Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on April 30th, 2013

[Rick Craig]

One of the complexities in my experience in the region.... Obviously the big issue that always comes up is mining, the mining companies, and the very deep complexity of what's going on in the mining companies.

From my experience, Canada does not have a good reputation because of that. There are a lot of reasons why that's happening. I think the companies are trying and doing their best, but there are other factors that are playing out.

Part of it is, in a case where you do get a conflict at a community level, the people don't trust the justice system. So if the justice system comes in and the police support the mine, then they've polarized the people against the mine even more.

So all of these issues are interconnected. In that country, as soon as you involve the police or the state in a business matter, all of a sudden you start to complicate the agenda.

It's a tough one.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Would you suggest that we go step by step?

[Rick Craig]

I think so.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We're actually out of time for this round. We're up to seven and a half minutes.

Mr. Schellenberger, go ahead, please.

[Gary Schellenberger, Perth—Wellington, CPC]

Thank you very much. Your testimony's been very reassuring to some of the thoughts I've had. I believe that the free trade agreement with Honduras is a step forward. It's a lot easier to work from within than it is from without. You work within. You sometimes have to put up with things that are in the country, but we as Canadians can't go in and say this is the way it has to be done. It's their country. We wouldn't accept them coming into ours.

With that, I do know that poverty is great in all three of the countries you're talking about. Unemployment is one of the big reasons that the gangs are so prevalent. If they can be helped economically to come along, rule of law will come with it, I think. I've heard from various parts of the third world countries that are in conflict, and they all seem to have that same problem, rule of law. You've expressed very much today how it has to go.

I have one question. The prosecutors are not elected. They're not on five-year terms, because that would probably be a waste. I think the way you're going about it to train those people...and we have to have patience going forward. We had the chair of the board of Gildan here, from the garment industry. Canada is quite involved in the garment industry in Honduras. It has somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 employees. That company transports its workers to work. If they were riding the regular bus, they might not make it to work.

You've explained a bit that sometimes our mining industry might get a black eye. It's doing the best it can, but it's working within the situation that is there. But it is providing jobs. We have to look at the amount they make. The garment workers make somewhere around $90 a week or something like that. That's a lot more than $1 a day or $1.25. That's the average there.

Does the free trade agreement and Canada helping create some jobs in Honduras help your particular interests going forward?

[Rick Craig]

It's interesting because our interests are to try to help them get the functionality of their system. There are benefits for Canada that come out of this, because obviously if you don't have stable security, it's hard for businesses to operate. Many businesses are spending a lot of money on security. In Guatemala, for example, there are six security guards for every police officer in the country. We're talking billions of dollars in the region. That's an issue. If you want them to get out of poverty, you need security. If you can't have businesses that function, because people are afraid or they're spending a fortune on trying to protect themselves, then you have a problem. It's a major drain on the GDP. It's a major drain on development. That's one issue.

We're looking at it from a Canadian perspective. We're interested in the fact that obviously part of this work is really to deal with the issue of the drug traffic. It's a concern to Canada. There's also the question of the gang relationship with Canada. All this stuff I see around the gangs in El Salvador, that they're in more than 20 American states as well as in Canada—there is an issue.

There are a number of things that have implications for Canada. The work we do will help business have a stable place. The only other option is to do what they are doing, to hire private armies. I just don't think people live very much with that going on. There are more guns in circulation than in the worst years of the civil war. There are more murders than in the worst years of the civil war.

Certainly all businesses and development benefit. You don't have an option. I don't know if that's answering your question, but that's how I see it.

[Gary Schellenberger]

I know Gildan says they support a local police station. They helped to do that. I don't think they're private security guards. I think it is the local police they help to support.

Again, I do understand. I've been to the Caribbean a few times. Especially in the Dominican Republic, when you talk about security guards, every resort has people sitting with guns on top of turrets to protect the people there. Then when you see the local police.... I'm sure there are far more security guards in the Dominican Republic than there are police, as well.

All I can say is I'm very pleased with the way you've explained the way your organization is working. To get a result going from 5% to 28% is a plateau, and I congratulate you on being able to make those steps. If it takes another 10 years or so to get to 50%, I think that's the way we have to work it.

Hopefully Canada can work along the same lines to help create jobs, to help get employment up, and to get security back in the country.

[Rick Craig]

I have just one comment.

For Canada this kind of work is fairly new work. Historically I don't think we did that in Latin America, and I do think the reputation of Canada in the region is quite solid. I think that's how it's viewed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

Before we go to our last questioner, I just have a question of my own, to clarify something you said a moment ago, Mr. Craig.

You said that at least in Guatemala, and I think also in Honduras, there are more murders than during the civil war. Do you mean that there are more fatalities of all types? When you say “more murders”, do you mean more people are being killed now than were being killed by murder and fatalities in the civil war? Is that your point, or do you mean that as one type of violence has gone down, another one has come up?

