Premier Francois Legault announced Friday that 113 Quebec tourists trapped at a Haitian resort are expected to be flown to safety Saturday.
Legault told reporters in Montreal that helicopters will be used to ferry tourists from the Royal Decameron resort to the airport in the Haitian capital. Air Transat, the travel company with which they booked vacation packages before violence broke out, will then fly them to Montreal.
Legault said three helicopters with room for 20 passengers each will be deployed. They will make two trips to transport the 113 passengers.
Air Transat said in a statement that the evacuation plan was made in co-operation with local authorities, the Canadian embassy in the strife-torn country and the federal government.
Earlier Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa and its diplomatic corps were working to help trapped Canadians get home.
"We're also obviously preoccupied with a number of Canadians who are in Haiti right now who are looking to come home to Canada in this crisis situation,'' Trudeau said. Global Affairs didn't provide an exact figure for the number of Canadians seeking to leave.
Among them is a team of 26 aid workers with a missionary group from Quebec whose situation remained unchanged Friday.
Another 24 missionaries from southern Alberta were in the country to host a women's conference and work on a housing project. A co-ordinator for the group, Haiti Arise, said its people were safe in Grand-Goave, about 65 kilometres from the capital. They were waiting for a chartered helicopter to take them to the airport to catch a flight home later Friday as supplies ran low.
Haitians on Friday vowed to keep protesting until President Jovenel Moise resigns, despite his announcement of upcoming economic measures designed to quell more than a week of violent demonstrations across the country.
Protesters are angry over skyrocketing inflation and the government's failure to prosecute embezzlement from a multi-billion Venezuelan program that sent discounted oil to Haiti.
Moise said during a televised address late Thursday that he would not surrender the country to what he called armed gangs and drug dealers, and he accused people of freeing prisoners to kill him. It was the first time Moise had spoken since the demonstrations began, and he made another call for dialogue with the opposition.
On Friday, the Canada Border Services Agency suspended deportations to Haiti. The agency said the stay is a temporary measure to defer removals in crisis situations and will be removed once the situation stabilizes. A CBSA spokesperson did not say how many people have been deported from Canada to Haiti since the beginning of the crisis.
- With files from the Canadian Press