Bill C-2 (Historical)

Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Colombia, 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

This enactment implements the Free Trade Agreement and the related agreements on the environment and labour cooperation entered into between Canada and the Republic of Colombia and signed at Lima, Peru on November 21, 2008.
The general provisions of the enactment specify that no recourse may be taken on the basis of the provisions of Part 1 of the enactment or any order made under that Part, or the provisions of the Free Trade Agreement or the related agreements themselves, without the consent of the Attorney General of Canada.
Part 1 of the enactment approves the Free Trade Agreement and the related agreements and provides for the payment by Canada of its share of the expenditures associated with the operation of the institutional aspects of the Free Trade Agreement and the power of the Governor in Council to make orders for carrying out the provisions of the enactment.
Part 2 of the enactment amends existing laws in order to bring them into conformity with Canada’s obligations under the Free Trade Agreement and the related agreement on labour cooperation.

CANADA-COLOMBIA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT IMPLEMENTATION ACT

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this agreement does contain a provision to protect the investments of Canadian companies planning to exploit Colombia's natural resources. Considering current trade volumes between Canada and Colombia, it seems to me that there are other priorities that the Conservative government—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am really thrilled to be speaking again. I am sure that this time around the hon. Conservative member will be recognized for a question when that time comes. I am sure he will be very eager and feverishly working on a question or two over the next 20 minutes. Nevertheless, he will have to wait for 20 minutes before he gets to ask his question.

We have gone through a very, very lengthy process dealing with this particular piece of legislation. I certainly want to compliment our critic for his enormous efforts over the last year or so on this issue. The member for Burnaby—New Westminster has been tireless in his efforts to stop this free trade agreement. It took the combined coalition of the Conservative government and the Liberal opposition to crush his efforts, and they did it in a very unsavoury way at the end of the day. The fact of the matter is, they denied key witnesses who should have been able to present on the bill.

Many key witnesses from Colombia, as well as Canadian and Colombian trade unions, were denied the right to appear at the committee, including the CLC, which represents 3.5 million workers. The National Union of Public and General Employees, NUPGE, one of Canada's largest unions with over 340,000 members, was refused. Several other organizations were cut out of the process by this unholy alliance between the government and its Liberal servants in this case.

I only have to look back to two years ago historically to see that there was a point at which the Liberal Party was on side, more or less, in terms of opposition to the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. Under the previous leadership and the previous critic, the Liberals were in agreement to have an independent human rights study, which is what has been demanded and still is being demanded as something that is absolutely necessary in this process.

As soon as the Liberal Party changed leaders and the leader changed the critic, the position of the Liberal Party on the Colombia free trade deal turned right in line with that of the Conservatives. The Conservatives received a bit of a gift, because they knew that the deal was dead. They knew this deal was as dead as the Colombia-United States deal.

Let us deal with that for a moment. The George Bush administration signed the agreement with Colombia and the United States in 2006, four years ago, and the U.S. Congress to this day has still not ratified that deal. The member for Kings—Hants and I were in Washington on February 19 and 20 meeting with up to 40 individual members of Congress and the U.S. Senate.

While we did not include this item on our agenda, we let them bring it up. There were at least three Republicans, not Democrats, but Republican members of Congress who said, “We love Uribe. We love the Colombian-U.S. free trade deal, but it is dead. It will never make it through the Congress of the United States. It is very sad, but it will never happen”. Why does the Conservative member opposite cling to this hope that passing it here in Canada will somehow revive it in the United States? Maybe that is the government's intention, to basically show, in the Conservatives' own minds, leadership and pass the Canada-Colombia free trade deal and ratify it so that it will be an example. Perhaps that is the strategy here. The Conservatives could go to the United States Congress and say that Canada passed it and the U.S. should follow suit.

We have argued all along that this is absolutely the wrong way to deal with free trade, particularly with a country like Colombia. As I indicated before, this deal was dead in the House in terms of ratification until single-handedly the member for Kings—Hants resurrected the whole process through some late night partying with the Colombian leadership. I think he claimed he was dancing until the sun rose. He did get a signature on an amendment which he felt would make the agreement fly.