[Rick Craig]

Obviously there was the period in Guatemala, which was the extreme period in 1981-82, when the massacres were happening, and that's a different thing.

But during the conduct of the civil war in Guatemala, if you look at the number of people killed per year, the situation is.... This was a surprise to me, because when I started back in 1999 and 2000, I thought the peace accords had been signed and things would be great and things would move forward. But what happened was the deportation of the people from Los Angeles to El Salvador. The growth of the Mara Salvatrucha and the Mara 18 gangs exploded. The estimates are anywhere between 50,000 and 150,000 in those three countries. There is one colonia that has 500 in one gang and 500 in the next one.

The social fabric was torn as a result of the civil wars—in Guatemala it was 36 years. People have grown up in fear, and because of the poverty and the social fabric and the infiltration of the gangs coming back and all of that stuff, a phenomenon developed that I don't think anybody expected.

Then of course the most recent twist on it has been what's happened in Mexico, because in some cases it has pushed the Zetas south. The Zetas are one of the most violent, and of course they're now in Guatemala and they're now in El Salvador. Of course these kinds of forces are potentially overwhelming, so that's why.... I didn't expect that. I didn't have a clue. I don't know that anybody could have seen that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you.

I would just advise members that we're not going to see the clock as being at 2:00 until Monsieur Jacob's questions are finished, but I would remind you that we need only three people here in order to hear testimony, if anybody has to get back to the House.

With that being said,

Mr. Jacob, you have the floor.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Craig, for being here with us today.

Several articles published recently in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and, in the United Kingdom, The Guardian, have described Honduras as a death squad democracy. Because of several very high-profile professional assassinations, which led some observers to believe that the government was behind them, even the Obama administration in the United States was criticized for funding and arming the Honduran police.

I would like you to explain to my colleagues on the subcommittee how judicial reform could be implemented in such a situation.

[Rick Craig]

I think the only way that can happen is with a two-pronged approach. You have to have, in the streets, the kind of work we're doing, and you have to have another level, which is the kind of level the commission is doing, where they're actually trying to hold the government accountable at the political level. So I think you need a two-pronged approach. You need both operating within that country. I don't think either one alone will probably be able to do it. That's my view.

The truth of it is, as you know, if you do have death squads, for example, within the police, again, they may be committed to political agendas or other agendas, or sometimes it's just simply that they're trying to make money. They're basically businessmen who are kidnapping people, for example. That's happened in a lot of these countries. Sometimes it's political, and sometimes it's just that they can make a lot of money that way, so it's a side deal. Those things have to be rooted out and those have to be tackled. At the same time, as I said earlier, rooting that out without dealing with the basic functionality for the common person doesn't create a functional approach.

Ideally, and maybe I'm Pollyannaish, but I believe that everybody wants the common murders to stop. If we can build a base there, and even if it's harder to deal with that other level, we have to start to create something that functions. We have to start to build on it step by step.

When I started this work back in 2000, they created a Guatemalan transparency and anti-corruption commission. It was a high-level commission right on top of the Ministerio Público, but the system didn't work. So I said, okay, you can pick that person and then get him out, but you still won't have anything working.

I think you need to have multiple strategies. One is the anti-corruption. One is the targeting of these forces, and they're sinister forces. A lot of them, I think, from my experience, may be political. But some of them are simply just people making money, because you can make a lot of money through, for example, kidnappings. I think you need to do both.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you.

Since I have a few minutes left, I will ask you a second question.

At the international level, what are the specific risks to Canada's reputation if we continue to have dealings with such a regime, as we have done?

[Rick Craig]

I would say that there are, I guess, different kinds of risks. There's certainly a risk of our wasting money. Certainly, for those of us who are doing this work, we don't want to waste our time and our money working in places where they're not delivering. We're very adamant about this. We will say to them that if they're not prepared to commit to what we're agreeing to, we're walking away. We put a lot of pressure on them because we're very careful and very conscious that this is Canadian money, so why should we throw it away? That's a risk around the money issue.

Where it gets more delicate, I think, is when you get into some of the more sophisticated technologies like wiretap. In the case of Honduras, it's the Americans who have been getting involved in that, not Canada. You can say things can be used for more than one purpose. This was a concern that happened in Guatemala, at one point, with one attorney general, but the result of it was that people put pressure on and they were able to deal with it.

I personally believe this work is complicated. This work is not without its risks, but I do think we have far more to gain as a country by being involved. We do have a different approach than our neighbours from the south, and I think we're viewed differently that way. I think we have opportunities to do things that some others can't. To me, there's risk, and something could go sideways, there's no doubt about that. At the same time, we're close enough to them, we're working close enough, that at least we have a window on this.

That's all I can say.

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Thank you, Mr. Jacob.

Thank you to you as well, Mr. Craig, for coming and providing us with testimony today. We're grateful that you were able to enlighten us, and we found it very informative.

We are adjourned.