Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Cana­da has al­ways been an im­por­tant part­ner to T&T, but in re­cent decades, bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions have be­come even clos­er and more crit­i­cal for both na­tions, es­pe­cial­ly the lat­ter.

Arif Ke­shani is the out­go­ing high com­mis­sion­er for Cana­da, hav­ing spent the last two years in the twin is­land re­pub­lic.

Be­fore fly­ing out of T&T this week­end, he sat down with the Sun­day Guardian to talk about re­la­tions be­tween the coun­tries.

Busi­ness re­la­tions

While Cana­da and T&T es­tab­lished diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions in 1962, Ke­shani says his­to­ry will show that trade re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries go back to the 1700s, when prod­ucts were be­ing trad­ed by ships. To­day, Cana­da’s foot­print can be seen every­where in T&T, from pop­u­lar banks such as Sco­tia­bank, CIBC, and RBC to less­er-known facts.

For in­stance, T&T pass­ports are made by a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny as well as coins from this coun­try. There is al­so a petro­chem­i­cal con­nec­tion as it was a Cana­di­an com­pa­ny that as­sist­ed in the clean-up ef­forts in the af­ter­math of the To­ba­go oil spill dis­as­ter in Feb­ru­ary.

“It’s a ro­bust re­la­tion­ship. I think there is al­ways op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow and ex­pand that re­la­tion­ship,” Ke­shani told the Sun­day Guardian.

He hailed the Min­istry of Trade’s de­ci­sion to des­ig­nate a trade at­taché for North Amer­i­ca. In Ju­ly last year, five com­mer­cial of­fi­cers and com­mer­cial at­tachés were ap­point­ed to rep­re­sent T&T in the in­ter­na­tion­al trade and in­vest­ment are­na.

For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Dar­ryl Smith was ap­point­ed for the North Amer­i­can re­gion. “That’s go­ing to as­sist in bring­ing more in­vest­ments back to T&T but al­so help­ing T&T ex­port their prod­ucts. We have trade com­mis­sion­ers here in T&T on the com­mer­cial side, and their port­fo­lio in­cludes as­sist­ing Cana­di­an com­pa­nies com­ing to T&T to do busi­ness but al­so help­ing en­cour­age in­vest­ment in Cana­da,” he said.

Ke­shani said the trade re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries have ma­tured “and will con­tin­ue to grow un­der these ini­tia­tives.” Such growth has been trick­ling in­to oth­er sec­tors, such as cul­ture and the arts.

In the last few months, two films, Dou­bles and No Bound­aries, pro­duced by Cana­di­an di­rec­tors, opened in T&T. Fur­ther to that, sev­er­al Cana­di­an au­thors were pro­filed at this year’s Bo­cas Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val, in­clud­ing Dionne Brand, Pre­mee Mo­hamed, and Za­li­ka Reid-Ben­ta.

“These types of ex­changes are in­creas­ing and flour­ish­ing,” he added.

On the eco­nom­ic side, a large dri­ver of trade re­la­tions has been the Caribbean-Cana­da Trade Agree­ment, known as CARIB­CAN, which is valid un­til De­cem­ber 2033. Un­der the arrange­ment, 98 per cent of this coun­try’s ex­ports, in­clud­ing methanol, rum, and bis­cuits, en­ter the Cana­di­an mar­ket free from tax­es.

When speak­ing about this area of trade re­la­tions, Ke­shani said it was one where the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da wish­es to sup­port and ex­pand while al­so la­belling it a pri­or­i­ty. He added, “This is a grow­ing area. We are look­ing at ex­pand­ing these pro­vi­sions and mak­ing it even more fa­cil­i­ta­tive for T&T busi­ness­es to be able to ex­port to Cana­da.”

Liv­ing in Cana­da

North Amer­i­ca has in­creas­ing­ly be­come a des­ti­na­tion for Trin­bag­o­ni­ans seek­ing to work and live abroad. Cana­da’s search for skilled labour in cer­tain ar­eas has been at­trac­tive for cit­i­zens want­i­ng to move.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that over 100,000 Trin­bag­o­ni­ans live and work in Cana­da, but Ke­shani brings it down to the “transna­tion­al lives” peo­ple live in the mod­ern world. He said, “We’re al­so see­ing a large Cana­di­an di­as­po­ra in T&T. Many of these are dual na­tion­als, but it is a grow­ing con­stituen­cy of in­di­vid­u­als that are al­so choos­ing to live in T&T and hold­ing Cana­di­an cit­i­zen­ship, so these transna­tion­al ex­changes are cer­tain­ly ex­pe­ri­enced be­tween both our coun­tries but are a glob­al phe­nom­e­non.”

