Canada announced in February 2023 that it would deploy navy vessels to Haiti to conduct intelligence gathering operations aimed at better understanding the security situation and supporting eventual security assistance efforts. The deployment represented Canada’s most concrete security engagement with Haiti’s crisis to date and reflected the growing international recognition that the situation required active international involvement rather than statements of concern.
The intelligence gathering mission was designed to provide detailed information about gang movements, weapons trafficking routes, and security conditions that would inform the planning for any eventual multinational security force deployment. Canada argued that effective security assistance required much better situational awareness than currently existed, and that the naval deployment could help build the operational picture needed for effective intervention planning.
Haitian civil society organizations welcomed any form of concrete international engagement while noting that intelligence gathering was several steps removed from the security assistance that communities under gang control urgently needed. They argued that years of analysis and assessment had produced abundant documentation of Haiti’s security crisis and that what was needed was action rather than additional information collection.
The Canadian deployment added to the multilateral engagement with Haiti’s security crisis that was slowly building through 2023 — Jamaica’s offer to contribute troops, the ongoing discussions at the UN Security Council, the eventual authorization of the Kenyan-led mission. Each element represented a piece of an international response that was taking shape more slowly than the crisis demanded, with every month of delay measured in lives lost and communities destroyed.