The Conservatives were only too willing to go along with this because they had nothing to lose. They were going nowhere until the member for Kings--Hants saved them. He has brought in an amendment which essentially says that the Colombian government will make up its own human rights annual reports. Is that not sweet? That is the standard to which the Liberals are prepared to hold the Colombian government. Essentially it would put full trust and faith in the Colombian government to police itself.

It is going to be business as usual in Colombia. There is no real incentive now for the Colombian government to clean up its act in terms of human rights. Before we ratify this free trade deal, we have the power over the Colombian government to say that unless and until it can show that it has changed its approach and cleaned up human rights abuses we will not ratify this agreement. What have the Conservatives done? They have simply laid down, given up, and rolled up the white flag. The government is going to ratify the agreement regardless of what happens in Colombia. Colombia can come up with its own annual reports and self-assess its progress on human rights.

That is a terrible way for the Liberal Party to approach agreements like this. I feel worse for the Liberals than I do for the Conservative government because they actually believe all this stuff and they got what they wanted.

It has been pointed out that the NDP has given more speeches than there are members in the NDP caucus. The government said that 40 NDP members have spoken but there are only 36 members in our caucus. I have no idea how the government does its math. Suffice it to say that we have fought this agreement for as long as we could.

People must wonder why this agreement is such a high priority for the government. In 2008, two-way merchandise trade between Canada and Colombia totalled more than $1.3 billion. We have always said that there is trade with Colombia and there always will be trade with Colombia, but there is just no reason to implement a free trade agreement.

Canadian merchandise exports to Colombia totalled $703.8 million in 2008. Major exports include agriculture goods such as wheat, barley and lentils, as well as industrial products, paper products and heavy machinery.

Canadian merchandise imports from Colombia totalled $643 million in 2008. Major imports consisted of coffee, bananas, coal, sugar and flowers.

Bill C-2 has attracted considerable attention from the media and various civil society groups, many of which were opposed to Canada's implementing a free trade agreement with Colombia because of its human rights record and because of the fear of the impact of free trade on investments and the environment.

We have experience. We have dealt with NAFTA for a number of years now and in the case of agriculture, for example tomato growers, in certain parts of Mexico, we have found that indigenous farmers have been put under a lot of pressure and put out of business because of the free trade agreement. If that could happen under NAFTA, it can be suggested that the same could happen under this type of free trade agreement.

I will deal with this later if I have enough time, as it is hard to fit in all of the points, but the fact is that there are indigenous farmers all over South America and certainly in Colombia who have sustained themselves for many years with their small farms. Free trade will flood that market with imported foreign food and will put those farmers out of business. That is what happened in Mexico and that is not good for the long-term sustainability of the local population.

We seem to think that somehow trucking produce around the world and spending a huge amount of money on fossil fuels, gasoline and trucks to get the produce there is the way to go. The reality is that we should probably be pulling back and trying to produce as much of our product in the local market. We should be encouraging the Colombian farmers to improve their farming methods but also certainly to produce the products there so they become more sustainable, rather than simply specializing in nothing but one product to export to Canada, and then of course have other products sent from Canada to Colombia, as opposed to developing independent self-sustainable enterprises.

[Merv Tweed, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Why do you hate Canadian farmers, Jim?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

My good friend from Brandon—Souris is getting excited about something I have said.

In terms of the young people, I am very impressed with a lot of the young people's approach to sustainability. I do see them on an individual basis embracing vegetarianism, embracing healthy lifestyles, embracing fair trade products, for example, fair trade coffee. They are prepared to pay a little more for the product as long as the product is being obtained through proper channels and not being produced by slave labour at really low prices. That is where we should be going in terms of free trade agreements.

The Conservatives love to argue with us and say that we would never support a free trade agreement. The fact of the matter is that we would. If attention is being paid to sustainability, the environment and labour rights, if an agreement is promulgated that includes all of those items, then not only the NDP but progressive parties will in fact support free trade agreements. It is only the Conservatives who are being hijacked by transnational big business, who sign on slavishly to big business, who continue to push these sorts of free trade agreements that we have in force right now. We see the negative effects of those agreements as we progress.

