Gail Alexan­der

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who is at­tend­ing the 44th Cari­com Lead­ers’ Sum­mit in the Ba­hamas, met yes­ter­day with for­mer US Sen­a­tor Chris Dodd, who is the Spe­cial Pres­i­den­tial Ad­vi­sor for the Amer­i­c­as.

And Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau yes­ter­day told Cari­com lead­ers Cana­da is work­ing to ex­pand and sim­pli­fy ac­cess for trust­ed trav­ellers from Cari­com coun­tries.

This was the word from Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day, as it gave an up­date on Row­ley’s par­tic­i­pa­tion at the Cari­com Sum­mit. Dodd and Trudeau are among the for­eign guests at the Ba­hamas meet­ing.

The OPM stat­ed that En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne were present for the meet­ing with Dodd. No de­tails of what tran­spired in the meet­ing were giv­en.

Young had ac­com­pa­nied Row­ley to Guyana’s In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Ex­po on Tues­day. When Row­ley (and St Vin­cent PM Ralph Gon­salves) were leav­ing Guyana on Wednes­day to trav­el to the Ba­hamas sum­mit, they were re­fused use of Amer­i­can Air­lines’ VIP lounge at Guyana’s Ched­di Jag­gan In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Young al­so met yes­ter­day with Deputy As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for En­er­gy Trans­for­ma­tion, US De­part­ment of State, An­na Sh­pits­berg, the OPM stat­ed.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s first ple­nary ses­sion of the two-day sum­mit, Cari­com lead­ers dis­cussed the Cari­com agri-food sys­tems agen­da and the steps tak­en to pri­ori­tise re­gion­al food se­cu­ri­ty. (See page 7)

They al­so re­ceived re­ports on COVID-19 and oth­er emerg­ing health is­sues and on the progress of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME).

The sit­u­a­tion in Haiti was high on the agen­da when heads met in cau­cus in the af­ter­noon ses­sion. Lead­ers were al­so sched­uled to dis­cuss com­mu­ni­ty gov­er­nance and bor­der is­sues.

Al­so yes­ter­day, lead­ers met with Cana­di­an PM Trudeau. He told Cari­com heads that Cana­da “is work­ing to ex­pand and sim­pli­fy ac­cess for trust­ed trav­ellers from Cari­com coun­tries and oth­er coun­tries in the re­gion.”

Trudeau al­so an­nounced ini­tia­tives to help sup­port the re­gion in­clud­ing:

• $44.8 mil­lion in new fund­ing to tack­le the cli­mate cri­sis in the Caribbean

• $1.8 mil­lion to tar­get il­lic­it drug traf­fick­ing and strength­en bor­der and mar­itime se­cu­ri­ty in the Caribbean

Trudeau al­so told lead­ers he be­lieves that to­geth­er, Cari­com, Cana­da and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners can help Haitians bring an end to the on­go­ing cri­sis and build a bet­ter and more hope­ful fu­ture for their coun­try.

To this end, he pledged $10 mil­lion to sup­port the In­ter­na­tion­al Of­fice on Mi­gra­tion to strength­en the pro­tec­tion and re­silience of Hait­ian women and chil­dren along the Haiti-Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic bor­der and an ad­di­tion­al $12.3 mil­lion in hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance for Haiti.

The sum­mit ends tonight, af­ter dis­cus­sions on en­er­gy, re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, cli­mate change and oth­er agen­da is­sues.