The for­mer high com­mis­sion­er said the cal­i­bre of ap­pli­cants Cana­da gets out of this coun­try is high, and that can ac­count for the large num­ber of im­mi­grants that are se­lect­ed from T&T.

Ac­cess to Cana­da be­came even sim­pler last June when Im­mi­gra­tion, Refugees and Cit­i­zen­ship Cana­da (IR­CC) added T&T as one of 13 ad­di­tion­al coun­tries to its “par­tial visa ex­empt coun­tries” list, mean­ing trav­ellers can ap­ply for an elec­tron­ic trav­el au­tho­ri­sa­tion (eTA) in­stead of a (vis­i­tor) visa.”

This was done dur­ing Ke­shani’s time as high com­mis­sion­er.

He told the Sun­day Guardian, “We’re fa­cil­i­tat­ing more of those peo­ple-to-peo­ple ex­changes be­tween our two coun­tries. It un­der­pins oth­er parts of our re­la­tion­ship as well. Com­mer­cial re­la­tions are al­so bol­stered by this de­vel­op­ment.”

Ke­shani said the move not on­ly takes us in­to the fu­ture but al­so shows that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans re­spect Cana­da’s en­try and ex­it re­quire­ments. He em­pha­sised that not all coun­tries in the Caribbean were af­ford­ed this op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Chris Must List

While diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries have been sta­ble, the sedi­tion charges against Cana­di­an vlog­ger Christo­pher “Chris Must List” Hugh­es threw the spot­light on Ke­shani and his team.

Hugh­es ap­peared in court on Fri­day charged with mak­ing a sedi­tious pub­li­ca­tion. He had plead­ed not guilty to the of­fence and is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Pamela El­der.

When asked about how this case has been treat­ed by the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion in this coun­try, Ke­shani would not go in­to de­tails but said, “This case has re­ceived a lot of at­ten­tion in the lo­cal me­dia and to some de­gree in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia. It’s an area of our bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions that each coun­try takes very se­ri­ous­ly, and that’s con­sular re­la­tions and the sup­port we pro­vide to our own na­tion­als abroad.

“It’s clear that when any­body trav­els abroad, they have to fol­low the rules of the host coun­try. That is a clear el­e­ment of in­ter­na­tion­al law ... I can con­firm we are pro­vid­ing sup­port in this case; I can’t speak to the specifics of it be­cause it is pro­tect­ed by our pri­va­cy leg­is­la­tion, and we will con­tin­ue to pro­vide sup­port to the ex­tent which we can in this case.”

He as­sured diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions be­tween both coun­tries re­main sound and were not shak­en in any way due to the “Chris Must List” con­tro­ver­sy.

Cana­da-T&T co­op­er­a­tion

As Ke­shani leaves T&T, he is most hap­py with his time as Cana­di­an high com­mis­sion­er and where both na­tions have been able to co­op­er­ate. Both coun­tries co­op­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant­ly on se­cu­ri­ty and de­fence. One of these as­pects of Cana­da that has been brought to T&T was the women, peace, and se­cu­ri­ty agen­da.

He said in the space of a year, there has been good progress. Ke­shani out­lined the sen­si­ti­sa­tion work­shops, which in­clud­ed mem­bers of the De­fence Force, the Po­lice Ser­vice, aca­d­e­mics, and mem­bers of civ­il so­ci­ety who came to­geth­er and tried to iden­ti­fy the el­e­ments of what a women, peace and se­cu­ri­ty ac­tion plan should mean for this coun­try.

In Jan­u­ary this year, the Min­istry of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs launched an ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee to be able to shape the na­tion­al ac­tion plan. Ke­shani said once this na­tion­al ac­tion plan is com­plet­ed, it will be the first in the Caribbean.

“It’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to mod­el how this could work in a Caribbean set­ting,” he added. Ke­shani in­sists peo­ple typ­i­cal­ly think about women, peace, and se­cu­ri­ty in con­flict zones, but he said it can al­so be adapt­ed to sit­u­a­tions of in­se­cu­ri­ty.

Speak­ing about his ex­pe­ri­ence as high com­mis­sion­er over the last two years, Ke­shani con­clud­ed, “In one word, it’s been very pos­i­tive. It’s a re­al priv­i­lege to be able to be a high com­mis­sion­er in a coun­try where we have such pos­i­tive re­la­tions. On the per­son­al side, it’s been very ful­fill­ing. There is a gen­uine warmth that I dis­cov­ered when I came to this coun­try, and I was re­ceived by the na­tion­als of this coun­try at both a pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al lev­el. This is a coun­try that has made an in­deli­ble mark on me.”