International Trade Committee on May 13th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

We are now going to proceed with the Standing Committee on International Trade, meeting 17 of this session. Our order of reference is with regard to an act to implement the free trade agreement between the Republic of Colombia and Canada, the agreement on the environment between Canada and the Republic of Colombia, and the agreement on labour cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Colombia.

We have had some changes in the schedule over the past week to try to accommodate people. Today, we are happy to have two witnesses with us. I think with just two witnesses we will go for an hour. That will give us plenty of time to ask questions. I would like to conclude today by wrapping up the Canada-U.S. procurement report.

We are now in session, so there won't be cameras going off, now that we're officially started.

With that, I'm going to begin by introducing our witnesses today. I see with us at the table we have Carleen Pickard from the Council of Canadians. Thank you for coming.

Via video conference we have Barbara Wood. I'm going to ask you to acknowledge that you can hear us.

[Barbara Wood, Executive Director, CoDevelopment Canada]

Yes, I can hear you. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

I think we will proceed with opening statements. I'll ask Ms. Pickard, director of organizing with the Council of Canadians, to begin with a statement of up to 10 minutes. We're going to try to stick to that for a change. Then I'll ask Ms. Wood to give us an opening statement as well.

Ms. Pickard.

[Carleen Pickard, Director of Organizing, Council of Canadians]

Thank you.

To start, from February 3 to 15 of this year, I participated in an international pre-electoral observation mission to Colombia. As part of a 22-person group, we carried out observation in four of Colombia's departments: Cordoba, Valle del Cauca, Antioquia, and Santander, as well as the capital city of Bogota. The regional observation teams were made up of professionals from different countries, organizations, and disciplines to assure a broad and multi-faceted perspective to the mission.

I have previously observed pre-electoral conditions and election day voting in Mexico, the United States, and Ethiopia with the Carter Center. I offer this testimony as important consideration for the committee in regard to the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, as the existence of a strong and healthy democratic system should be a key consideration of the committee and the deliberation on the CCFTA. As with the question of whether to recommend ratification of the CCFTA without a human rights impact assessment, we are convinced that the exercise of democracy cannot be understood as an isolated event on the day of voting.

Our methodology for observation was designed to be as broad and inclusive as possible. We met with leaders of all major political parties, representatives of civil society organizations, local, state, and national government officials, electoral authorities, officials charged with electoral oversight on municipal and departmental levels, journalists, and members of the media. We also sought out direct contact with citizens, organized through the church, civic groups, unions, indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups, the LGBT community, displaced persons, feminists, and others.

The purpose of the mission was to gather information regarding the conditions surrounding the March 14 congressional elections, also relevant to the presidential elections at the end of this month. International standards stipulate that valid electoral observation cannot take place without a study of pre-electoral conditions, as these constitute the often invisible but determinant backdrop to voting on election day. In a situation of internal conflict, the presence of illegal armed groups, widespread violence and violation of human rights, and internal displacement, as in Colombia, this is especially critical.

In March of this year, each of your offices received a copy of the mission's final report. I'll use the bulk of my time to highlight our key concerns, with only a few of the examples that are covered in the report.

Our first concern relates to the influence of armed groups—paramilitaries and narco-traffickers—on the electoral process. The influence of narco-traffickers and armed actors on the electoral process in certain parts of Colombia is, by all indications, significant and alarming. Their forceful interventions are directly related to the ultimate objective of becoming the de facto political authority in various parts of the country. It is certain in places where these groups have been active or allowed to operate with impunity that the legitimacy of both the electoral process and the candidates elected during those campaigns has not been and will not be trusted by the people. High-profile scandals, many of which this committee has already heard about, further erode the people's sense that the government and its representatives exist to serve them and address their needs.

According to community leaders and organizations based in various parts of the country, the government bears a large portion of responsibility for the recent expansion of the armed banditry and violence that is evident in all areas of social life, including electoral politics. Evidence from numerous sources indicate narco-traffickers and armed actors in and around Buenaventura are heavily involved with all aspects of electoral politics, including handing out gifts and bribing and intimidating candidates and the electorate, monitoring polling places, and directly interfering with poll workers and ballots after the voting process has ended.

Our second concern is about electoral fraud and electoral crimes. In our meeting with Colombian citizens, elected officials, and representatives of political parties, the following complaints were registered, which constitute interference with the free exercise of voting. To begin, in all regions there were reports that official poll watchers have been bought by parties to promote their interests and either turn a blind eye to irregularities or actively participate in them. These include activities such as marking ballots in favour of their candidate, falsifying vote counts, or annulling ballots that were already marked for opposing candidates. This level of collusion is essential to operationalize many of the additional strategies I'll talk about here.

