Canada is expanding its evacuation of citizens from Haiti to include relatives and Canadian permanent residents.
The government is also providing a charter flight for Canadians who are willing to pay a market rate to fly from the Dominican Republic to Montreal.
Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced a week ago that Canada was transporting people with valid Canadian passports from Haiti to the Dominican Republic.
At that time, Joly stated that Ottawa was urging the Dominican Republic to allow permanent residents of Canada and the foreign relatives of Canadians on those helicopter flights.
Global Affairs Canada has seen an increase in Canadians requesting help to leave Haiti, as expectations for a decrease in widespread violence have been replaced by gang-fueled chaos.
A week ago, 300 people had asked for help, but another 200 have since requested to be part of the evacuations from the Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince.
Those eligible for the airlift as relatives of citizens or permanent residents include spouses, common-law partners, and dependent children.
The Caribbean country has been dealing with a political and humanitarian crisis since mid-2021, and gangs have been committing brazen violence across the country while also limiting access to food and essentials.
The situation worsened further last month when progress towards a foreign military intervention led gangs to release prisoners and close down Haiti’s main airport.
As of Monday, 3,110 people with a connection to Canada had voluntarily registered their presence in Haiti with Ottawa.
The NDP had been urging the Liberals to start a family-reunification program for relatives of Canadians living in Haiti who are at high risk of violence.
In response to that proposal last week, Immigration Minister Marc Miller mentioned that Ottawa had committed a year ago to welcome 15,000 migrants on a humanitarian basis from the Western Hemisphere. This change was announced alongside the closure of an increasingly popular route for people crossing from the U.S. to claim asylum in Canada.
“We are also focused on getting the people out that we undertook as part of our commitment,” he said, noting “several thousand” are sponsored by Haitian Canadians.
“This is a situation that we are monitoring very closely, and always I think Canadians can expect their governments to show a very humanitarian face to this conflict.”
