Thank you for those questions.
The onslaught against the trade union movement in Colombia has resulted in a serious decline, not only in the numbers of unionized workers in Colombia but also in the number of certified unions. According to the Canadian Labour Congress, who I think will appear before you in the first week of May, the number of workers covered by collective agreements in Colombia is now the lowest in the Americas; this from a heyday. So there has been a systematic destructuring of the basis for union members in Colombia.
I have just another quick comment about your characterization of the side agreement for labour and how we agree that there would be a kind of repugnant outcome in which actually the Colombian government would move money from one pocket to the other as it took account of the number of trade unionists that were killed. I think it actually speaks to a larger question, which is the weakness of the approach itself. This approach says that in a situation where the human rights crisis against workers is so high, you could have a paragraph, you could have a side deal that could work out a way to address it. The essential problem of the attacks on trade unionists and the impunity for those attacks is one of political will in the Colombian state. And you can't create will in the Colombian state to address workers' rights through a side agreement that Canada would organize, no matter how well the paragraph is crafted.
In the end, what are they left with? Well, perhaps you could pay yourself. I mean, I think it reflects a kind of weakness, that in a situation of crisis that great, the notion of working out some text to address it is itself a non-starter.
Lastly, on the concern the committee has about how to assess the reality on the ground, we're hearing different messages. We've tried to make this case before, but just to perhaps retable the notion, it may be useful for committee members, as they travel, to seek the possibility of getting out of Bogotá in order to access the groups, beyond immediate access from the capital--those that have a lot of information on the different spin. A lot of the violence, a lot of the kind of alternative reality of Colombia, is outside the capital. So if there's any way the committee is able to access groups and marginalized communities outside of Bogotá, I think it would go a long way to helping you triangulate the information you're getting.