The buying and selling of votes is the most common complaint received by the regional delegations in the mission. Citizens in Tierra Alta, Montelibano, and Monteria reported being offered anything from bags of cement and roofing materials to the construction of houses, to cash payments of 20,000 to 50,000 pesos, which is between $10 and $25 Canadian, per vote.

Typically, voters and representatives of opposition parties reported that vote buying from various political parties would require confirmation that a citizen had voted as agreed before paying the full amount. There are various methods for ensuring this, including taking photos of the marked ballot with a camera phone or just a regular camera, or using carbon copies to reproduce the vote.

The misuse of voter ID cards was commonly cited as a method of voter fraud in all regions. ID cards from people from other voting districts, counterfeit cards, or even cards from deceased persons have been used.

In the mission's final report we also discuss and cite examples of election observers being removed or obstructed from observing election day activities and report impediments to the right to vote as related by witnesses we interviewed.

In the final report we also discuss testimony of the existence of illegal electoral campaign financing practices, especially originating in drug trafficking, which I will not elaborate on here in order to respect the time guidelines.

Third, there is the use of government programs to influence election results.

Acción Social is the agency that channels national and international resources to social programs under the presidency and that attends to the needs of vulnerable sectors of the population affected by poverty, violence, and drug trafficking.

Among the different programs that have been developed under Acción Social, the Familias en Acción program is the most recognized at the national level and has the broadest coverage, serving nearly three million families. The program consists of providing conditioned subsidies to mothers and poor families and/or families displaced by violent conflict, on the condition that they fulfill commitments such as sending their children to school, regularly attending health evaluations, etc.

After analyzing the results of all four regional delegations, we were impressed to find that a wide variety of sources coincided in affirming that candidates of the ruling Partido de la U and other parties in the governing coalition have attended meetings with beneficiaries of the social programs, at which they stated that if the beneficiaries do not support them with their votes, the subsidies they receive from the president will end.

It is of grave concern that there appears to be no separation between the presidential figure and the needed government programs that attend to displaced persons and other vulnerable sectors, and from reports we've received, there's an alarmingly high rate of manipulation and misinformation on the part of regional politicians regarding Familias en Acción. This practice leaves open the possibility of manipulation of subsidies and the restriction of the voters' right to choose freely who to vote for.

Before ending, I want to point your attention to the OAS election report released on May 6 after the March 16 congressional elections; it highlights similar findings in regard to vote-buying and lack of citizen participation and understanding of the democratic process during that congressional election. Reports commending the fact that these elections were the most peaceful in years indicate that the bar for Colombian democracy is pretty low, when the absence of bombings at polling centres or of assassinations of candidates is a marker of a successful election.

Pre-electoral observation includes a multitude of factors that run from daily participation in decision-making by a free and informed citizenry to defence of national sovereignty at the geopolitical level. For this reason, we strongly believe that an in-depth analysis of the social and political conditions in the country is indispensable, since these constitute the often invisible but crucial backdrop to the electoral process.

I would offer that in consideration of the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, the human rights impact assessment proposed by this committee is an essential step to understanding the context on the ground in Colombia.

In closing, I thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation. I would say in addition that I feel strongly that the committee needs to continue to hear from the outstanding list of witnesses who have requested to testify in the coming weeks.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Vancouver to hear Barbara Wood by video conference. She is the executive director of CoDevelopment Canada.

Ms. Wood.

[Barbara Wood]

Thank you.

I am the executive director of CoDevelopment Canada, an international development NGO based in Vancouver that works with communities and organizations in Latin America from a rights-based approach.

I have been in human rights and development work focused on Latin America for more than 25 years. As part of my work with CoDev, I manage the program in Colombia that we've been engaged in since 2001. I have travelled to Colombia on numerous occasions and have met with a large and diverse group of Colombians, including government ministers, local and regional authorities, trade unions, indigenous groups, religious groups, political parties, displaced people, and human rights groups.

My most recent experience there was with the pre-electoral mission that Carleen has just described.

I will focus my presentation today on the human rights situation. You have by now heard or received a great deal of testimony focusing on the Colombian human rights situation. Most everyone, including the Colombian minister of trade, recognizes there is a serious problem. That is where the agreement ends, it seems. Some think the situation is good enough that we ought to enter into a trade deal and hope that the trade deal itself will further propel positive change. Others see the situation as one of profound and systemic human rights violations that will only be exacerbated by a trade deal.

