CANADIAN GOODWILL WILL NOT STOP DRUG CRIME

Canada's response to the escalation of drug violence in Central
America, now the most lawless region in the hemisphere, with the
world's highest murder rates, has failed to match the scale of the
problem.

The federal government has made various gestures of goodwill in reply
to the urgent requests for police training and judicial reform from
Guatemala and Mexico. But it has not done enough to combat the
transnational criminal organizations that are turning these countries
into narco-states.

"Organized crime is not just infiltrating us. It pains me to say it,
but drug traffickers have us cornered," Alvaro Colom, Guatemala's
President, said recently.

In the last four years, the amount of South America cocaine being
shipped through Central America (most of which is headed for Canada
and the U.S.) has increased more than six times, as Mexican cartels
are increasingly squeezed by President Felipe Calderon's military
campaign against them.

More people are dying in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador than at
the height of the civil wars in the 1980s, as home-grown drug barons
and vicious youth gangs battle these cartels - cartels active in every
major city in the U.S, and several Canadian ones.

Diane Ablonczy, Canada's newly appointed Minister of State for the
Americas, acknowledges that the drug war is undermining the security
of the Americas. "Canada has a real direct stake in partnering with
Mexico and other countries in the Americas ... to fight transnational
criminal organizations," she said in an interview. "You can't just
address the issue in one country."

Yet so far this has not translated into a sense of urgency, let alone
more resources. Helen Mack, head of Guatemala's police reform
commission, came to Ottawa last year to ask for help, and the official
response was an assessment team and two RCMP officers.

Canada, which played a key role in facilitating peace in Central
America, must now re-engage. It can help with penal and fiscal reform,
anti-gang initiatives such as "programs to help rehabilitate and
socialize former drug gang members," and can send intelligence
professionals to the region, says Jennifer Jeffs, president of the
Canadian International Council. Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American
Dialogue, a Washington think tank, adds "No one in the U.S. and Canada
has any idea what is going on in Central America."

Canada must support the reformers in the region, help Central America
re-establish security and consolidate their fragile democracies, and
reduce the violence of the cartels - before it is too late.