The world is sending soldiers back to Haiti — this time without Canada's help

Why is Canada involved in Haiti? Why is it Canada's job to fix a failed state?

Those are two of the most common questions CBC News hears from Canadians about the current state of anarchy and widespread gang violence in this Caribbean island nation. The answers are complicated — because Canada's involvement in the international response to Haiti's plight is much more limited than it might appear.

In fact, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not volunteer for the job of fixing Haiti. As they say in the army, Canada essentially was "volun-told" to sign up for the daunting task of restoring order there — and the federal government has been doing everything it can to limit its role ever since.

It was the Biden administration that tried to drop the Haitian hot potato in Canada's lap, arguing that Washington's hands were filled with larger global matters, such as the war in Ukraine and threats to Taiwan.

Nearly two years ago, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began to talk to Caribbean leaders and others about Canada taking the lead on an "international stabilization force" for Haiti.

It was an assignment the Trudeau government appeared determined to ditch.

It's rare for a Canadian government to resist heavy and sustained pressure from an American administration, but that's what happened in the case of the Multinational Security Support Mission for Haiti.

But unlike Jean Chrétien, who turned down Washington flat when asked to contribute troops to the invasion of Iraq, Trudeau chose to run out the clock.

Instead of soldiers, Canada sent fact-finding missions to Haiti to look into the possibility of a mission. It sent aircraft to fly over Port-au-Prince and contribute intelligence to the Haitian National Police. It even sent two Kingston-class coastal defence vessels to Haiti to patrol Port-au-Prince Bay, ostensibly to stop gangs from attacking shipping or launching amphibious attacks on rivals' territory.

In other words, it did everything short of putting boots on the ground.

And through it all, the message coming from Prime Minister Trudeau, Ambassador to the UN Bob Rae (his chief envoy on Haitian matters) and Canada's ambassadors in Haiti was consistent: Canada does not wish to repeat the mistakes of past deployments.

Trudeau repeated that message this past week, saying that changes in Haiti "have to come from within the Haitian society and have to be executed by Haitian police and by others."

"We have to come to grips a bit with the history of large military interventions, where basically you're just pushing aside all of the Haitian institutions and [saying], 'We'll do this,'" Trudeau said. "And then the pressures come from back home, saying, 'Well, how long are those troops going to be there?'

"Troops come out again, and then where are you? What have you got left?"