There seem to be a couple of questions central to this discussion, which I think are worth bringing up. How bad does a situation have to be in order for Canada to say we couldn't possibly engage in a trade deal with this country?

The second question, I think, is whether or not a trade agreement is a possible vehicle to improve human rights violations, as some have proposed.

The first question has no clear answer, but it is an important one with which to grapple, I believe. Some members of the committee have stated there is no country in the world, including ours, that does not suffer from human rights violations. This is true, but in speaking about Colombia, this statement becomes so reductionist as to become meaningless.

Colombia leads the world in the number of trade unionists killed and people internally displaced, as you have already heard. The situation of indigenous people is alarming. Last year, in 2009, 114 indigenous people were assassinated, a 63% increase over 2008. Furthermore, 6,201 indigenous people were violently expelled from their ancestral homelands last year as well. Extrajudicial executions continue in unacceptably high numbers. In the region of Cordoba, on the Caribbean coast, where I visited in February, in 2009 alone they had 569 extrajudicial executions, the highest number ever recorded there. Virtually all of these killings—and they included municipal leaders and teachers and campesinos and other leaders—were widely seen to be committed by the paramilitaries.

I could go on. The numbers are staggering and horrific, and each one represents an individual with a family, a community, and friends. It is simply misleading to indicate that Colombia is but one of many countries that has “some problems”.

My work is never far from my mind, but the situation in Colombia was brought closer again last Thursday when I received a request for urgent action from our human rights partner in Colombia, NOMADESC. They, and several other leaders and communities with whom they work, had received another death threat. Those who were threatened included indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders from the region of northern Cauca, as well as trade union leaders, opposition politicians, and human rights defenders.

Our partner, NOMADESC, has been the target of intimidation and surveillance for many, many months now. Their offices are openly watched; their telephone calls are regularly disrupted; they've recently suffered two robberies, and a near fatal car accident when their car was forced off the road. They see these incidents as part of the intimidation campaign against them.

The communities that NOMADESC works with, and that were also named in the April 8 threat in northern Cauca, are especially vulnerable. A massacre of eight miners there in early April has ratcheted up the tension there even more than the numerous killings before the end of the year did.

This one urgent action is not an isolated case, as you will know from all you have heard here in committee. Human rights violations in Colombia are systematic and more than 95% of the time are left in total and absolute impunity. The situation is unacceptable.

We need to look at who is behind this violence and abuse. The guerrilla armed forces of the FARC and the ELN have their share of responsibility for abuses in the country, including the use of anti-personnel mines and the recruitment of child soldiers. The vast majority of abuses, however, are the work of the paramilitary organizations, which continue to operate throughout Colombia despite an official demobilization process.

The groups of today, sometimes known as the successor groups, or, in Colombia's slang, the recycled paramilitaries, number between 4,000 and 10,000. Despite claims to the contrary by the Colombian government that paramilitaries no longer exist and that the few armed troops that are out there are merely criminal gangs, no credible human rights organization makes this same claim--none. The paramilitary demobilization was a flawed process that did not disband the economic and political structures, which the paramilitary bought up and allowed any who did not demobilize to walk right in and continue acting.

As you've also heard here in the committee, the para-politics scandal has brought to light the vast web of connections and power relationships between elected officials from the ruling party's coalition and the paramilitaries. Recent congressional elections have done little to change that.

Further proof that Colombia is not the country that Canada would like to have as a trading partner is the continuing scandal of the DAS, or the Department of Administrative Security. The DAS is a presidential intelligence body that has been under scrutiny in the past year for illegal activities, including wiretapping of Supreme Court judges, human rights defenders, trade union leaders, and even international human rights bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the UN High Commission on Human Rights.

Their activities did not stop at wiretapping, however. They are also responsible for sending death threats, committing illegal break-ins, stealing computers and other materials from their victims, and passing information about their victims directly to the paramilitary. Information continues to come to light about the depth and breadth of this illegal program, but there's ample evidence that these activities were not the actions of isolated individuals.

Meetings took place in the presidential palace with officials close to the president, including his previous adviser and also his personal secretary. In fact, the president of the Supreme Court in Colombia recently qualified this as “a conspiracy of the state against the court, a criminal action”.

Although the DAS has now been disbanded, there are many outstanding questions about who the intellectual authors of these actions were. If this is not uncovered and tried through court proceedings, it is feared these illegal activities will continue under another name or in a different department.

