dai­ly ba­sis. In fact, the da­ta now shows that we are los­ing, by vi­o­lent killings, about 15 peo­ple a day in the Cari­com re­gion, near­ly all of it from the use of firearms, and there is a pro­lif­er­a­tion in re­cent times of as­sault weapons, so the in­stance of shoot­ings usu­al­ly end up with mul­ti­ple ca­su­al­ties and many deaths.”

He said il­le­gal firearms in the hands of crim­i­nals had wors­ened the risk to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

“Gangs have been arm­ing them­selves more ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly, they have be­come bet­ter killing ma­chines to the point now where they pose a threat to the state it­self.”

Dr Row­ley ref­er­enced two re­cent ma­jor firearms hauls in the San­ta Cruz area, as he il­lus­trat­ed the pro­lif­er­a­tion of il­le­gal weapon­ry.

“On­ly last week in Trinidad and To­ba­go, by dili­gent po­lice work, we dis­cov­ered a cache of 35 50-cal­i­bre weapons in a vil­lage. When we thought that was the end of it, we dis­cov­ered an­oth­er dozen, so peo­ple are arm­ing them­selves to car­ry out their crim­i­nal busi­ness, large­ly the drug trade and hu­man traf­fick­ing trade,” he said.

Dr Row­ley iden­ti­fied Cana­da’s role in im­prov­ing T&T’s and the re­gion’s bor­der se­cu­ri­ty through the ac­qui­si­tion of ves­sels.

“We need to be bet­ter able to pa­trol our coastal ar­eas with small craft and we can’t get a prop­er sup­ply of small craft to put in­to use im­me­di­ate­ly. I am amazed at how dif­fi­cult it is to get small craft, lit­er­al zone pa­trolling, but Cana­da has a long coast­line, you have good busi­ness and it may very well be that in con­ver­sa­tion with your peo­ple, we might be able to find some as­sis­tance. We’re not just talk­ing here about hand­outs, we’re talk­ing about ac­tu­al­ly get­ting the equip­ment to help us pa­trol our lit­er­al zones.” Row­ley said the crim­i­nals have grown their abil­i­ty faster than the po­lice has been able to cope and called for help with im­proved po­lice train­ing.

“Your man­age­ment of polic­ing is some­thing quite sig­nif­i­cant. Again, col­lab­o­ra­tion and co­op­er­a­tion and train­ing the train­er and get­ting as­sis­tance for our mid-lev­el to up­per man­age­ment po­lice of­fi­cers to bring about bet­ter man­age­ment of the crim­i­nal surge, that can help.” The Prime Min­is­ter said cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty re­mained on the re­gion’s radar and ef­forts to ad­dress its threats were im­por­tant in crime fight­ing. He al­so recog­nised the need to re­view laws which he said “did not cater for the pop­u­la­tion that ex­ists to­day”.

“They (laws) catered for a dif­fer­ent breed of peo­ple, where there was some moral com­pass, some un­der­pin­ning of good be­hav­iour, some ex­pec­ta­tion of in­tegri­ty in the in­sti­tu­tions,” Dr Row­ley said.

He said if the le­gal re­spons­es were not ad­just­ed, then the court would be­come a mock­ery for crim­i­nals.

Dur­ing his open­ing re­marks on re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, Cana­da Prime Min­is­ter Trudeau said steps con­tin­ued to be tak­en to sta­bilise the un­rest in Haiti.

The coun­try has been hit by waves of gang vi­o­lence fol­low­ing the as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se in 2021.

Trudeau said among the on­go­ing works to fos­ter sta­bil­i­ty in Haiti, re­sources will be com­mit­ted.

“We will wel­come views of the Hait­ian del­e­ga­tion and oth­er Cari­com states on the mat­ter. Cana­da is go­ing to launch a mul­ti-year train­ing pro­gramme to as­sist Haiti’s po­lice force to deal with cor­rup­tion and gangs. We will al­so be al­lo­cat­ing 3.4 mil­lion dol­lars to pro­vide equip­ment and as­sis­tance to fight weapons-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence. And to help Haitians re­main healthy, we will be in­vest­ing 18.3 mil­lion dol­lars un­der the glob­al ini­tia­tive for equal­i­ty and fair­ness.”

Mot­t­ley wants fi­nan­cial sys­tem changes

Lead­ing con­tri­bu­tions on the top­ic Ac­cess to Fi­nance: Glob­al Fi­nan­cial Ar­chi­tec­ture Re­form, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley said ur­gent changes were need­ed to the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem, as coun­tries had be­come in­debt­ed due to com­plex­i­ties in gov­er­nance, en­vi­ron­men­tal threats and changes to trade sys­tems. “Up to yes­ter­day, two more coun­tries were black­list­ed and the con­se­quences of these black­list­ings con­tin­ue to hurt our coun­tries be­cause ef­fec­tive­ly, com­pa­nies will de-risk as a re­sult of the en­hanced due dili­gence put in place for them to do busi­ness,” Mot­t­ley said.

Mot­t­ley added that the ab­sence of the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and the fail­ure of the G7 and G20 coun­tries to recog­nise the dis­pro­por­tion­ate con­se­quences of Caribbean peo­ple were un­ac­cept­able. She fur­ther sug­gest­ed how the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund could be more im­pact­ful.

“In an en­vi­ron­ment of high in­ter­est rates, the sur­charges must go. One of the dif­fi­cul­ties at the same time is while we call for ac­cess from mid­dle in­come coun­tries, it does not re­duce our calls for the tripling of as­sis­tance to ei­ther coun­tries and the re­al­i­ty is we want poor coun­tries to stop be­ing poor and we want mid­dle-in­come coun­tries from be­ing poor again.”

Mot­t­ley al­so lament­ed that the ab­sence of po­lit­i­cal will to re­form fi­nan­cial sys­tems con­tin­ued to cost Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries.

“I ask my­self what was so spe­cial about 1969 that caused the coun­tries of the world to rise to the lead­er­ship to in­tro­duce spe­cial draw­ing rights? Why are they more than equal to the task of their times than we are to the task of our times when the crises that we face are sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater?”

The Cari­com-Cana­da sum­mit is Prime Min­is­ter Trudeau’s sec­ond meet­ing with re­gion­al lead­ers for the year.