Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley hopes Cari­com has forged clos­er ties with Cana­da and that its Prime Min­is­ter, Justin Trudeau, will as­sist the re­gion in what­ev­er way he can.

Row­ley made the com­ment yes­ter­day as the cur­tains came down on the first Cari­com-Cana­da Sum­mit in Ot­tawa, Cana­da.

Speak­ing dur­ing a clos­ing me­dia brief­ing along­side Trudeau and Guyana Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali, Row­ley hailed the event for strength­en­ing of re­la­tion­ships among the ter­ri­to­ries.

Row­ley, who had pre­vi­ous­ly recog­nised Cana­da’s role in as­sist­ing with re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty through the ac­qui­si­tion of bor­der pa­trol ves­sels, po­lice train­ing and cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty, said fur­ther rep­re­sen­ta­tion can al­so im­prove con­di­tions “not on­ly in dol­lars and cents” across the is­lands.

“Speak­ing in the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket place and in­flu­enc­ing the con­ver­sa­tion and de­ci­sions that af­fect us be­cause one of the things that af­fect us is ar­bi­trary de­ci­sion-mak­ing and I might go so far as say­ing dis­re­spect for our in­ter­ests, so if we do have help in mak­ing our case at the ap­pro­pri­ate fo­rum, then we can ben­e­fit a lot from what Cana­da can say for us and with us,” Row­ley said.

Caribbean lead­ers have pre­vi­ous­ly lament­ed chal­lenges in ac­cess­ing in­ter­na­tion­al fund­ing, as well as equal op­por­tu­ni­ties to tack­le mat­ters such as cli­mate change. With tur­bu­lence re­ver­ber­at­ing across the world, Dr Row­ley, in re­spond­ing to ques­tions from the me­dia, al­so main­tained that the Hait­ian cri­sis can­not be tak­en off the re­gion­al radar.

“As we look at the cri­sis and ad­vo­cate for in­ter­ven­tion and as­sis­tance, that that as­sis­tance be seen com­ing from hon­est bro­kers and not, in fact, prop­ping up what ex­ists in per­pet­u­at­ing, that in it­self pos­es the dan­ger.”

Over the years, Haiti has been paral­ysed by gang vi­o­lence, which has left hun­dreds dead and thou­sands dis­placed.

In recog­nis­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the sum­mit, Row­ley sug­gest­ed that go­ing for­ward, the meet­ing among lead­ers should be or­gan­ised bi-an­nu­al­ly.

On Wednes­day, the Prime Min­is­ter 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.,

Ques­tioned about the sum­mit and its out­come yes­ter­day, Cana­da’s Trudeau said the launch of a strate­gic part­ner­ship will ben­e­fit both Cana­da and Cari­com.

“We are com­ing out of this with a con­crete plan of ac­tion to con­tin­ue to har­ness the op­por­tu­ni­ties and po­ten­tial among Cana­da and Caribbean and our mu­tu­al in­ter­ests in mov­ing for­ward in the right way to­geth­er,” Trudeau said.

The launch of the Cari­com-Cana­da strate­gic part­ner­ship at the sum­mit is aimed at fos­ter­ing the ex­ist­ing re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cana­da and Cari­com through reg­u­lar leader, min­is­te­r­i­al and se­nior of­fi­cial lev­el meet­ings to ad­vance roadmaps for ac­tion, a state­ment on the sum­mit said.