I want to deal with some of the companies that are involved in Colombia. For example, 43 companies have been accused of having ties with paramilitary groups in Colombia, with forced displacement of communities and assassination of trade unionists. Among those companies, according to the Colombian trade union movement, were Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Chiquita Brands. However, I found one of great interest, which was BP. What have we recently heard about BP? British Petroleum is involved in the gulf drilling oil wells, very unsuccessfully at this point, and trying to clean up a major spill, which is enormous in size and damage it will cause to the world environment.

Bloc speakers have mentioned in a lot of their speeches that the real reason for this free trade agreement is to protect investment. We are going to be protecting the investments of companies such as British Petroleum that not only has caused an oil spill and huge environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico, but has also accused among the 43 companies of having ties with paramilitary groups in Colombia. That is hardly an example of corporate responsibility, but those are the kinds of companies we are dealing with in this environment.

There are many reasons why Canada should ditch this free trade agreement. For example, more labour leaders were killed in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined. There have been 470 labour leaders killed since 2002 and 2,865 in the last 25 years.

In terms of Colombian labour laws, members have said that they are very good and strong. The fact is they stifle the rights of workers. The rate of unionization in Colombia is less than 5%, which is the lowest of any country in the western hemisphere. Few of the crimes against workers and other civilians have ever been investigated by the government. In fact, thousands of demobilized paramilitaries have formed new groups.

This is a really important point. The member for Kings—Hants points out that there are on no more paramilitary groups because they have all been demobilized. I do not know what planet he has been on or where he lives. He assumes that just because he is being told by Colombians that they have demobilized the paramilitary groups, all of a sudden these groups have disappeared. Why would he want to believe something like that?

The fact is the paramilitaries did not disappear. They have now formed new, even more deadly groups than they were before. Sixty-two criminal networks control economic activities and political institutions in many jurisdictions. In fact, 27 high-ranking army officers were accused in 2008 of kidnapping and executing civilians and dressing them up as FARC guerrillas. That was the false positive program about which many members have spoken.

Colombian unions have said no to the NAFTA model because it will create more poverty and unemployment. Signing a deal with Colombia will simply legitimize state terrorism and undermine the struggle for democracy in the country.

In 2008 the Standing Committee on International Trade pushed for an impartial human rights assessment before any agreement was signed. This was crucial because this was when the former Liberal critic for international trade was onside with the Bloc and the NDP in opposing the deal. Had we proceeded with that and had the Liberals not changed leaders and critics, we would be having an impartial human rights assessment carried out. That is what we really wanted. That is what we should have had. That is what Canadians deserve in this. However, the Liberal leader single-handedly changed the critic and the critic changed the position to mirror exactly what the Conservative government wanted him to do. I know he was a former Conservative in the past and—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Elmwood—Transcona could have used another 20 or 30 minutes to put his case fully. Just like all the rest of us in the New Democratic Party, he feels very strongly about this issue. The fact that the debate is coming to an end today is profoundly disappointing to all of us, especially since the end is coming as a result of a time allocation motion. We are not even allowed to fully debate this issue in the House. However, I will ask the member one brief question.

I was surprised that in my home town of Hamilton, some of the biggest proponents of putting an end to this Canada-Colombia free trade agreement were people affiliated with the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace. They saw a critical nexus between this issue and their advocacy for corporate social responsibility, particularly in the global south.

I want to commend some people for their work on that issue. Father Ted Slaman, in particular, was a prime mover of the petition campaign and card campaign that was launched in our community. People like Rita Dugas and Kathy Somers were instrumental as were students at Catholic high schools right across my riding. In particular, I single out St. Jean de Brébeuf high school. Students there care passionately. They believe this is an issue of fundamental human rights. It is an issue of corporate social responsibility.

Could the member address those concerns?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent question. Specifically, I will deal the question of time allocation. The Conservative government, when it was in opposition for many years, decried the Liberal government's use of closure. I believe the Liberal government were quite excessive in its use of closure. I think someone said that it used closure perhaps 150 times. The Conservatives were suitably outraged about that. Those were in the old days when they were Reformers and they believed in free votes and in transparency and democracy, all of the things that they have dropped and forgotten about since they have become government.

