The following are notes for an address by former United Nations Ambassador Bob Rae to the fourth annual Canada-Caribbean Institute (CCI) Research Symposium on February 19th, 2026, at the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago. The symposium, titled “Securing Canada–Caribbean Futures: Repositioning Traditional and Emerging Challenges,” advanced the 50th CARICOM heads of government conference in Basseterre, St. Kitts and Nevis, from February 24th-27th.

It is a tremendous honour and pleasure for me to be able to join you in person for this timely and important conference. Of course, to leave the balmy climate of Canada in February to face the harsh winter weather of Trinidad is a major hardship, but there are always personal sacrifices that have to be made for the greater good.

When I accepted the invitation to join this conference, the issues before us were of course serious, but now, in light of the continuing deterioration of the situation in Haiti, the ongoing impacts of climate change and the spreading of dangerous ideas about this planetary crisis being a “hoax”, and the renewal of the Monroe Doctrine with its Trump corollary, it is not exaggeration to say we have gone from something serious to something existential.

Let me begin by paying tribute to someone whose writings had a great impact on me as as young man, which as you can see from the colour of my hair was 60 years ago. I am referring to Eric Williams’s great book Capitalism and Slavery, which was published in 1944.

What Williams pointed out is that the wealth of the centre of empire — in this case the United Kingdom — can be traced directly not only to industrial development, but to the slave trade, the wealth that it generated, and the windfall that it produced for the English aristocracy. Over 80 years since the publication of this landmark work, it is now widely accepted that the premise of his book is true, and indeed, as William Dalrymple wrote in his brilliant work on the East India Company The Anarchy, what was true of slavery was also true of indenture.

As Canada has had to come to terms with our own history of plunder, genocide of indigenous populations, and the extraction of wealth from fish, fur, and timber, so too we must recognize the roots of the inequality that is still the plague of our current economic situation. We gain nothing from mincing words. And Canada also has to recognize the complex nature of our own historic  relationship with the Caribbean. We, too, have benefited from trade and investment patterns that have been far from reciprocal, as my friend and mentor Kari Levitt pointed out to me over many years.

The word “security” can mean many different things. While the word has been hijacked by those who only want to talk about the military side of things, the reality is that it takes many forms.

We know from Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” that it starts from birth, and has relevance for every stage of human development. Human security means knowing that children must be fed, loved, housed, educated, valued, and shown the full dignity that nurtures personal as well as social and economic growth.

We know how far we are in every part of the world, even in wealthy countries, from being able to say that these critical elements of human security are being properly met.

So, the personal, the social, and the economic, are all essential in understanding the architecture of security. Where lawlessness reigns, where gangs prevail, where poverty is everywhere, where children are starved and abused, where women are raped, where children see more opportunity in joining a gang than finding a job, where this is the world around us for too many, there can be no security.

I served as Chair of the Advisory Group on Haiti of the UN Economic and Social Council for five and a half years. I made my first visit there as a Member of Parliament in 2010 after the earthquake killed 150,000 people in Port au Prince in the blink of an eye. Many promises were made to the people of Haiti, by leaders, and by visiting dignitaries. Solemn pledges about “never again”, “game changing assistance”.  None of them were kept.

The old politics returned quickly, and bad policies on aid and development continued, as did, it must be said, corruption and malfeasance.

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in the summer of 2021, things have gone from bad to worse, mush worse, with 1.4 million now displaced from their homes, not by an earthquake or a hurricane, but by criminal gangs terrifying the population and forcing them out of their homes, and then levelling those same buildings to the ground.

When the gangs are finally defeated, and people can travel freely through the capital city, they will see the full extent of this terrible destruction.

Haiti is an example of what can happen when the perfect storm of a collapse in security is allowed to happen. Yes, it’s about gangs and corruption. It’s about violence. But it’s also about poverty and no work. And while additional security forces are essential in Haiti, they are not the only answer.

The flow of guns into Haiti, and indeed into the whole region (as well as into Mexico, and Central and South America, comes in good measure from the United States, whose domestic policies on gun control in turn allow for a massive export of the means of violence. Unless that stops there can be no security.

And unless we can provide a future for the youth who find their meaning in joining a gang and, yes, engaging in acts of violence and abuse, we shall find no durable to the hopelessness that infects a society and can’t be eradicated only by arresting and shooting “the bad guys”.

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was writing at the time of the English Civil War when tens of thousands died in the face of a conflict that made steady investment and economic growth impossible.

It was Hobbes who reminded the world that loyalty to the sovereign and acceptance of a state that controlled the means of violence were two necessities that had to be in place to end what he called “the war of all against all” and made life “nasty, brutish and short”.

