Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to the witnesses. I have three questions and one comment.
To Mr. Potts and Mr. Simpson, I'd like to know how much you've received in support for trade product promotion around the world over the past year. This is one of the ongoing problems we have in Canada. We invest absolutely nothing in trade product promotion, while other countries invest considerably more.
My other comment and questions are for Mr. d'Aquino. There is a lot in some of the comments you made that I think is contestable. I'd certainly love to challenge you to public debate on a lot of these issues--for example, Pinochet's Chile being a free-market reform state where there were appalling abuses of human rights; the rural meltdown in Mexico that has taken place and has accelerated this year because of many of the provisions of NAFTA; and what's happened in Canada. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is extremely proud of the economic development over the past 25 years, and the figures contradict what you say. Since 1989, real income has actually declined for two-thirds of Canadian families, and we now have the same kind of income inequality that we had in the 1930s, where 50% of all income goes to the wealthiest Canadians. Those are the facts. That's what Statistics Canada tells us about what has happened since 1989.
So I simply find that your arguments around economic development don't hold water. Essentially what we have now are jobless exports. We're shipping raw logs across the border. We're shipping oil and gas. We're not creating jobs with it. That's why real incomes are falling. That's why, instead of good manufacturing jobs, we're looking at minimum-wage service industry jobs.
Those are my comments. My questions, coming back to Canada-Colombia, are around some of the things we heard in Colombia. We heard testimony about allegations of collusion between paramilitaries--thousands of them are still on the ground--and major companies like Nestlé and Coca-Cola and Chiquita. The Colombian government is refusing to investigate those allegations, which are very serious and have resulted in the potential death of labour unions.
Do you think that companies are above the law or do you feel, like the NDP does, that when a corporate executive breaks a law it should be thoroughly investigated, and, if the allegations are true, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law?
My other question is around the labour side agreement. You mentioned high-quality labour accords, when we know from our briefing that what's actually in the agreement is essentially a fine, that if the Colombian government continues to abuse human rights, if there continue to be deaths of labour activists and ties between the paramilitaries and the government--the many allegations there--then essentially the Colombian government would have to pay a fine into a solidarity fund.
Do you feel that's an appropriate high-quality labour accord, and if so, what price would you put on the continuing slaughter of labour activists and human rights activists in Colombia?