However, the Conservatives have gone back on their previous word that they would not bring closure into the House. What are they doing? They are doing it now on a routine basis. My prediction is that we will see more and not less of the current government's—

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Complete disdain for Parliament.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes, it is a fundamental disdain for Parliament.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade]

Mr. Speaker, I have been in the House going on to my 14th year, so I would think nothing would surprise me. However, every once in a while I am.

The member opposite was stating what it would take for the NDP to support our free trade agreement. He said that it would take an agreement on the environment, on labour and on human rights. All three are side agreements to the Colombia-Canada free trade agreement, but the NDP does not support that.

The reality is his party has never supported a free trade agreement. It does nothing but criticize trade agreements, which supply jobs for Canadians, and has no option set aside for what it would do.

The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster, at committee, stated:

We had another massacre a few weeks ago. Twelve representatives of the Awa first nation were brutally killed....I understand that you're not here to testify on human rights issues, but if you would care to comment on how the Canadian government should act when an arm of the Colombian government brutally massacres 12 of its citizens...

The hon. member very clearly implicated the Colombian government in this massacre. When we found out the truth about it, it was the FARC, which is their socialist colleagues and their insurrection in the jungle in Colombia, that brutally murdered two families, twelve individuals in total, of Awa indigenous peoples in Colombia.

What does the hon. member think of someone misleading committee like that and refusing to apologize for doing it?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member asked about the kind of a free trade deal New Democrats would support. I did explain that in my speech. We support fair trade policies to protect the environment by encouraging the use of domestically and locally produced goods, which involve less freight, less fuel, less carbon, and by promoting environmentally conscious methods for producers that ship to Canada. By contrast, free trade policies, even those created with the environment in mind, do little to impede multinational corporations from polluting with abandon. The environmental side effect of NAFTA, for example, has proven largely unenforceable, particularly when compared with other protections for industry and investors.

A system of fair trade can encourage the growth of Canadian jobs, both in quality and quantity. In fact, fair competition rules and tougher labour standards will put Canadian industries on a level playing field with our trading partners and slow the international race to the bottom, which has resulted in the loss of Canadian manufacturing jobs. That is the type of free trade deals the Conservatives have signed up until now, which really end up in a race to the bottom.

Fair trade can also protect labour rights by fostering the growth of workers' co-operatives and labour unions. The environmental side accord NAFTA labour agreement has gone mostly unenforced, giving industries that are willing to violate workers' rights incentives to relocate Canadian jobs. The member knows that is a big issue not only in Canada but in the United States. Fair trade policies that favour co-ops, unions and equitable pricing will protect workers in the developing world, who might otherwise be exploited, and take away reasons for Canadian producers to exploit jobs.

In addition, fair trade rules will also protect societies and human rights around the globe. Although some predicted a human rights benefit from unrestricted free trade, this is yet to be seen. Regardless of what the member for Kings—Hants would like to pretend that somehow this will improve human rights—

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Nickel Belt.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am baffled that the so-called law and order government wants free trade with Colombia. There is a big difference between fair trade and free trade. We are certainly not against fair trade. However, with Colombia, it is a national pastime, killing trade unionists, raping women and children and kidnapping people.

The interesting thing is the product that we import the most from Colombia is beef. We are a beef producing country.

First, why would we want to deal with a government that believes in killing and raping women and children? Second, why would we want to import its beef when we have lots of beef in Canada? That certainly would help the beef industry in Canada.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is clearly the Americans, who signed the agreement four years ago in 2006, have no appetite to ratify the free trade agreement with Colombia. They have refused to do it. Now under the new presidency of Barack Obama, the current Congress is refusing to ratify the agreement. It will not ratify the agreement, regardless of what the Conservative member thinks will happen.

What is happening is he and his friend from Kings—Hants are now going to take this ratified agreement and they are going to be on the phone to the United States, trying to stir up their Republican friends in the Congress. They are going to try to give them encouragement and get them to ratify the agreement in the United States. However, the member he is wrong, wrong, wrong. They will not have the votes to do it.