Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I will try to be brief.
My name is Mark Rowlinson. I'm here on behalf of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers. We're grateful for the opportunity to make these submissions on the ongoing negotiations aimed at establishing a free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia. CALL has taken a substantial interest in the situation facing workers, trade unionists, and advocates in Colombia over the last 15 or so years. We have worked with Colombian lawyers and academics to gain a better understanding of the human rights and labour rights situation in Colombia, and we are actively involved in the international campaign to bring an end to the ongoing labour and human rights abuses in Colombia.
As this committee has already heard, entering into a free trade agreement with Colombia raises important legal and ethical issues for Canada. Arguably, as you've just heard, Colombia has the worst human rights record of any country in the hemisphere. With respect to labour rights, Colombia continues to attract attention for its appalling record regarding the frequent murder of trade unionists.
Given our expertise, we are of course particularly concerned about the labour rights situation in Colombia. There are those who argue that hemispheric trade agreements that contain labour provisions or so-called labour side agreements serve to ensure that basic labour rights are respected by the countries that are bound by the agreement. However, our experience with hemispheric trade agreements has shown that the protection of labour rights in these agreements leaves much to be desired. Moreover, there continues to be a systemic failure to enforce labour rights in many parts of Central and South America, especially in Colombia.
Preferential trade agreements have not generally provided any real mechanism, in our submission, to ensure that labour rights are protected when implemented by contracting parties. Therefore, our message to this committee, in a nutshell, is that there's no basis to believe that the insertion of labour provisions into a proposed trade agreement between Canada and Colombia will have any positive effect on the labour rights climate in Colombia. As a result, in our view, Canada should not consider free trade with Colombia until there is a clear and dramatic improvement in the general human rights conditions in Colombia.
From pages 2 through 4 of our brief I give you an overview of what we describe as the current labour rights crisis in Colombia. I'm not going to go through it in detail. You have already heard from Amnesty International, from the Canadian Council of International Cooperation, and I believe from the Canadian Labour Congress on this situation.
But I want to leave you with one overarching message. I have no doubt that during your trip to Colombia you were told, and have been told repeatedly, that the situation in Colombia is improving. The situation in Colombia has improved somewhat, but I think it is important to remember a few statistics. Under the current administration, the Uribe administration, over 400 trade unionists have been assassinated. In the first four months of this year alone, 22 trade unionists were assassinated in Colombia. The reality is that the International Labour Organization continues to cite Colombia for its repeated failure to comply with ILO core labour standards and for its repeated failure to adequately protect trade unionists in Colombia. The reality is that trade union density in Colombia has been declining over the last 10 to 15 years. The last figures I have show it was under 5%, therefore making trade union density in Colombia amongst the lowest anywhere in the Americas.
So I would commend to you that at page 4 of our brief we have included an excerpt from the most recent ILO report, from the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association. It notes with great concern that members of trade unions continue to be the targets of serious acts of violence because of their union membership. It expresses the fact that while the government has made significant efforts, it nonetheless observes that the number of persons being protected has declined and considers that the protection efforts need to be strengthened by the Colombian government. It is simply not the case, with respect, that these issues have been adequately addressed by the current Colombian government. There are no significant international human rights institutions that are prepared to stand up and tell you that Colombia is meeting its international human rights obligations.
I want to talk very briefly about our experience with respect to the labour provisions in existing hemispheric trade agreements. In short, they have proven thus far to be a disappointment.
Obviously I'm speaking to you here without the benefit of a draft text of the Canada-Colombia agreement. I have reviewed the evidence given by Mr. Pierre Bouchard before this committee. It's fairly clear that Mr. Bouchard indicated that while there will be moderate improvements in existing labour provisions and trade agreements, the trade agreements that are likely to be in a Canada-Colombia agreement will be similar to those we have found in NAFTA, the Canada-Chile Free Trade Agreement, and the Canada-Costa Rica Free Trade Agreement.
Those trade provisions have a number of serious defects that I've identified at pages 5, 6, and 7 of our brief. I'll just review them with you very briefly.
First, the agreements focus on the enforcement of existing statutes rather than on raising labour standards.
Second, those agreements that do require the parties to maintain ILO core labour standards, such as the draft U.S.-Colombia agreement, only require that states not derogate from that obligation in a manner “affecting trade or investment between the parties”. This means Colombia can continue to violate ILO core labour standards provided it does so in a manner that doesn't affect trade and investment. That's a serious deficiency, in our view.
Third, the enforcement mechanisms in existing labour provisions of trade agreements are uniformly unsatisfactory. They are slow. They're cumbersome. They're not independent. They're not often transparent. They're too bureaucratic. The result—and I don't have time to go through all the stages—is that under existing trade agreements, such as NAFTA.... There have been multiple complaints filed on the labour side agreement of NAFTA and not a single one has ever reached the arbitration stage. They end in ministerial consultations and then they die; that is to say, the signatory states have shown no desire whatsoever to create enforceable labour rights under trade agreements.
Finally, the remedies that are available under the labour provisions in existing hemispheric trade agreements are also uniformly unsatisfactory. At best, they amount to fines, and if the states agree, there is the potential for the revocation of the trade agreement. Again, the remedies are largely fines. So the question this committee has to consider is, in the context of the state of Colombia, where the labour rights violations are so egregious, whether or not the kinds of remedies you see in existing trade agreements are appropriate.
To wrap up, our organization essentially has two recommendations to this committee. In our view, the Government of Canada should not enter into a trade agreement with Colombia until such time as respected international human rights institutions have determined that Colombia is in fact meeting its international labour rights and human rights obligations.
Second, given the importance of this trade agreement, both for Canada's foreign policy and for the Americas in general, the negotiation and ratification of the trade agreement must take place in a free, transparent, and democratic context, which is to say that once it is completed, the text of the trade agreement should be released to the public. The Government of Canada should engage the trade union movement, civil society organizations, and professional organizations in a full consultation process about the agreement, and then at the end of the day the agreement should be subject to ratification, if you will, by the House of Commons.
Those are very abbreviated submissions, and we look forward to your questions.
Thanks very much.