The Value of Self-Help

Canada has proclaimed itself a champion of Haiti, determined to assist that vastly underprivileged country to haul itself into the 21st Century, to a place and time where its people can look toward the future with some degree of confidence that they will no longer be left behind by misfortune and ill governance. The Government of Canada, like governments all over the world, look upon the social-political-structural failure of Haiti with true regret.

And Canada, like many other countries of the world has responded generously to Haiti's need for assistance, particularly after the devastating earthquake that took the country's infrastructure back to its beginnings, killed far too many innocents, and made millions homeless. Canada has invested quite a lot of its treasury in Haiti, along with its hopes that through its humanitarian efforts the country will sooner, rather than later, achieve some measure of success.

Canada's current Governor General, a Haitian-Canadian, has accepted a United Nations post as overseer of a UN mission to help with Haiti reconstruction. And the many Haitian-Canadians living in Canada continue to have hope that their original country may eventually become more than an unfortunate footnote in the Western Hemisphere. Now, news surfaces that we may be aiding Haiti in ways never quite imagined.

A former employee of the City of Ottawa has become newsworthy in the nation's capital.
Accused of stealing over a million dollars from a charitable organization she was employed with. This is a woman in whom trust was placed to be invested in the smooth operation of a charity for the care and oversight of people incapable of caring for themselves.

She migrated with her family to Canada from Haiti when she was 17, lives now with her mother and her own 17-year-old daughter in her very own $530,000 home.

Yolande Knight, formerly director of finance for Total Communication Environment, an agency funded by the province to provide care to roughly 90 adults with disabilities, has been charged with fraud, theft, breach of trust, forgery and possession of the proceeds of crime for using corporate credit cards to pay for personal purchases over an eight-year period.

An audit in 2009 disclosed the fraud, where a total of $1,114,827.40 appeared to have been misappropriated. The city-issued credit cards this trusted employee used to pay for hairdressers, gym memberships, groceries, gas, clothes and landscaping for her home, along with airline tickets and limousine rentals enabled her to live a peculiarly inappropriate lifestyle. Yet she still appears to be in debt to the tune of $500,000.

Much of the avails of her ill-doing appears to have been transferred to her boyfriend, Rene St.Fort. Mr. St.Fort, another Haitian-Canadian, was found guilty in 2002 of fraud over $5,000 and sentenced to a year and a half in prison, having defrauded Canadian banks. And now, Mr.St.Fort is the head of the National Reform Party of Haiti, though still residing in Canada.

Mr. St.Fort was not the sole beneficiary of Ms. Knight's largesse, for Mr. St.Fort's brother and three other men also received wire money transfers. "The accused was identified in sending 12 transfers resulting in suspicious transaction reports being generated under the Proceeds of Crime Money Laundering and Terrorist financing Act", the court was informed.

Ms. Knight's lawyer, Jean Claude Dubuisson, argues "She has no criminal record. She's been living in Canada since she was 17 years old", insisting she be seen as eligible for bail and does not represent a flight risk. And the sitting judge, Justice of the Peace Beverly Souliere, in the laudable spirit of of open-minded fairness pointed out that the court hadn't heard Ms. Knight's "side of the story".

That side obviously being that people who migrate to Canada from underprivileged countries are not expected to behave in accordance with the same ethical and moral codes that compel other Canadians.