Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who has made relief and reconstruction for Haiti a major cause for his government, will travel to the earthquake-ravaged nation today to see the recovery efforts firsthand.
His visit comes as international efforts to aid Haiti, still struggling to provide basics such as food and shelter and sweep rubble from roads, increasingly look ahead to the task of rebuilding the poorest nation in the Americas almost from scratch.
Federal officials confirmed Sunday night that Mr. Harper, who a month ago ordered Canada's largest-ever emergency mission into the Caribbean nation, would be visiting the southern areas of Jacmel and Léogane, where Canadian troops have taken a major role in relief efforts. Among other things, he will visit a hospital, a water unit, and a school that was demolished in the earthquake.
He is also scheduled to visit the capital of Port-au-Prince and meet with President René Préval and Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.
The Prime Minister's spokesman said Mr. Harper will be taking stock of the rescue and assistance work but will also be looking at the "long-term reconstruction challenges."
There are now about 2,000 Canadian troops in Haiti. Canadian troops expect to have distributed nearly a million meals by the time Mr. Harper departs tomorrow.
The swift dispatch of the Canadian military's relief efforts - the first aid planes landed 36 hours after the quake as two navy ships sailed - was remarkable for a country that has in recent years faced criticism for the slow pace of its emergency response.
But the troops are slated to return to Canada some time in March, and efforts will turn to the task of rebuilding Haiti, as donor nations convene at the United Nations in New York for a conference on reconstruction March 22 and 23.
The UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, John Holmes, said Haiti's immediate needs are still humanitarian relief, including the need for shelter ahead of the approaching rainy season, but it is time to think ahead to reconstruction.
"We're working as much as we can to make sure whatever we're doing on the emergency side ... fits in properly with what needs to follow," he said in a press briefing from Port-au-Prince.
The real scale of a disaster that killed more than 200,000 is still being revealed now, he said. Refugees from Port-au-Prince are straining food supplies in a country where the normal food distribution system has broken down; a huge number of buildings were levelled by the earthquake, but many more are so unsafe they will have to be demolished.
"There will need to be a lot of destruction before there can be reconstruction," he said.
Mr. Harper will not be the first foreign leader to visit Haiti since the earthquake - the President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, visited two days after the earthquake, followed by leaders of Jamaica and Ecuador - but he will be the first from one of Haiti's major aid donors. For Mr. Harper, Haiti has become a foreign-aid priority unlike any other in his four years in office.
More aid has flowed to Afghanistan, hand-in-hand with Canada's NATO military mission. But from the hours after the earthquake hit, Mr. Harper tied his political identity to a humanitarian mission as never before.
After dispatching troops, the government convened a preliminary donors' conference in Montreal, where nations agreed they will have to commit 10 years of efforts to reconstruction in Haiti - a country where the international community's record of start-and-stop commitment has been notorious.
Canada's ties to Haiti are personified by Governor-General Michaëlle Jean, whose family roots are in Jacmel - among those killed in the earthquake was the godmother to her daughter. Montreal is home to a large Haitian community and the Prime Minister's Office estimates that 100,000 Canadians have roots in Haiti.
Those links combined with Mr. Harper's desire to make the Americas a focus of his foreign policy and the palpable reaction of Canadians to the horror of the earthquake to make Haiti a focal point for Ottawa's aid in future years.
Haiti was already Canada's second-largest recipient of aid - the Canadian International Development Agency pledged $159-million last year - but Mr. Harper said at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that is "only going to get bigger in the future."