Can trade agreements help to resolve human rights issues? We don't think that in this case it's possible because we're involved with a government that is complicit in human rights violations through judicial inaction and the direct involvement of its agents. The human rights amendment that has been put forward is not an adequate instrument to address the serious situation, especially because it relies on the Colombian government itself to make reports on itself.

Colombia is a complex country faced with many challenges. As Canadians, before we enter into this territory, the least we can do is to carry out a full and impartial human rights impact assessment, as was agreed to here in this committee two years ago. Such an instrument will give us more information as well as objective measures and indicators with which to make an informed decision and that could form the basis for ongoing monitoring and evaluation should we decide to go ahead with this deal.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

I thank both our witnesses for their courtesy in staying within the timeframe we established.

We're going to begin our round of questioning. We're going to have time for at least one full round and perhaps a second shorter round.

We'll begin with Mr. Brison, the Liberal critic.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Ms. Wood.

You stated that the human rights amendment and the binding agreement that will be signed by the Canadian and the Colombian governments requires only that Colombia write reports on their own human rights. Is that what you believe to be the fact?

[Barbara Wood]

I don't have full information on what that amendment includes, but I understand that the Colombian government would be responsible for presenting reports on the human rights impacts of this trade deal in their country.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

You're right. You do not have and you have not taken time to gain or ascertain the information that you probably ought to have. The fact is, the Canadian government will write a report on Colombian human rights. That report will draw on the NGO community, and it will draw on input from the civil society community. It will be reported to Parliament on an annual basis, and we can debate it at a trade committee or a human rights committee.

I appreciate the opportunity to communicate that, but you did present what is false as a fact. It troubles me because it reflects what I believe to be a bias you have. If in fact you were willing to provide half truths to support your ideological argument on something so easily determined simply with a phone call to my office, then I wonder whether much of what you provided to our committee is based on rigid ideological aversion to trade and how much of it is actually based on well-researched fact. There is a certain responsibility for those who appear before our committee to bring us fact and not necessarily pure rhetoric.

I have a question for Ms. Pickard--

[Barbara Wood]

May I respond to that? You just made some fairly.... May I respond, please?

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

No, I didn't ask for a response. I'm fine.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Barbara Wood]

You made some pretty significant accusations.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

That was a pretty offensive comment. Please allow the witness to reply.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

My next question is for Ms. Pickard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Mr. Brison has the floor.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Ms. Pickard, you've spoken of national sovereignty and the importance of respecting national sovereignty in Colombia. In the congressional election there was only one party against free trade agreements and that was Polo, and the result for this election was that 7% of Colombians voted for the anti-free trade party. Several recent polls have demonstrated that the same party in the presidential election is tracking at 4% to 5%. Isn't it disrespectful of Colombian national sovereignty to not respect the independence of that nation when they say they want these free trade agreements?

[Carleen Pickard]

What I presented in my report to the committee is based on the findings from our pre-electoral report. What I put forward were findings of problems we found in the electoral process. What you'll find in the report, if you read it, is it doesn't make a judgment on the free trade agreement or not, or whether or not the will of the people in Colombia is being respected. It reports on the serious concerns around the longstanding problems inherent to the system at that point that will take a lot of effort by whatever government ends up being in Colombia, whatever government needs to deal with these issues.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

You did discuss free trade in terms of its potentially deleterious effect on sovereignty in Colombia.

[Carleen Pickard]

No, I don't believe I did. When I was referring to the free trade agreement, I was referring to the fact that if Canada wants to enter into a free trade agreement, then this committee should be considering the democratic process in Colombia: the process, the mechanisms, and what the institution of democracy in Colombia itself--

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The logical corollary of your argument is that we should consider as well the democratic will of the Colombian people. That is what you're saying.

[Carleen Pickard]

What I'm saying.... Certainly, the point of the electoral mission was to look at the democratic process in Colombia and make comments on that, and vis-à-vis how the will of the people is expressed is one key component to it. But I think there are a number of holes that we identified in the report about impediments for people who are actually unable to do that on the ground in Colombia. What I present to the committee is that the discussion around the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, from what I've observed, has been an assumption that there is a healthy and robust democracy in Colombia, and therefore the ability for people to express their--

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Have you studied the democratic institutions and elections of Venezuela?

[Carleen Pickard]

Sorry, I just want to finish that thought. What we put forward in the report was that if that does not exist, then the committee should be considering it, and one of the main ways to do this is through the human rights impact assessment.