But it has taken us a very long time to come to realize that many other things are also required to provide the conditions for a better life.

Throughout the Caribbean, the journey to independence has been linked closely to a social and democratic vision that transcends political and partisan divides.

Today, for the most part, political independence and sovereignty have been achieved. But I want to suggest that as important as this progress has been, it is now equally important that we appreciate the importance of building greater institutional co-operation that will allow for social and economic sovereignty as well.

It is not for an outsider like me to say what form that co-operation should now take, but that it must happen seems pretty clear.

Haiti’s gangs are not confined to the western half of the island of Hispaniola. The gangs thrive on support from offshore. And no country, including my own, is exempt from their reach and their impact.

One of the reasons Haiti’s Caribbean partners have played such an important role in trying to fashion an effective response to the current crisis, is precisely because problems that might seem “national” are actually “regional” or even “international”.

We are going through a time in which two important truths are being denied, and the consequence of that denial is potentially disastrous.

The first denial of an important truth is to believe that international laws, international co-operation, and international institutions, are all part of a conspiracy intended to weaken nation states, and in particular to weaken the power and authority of those nations states that my Prime Minister has called “hegemons”.

Over many generations, we have collectively built institutions whose purpose is actually to advance the cause of effective sovereignty by ensuring that its meaning is not confined to the monopoly of the use of force.

In other words, that economic and social improvements are equally important in the attainment of a decent life, and the achievement of an effective political sovereignty.

None of these institutions — the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations and all its agencies, the regional development banks, the organizations that facilitate trade, health, and human rights — are perfect.

They need reform and improvement. But they must not be destroyed because to do that means that Might Makes Right will prevail.

This is really a kind of New Imperialism, which every thoughtful and democratic person should reject and resist.

The second major denial of truth has to do with the survival of planetary health and wellbeing.

Over the last several decades, human experience and scientific inquiry have come to understand two fundamental facts: that the spread of disease knows no national borders, and that the our health depends not only on our own prejudices but on respecting the truths that have been hard-won. We need better vaccines, not no vaccines.

Viruses and bacteria know no borders, and we saw in Covid 19 that while we might like to think we are in the same boat, we actually are in different boats of different qualities, and we are not equally protected against the storms of disease.

What is true of health is also true of climate change. The Caribbean knows as well and better than the rest of the planet the devastation that storms and hurricanes can bring. They are bigger and more dangerous than ever before. They are intensified by warming and rising oceans that are the product of a planet that is warming. To deny this is to deny the nose on your face.

And the response to this, it is widely recognized, is to reduce emissions and to increase the capacity of those countries that are most vulnerable to deal with the impacts of storms. This is not happening sufficiently to protect those who need most help.

None of this happens without money. The level of assistance to strengthen infrastructure is simply not there, nor is the financing that is required.

Prime Minister Carney’s recent speech in Davos made the essential point that in the face of the rejection of these important truths, it is critical for countries to join together to build alternative structures that will make the necessary progress.

The one country that many looked for for leadership on these issues has decided to walk away from its global responsibilities — for how long we do not know.

That puts an even greater burden on the rest of us to recapture our own sense of agency to do what is right. It’s time to put ideas such as “strategic patience” on the shelf.

What we do know is that it is up to the rest of us — and that means all of us — to step up to OUR  responsibilities to ensure that all the dimensions of insecurity — personal, political, military, legal, social, economic, and environmental — are being tackled, not in the name of instant solutions, but in the name of steady progress.

This organization is based on the correct premise that the truth will set us free. But we all know that truth by itself is frail without the will and the means to actually make things happen. We have faced challenges before, and met them, but we are now being called to do even more and better.

Each of us has the responsibility to show more courage in the face of these challenges. Truth needs our courage and persistence in order for it prevail. Nothing happens without the human foot steps and the determination to stick to the right path.

There is nothing gentle or frail about our opponents at the moment.  We owe it to ourselves to push ahead.

My final point is to emphasize the need for a regional strategy for education and learning, based on the need for an ongoing investment in human capital. Put simply, we have to replace the brain drain with a brain gain.

No matter what the question in public policy, education of all kinds and at every level will be part of the answer. The Canada-Caricom Institute needs to play a role in the development of this strategy.

Policy Contributing Writer Bob Rae teaches and writes on law and public policy. He is a Fellow of Massey College, the Munk School at the University of Toronto, the Forum of Federations and Queen’s University. He served as Ontario’s 21st Premier, interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and Canada’s Ambassador to the UN.