International Trade Committee on June 2nd, 2008

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Mr. Keddy.

I think we're going to have to wrap this up; we're past the bottom of the hour.

Thank you for that. There may be additional questions coming because of the shortness of time today, so if you wouldn't mind, I would ask you to respond to our members individually if you can.

Thank you for coming today. We appreciate your being here.

We're going to have to take a break now because we're moving to a teleconference. That means the witnesses will have to move opposite while the television screen is moved to where they're sitting. I'm going to take about a three-minute break while we do that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I'm going to welcome the group back. We're going to take a minute or two with logistics here.

First, I'd like to welcome those who are joining us via video conference this time around.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Chair, I think there's been a switch. We're getting Spanish on channel 1.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Okay.

We're going to presume that we're going to continue with these little translation devices, for those who would like to have them.

I don't know whether our guests on video conferencing are wired for Spanish as well as English and French, but I hope they are. We'll get to that in a moment.

For the time being we're going to presume that we're going to continue with English on channel 1, French on channel 2, and Spanish on channel 3.

Can you hear me on the screen there? I'm not sure where you're from. Are you in Boston?

[Maria McFarland, Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch]

Yes. I'm in Boston.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you. We have a connection.

You are senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

We also have Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Can you hear me?

[Jeffrey J. Schott, Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics]

Yes, I can.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Great. Thank you.

We have a slight delay, I sense, but that's okay.

Where are you speaking from?

[Jeffrey J. Schott]

I'm at the Peterson Institute, in our conference room.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I'm sorry, I don't know where the Peterson Institute is. That was my question.

[Jeffrey J. Schott]

The Peterson Institute was previously known as the Institute for International Economics. We added the name of our chairman, Peter Peterson, in honour of his 25 years of service. We've become known as the Peterson Institute for International Economics, or IIE, which is probably better known throughout Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Can I ask you where the institute is?

[Jeffrey J. Schott]

It's in Washington, D.C., right next door to the former Canadian embassy that used to be on Massachusetts Avenue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Right. Now I know exactly where you are. Thank you.

Mr. Bains is anxious to get started, so we will.

We also have with us today Luis Hernán Correa Miranda, vice-president of the Unified Workers Confederation in Colombia. Mr. Correa was visiting Toronto, Canada, with a Canadian Labour Congress meeting, I believe. We're fortunate to have him come up to Ottawa to join us today.

We're going to proceed with brief opening remarks. We're going to have to keep them brief because our meeting is a little condensed today. I will ask Mr. Correa to begin with a brief opening statement. We will hear all three statements from our witnesses, and then we'll proceed to questioning in the usual manner.

Now we will ask Louis Hernán Correa Miranda, vice-president of the Unified Workers Confederation of Colombia, to please begin.

[Luis Hernán Correa Miranda, Vice-President, Unified Workers Confederation]

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to address a committee of Parliament. I'm deeply honoured to be here with you.

I'm the vice-president of the Unified Workers Confederation. I was the founder of the mining trade union in Colombia in the seventies. I'm also a member of the CUT, the Central Union of Colombia. I have 20 years of experience in the trade union business. I was the president of the banana trade union. Since I was 15 years old, I've been a member of this union.

Because of this political career, because I have been working as a trade unionist, I have lost five members of my family. I have suffered a lot of losses in my family, as you can see.

I want to try to answer some of the questions that are being posed at the international level. First, why are union members being killed in Colombia? Union leaders are being killed because there is a culture that has developed between the government and the employers. The unions are considered responsible for all the companies that are being lost in Colombia. To most employers and the government, unionists and union members are very expensive. They are the reason the companies are going bankrupt, and that's why they have to be killed and gotten rid of.

Union members are being killed in companies where there are no trade unions. They are being killed because they are asking for the collective agreement to be respected, for negotiating a collective agreement, for going on strike, or for starting or launching a negotiation. They're also being killed because they are being identified by employers and the government as people who are considered guerillas, who are supporting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC. In a single word, those who are not with the government are against the government. Those who are not with the government are enemies of the government. Those who are not with the government are supporting terrorism. Unfortunately, that's the way union members are considered in Colombia.

The Uribe administration hates trade unions. When Uribe was a senator in the congress, he promoted a bill that threatened security for the workers. That's one of the reasons. Another situation we are going through in Colombia is that the union member is seen as related to FARC, to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and is considered a terrorist.

I should tell you that our position is not in support of FARC. We do not agree with FARC. We do not agree with the kidnappings and the terrorist attacks being carried out by FARC in the country. We believe the guerrilla movement has become a real problem--a threat, an obstacle, and a barrier to the development of social struggle in the country--because those who do not share the views of the government are linked to the FARC.

To us, it is necessary to develop a political negotiation. As long as we are being connected...we will not be able to fight a social struggle. We deal with social issues, with the political cause of workers, and the popular cause of the country and the workers.

I wanted to emphasize this because we currently face a very serious issue; the union movement is being killed in Colombia. At the same time, the government says that the number of our ILO people killed has been reduced. That is true to a certain extent, but we also need to say that trade unionism has disappeared. The right to collective negotiation and collective agreement has vanished. Last year, only 3% of the workers were members of the unions and had the right to collective agreements and negotiation.

Everything is being outsourced, and they are creating what they call the “work cooperatives”. ILO calls them pseudo-cooperatives because these cooperatives end up in the hands of two or three individuals. That is the situation we're currently going through in Colombia in terms of collective agreements.

The collective agreement--as a contract between the workers and the companies--has vanished. More than 66% of the workers are a part of the informal economy. They're being exploited, because through outsourcing, workers have to work without social security, with no right to employment, and they are forced to work under severe conditions of exploitation. More often than not, they are being paid under the minimum wage.

So the situation in Colombia is very dire for workers. We are convinced that with the free trade agreement conditions will not improve, and they will not improve because with FTAs...in particular, this free trade agreement that was negotiated with the United States is a free trade agreement that was not the result of a consultation with the Colombian people; the Colombian people were not asked whether or not they agreed with the agreement. The only ones who will benefit from that free trade agreement will be the multinational companies, in particular the U.S. companies.

I should also point out that companies like Chiquita have provided funds to the paramilitaries and the guerrillas, and they have contributed to violence in the country. Drummond, a coal company on the northern coast of the country, has done the same thing. They are going to be strengthened; they will be fortified, and the small to medium-sized enterprises will go out the window because they will not be able to compete with multinational corporations. These small and medium-sized companies are the ones that create the highest number of jobs in Colombia. The free trade agreement is no doubt very negative to the Colombian people and the Colombian workers in particular.

I would also like to say that there is some kind of a partnership between the Uribe administration and the paramilitary groups. These paramilitary groups are responsible for 24 deaths. There's a change here now: trade leaders are being murdered; they're being stabbed to death with machetes and knives, because a person who's murdered without firearms looks like they were killed by regular criminals--or because of some kind of personal vendetta--without an apparent political cause.

The CTC, the CUT, and several NGOs in the country were threatened by illegal groups. They are called the Black Eagles. These are groups of paramilitaries who don't want anything to do with trade unions or trade unionism. These groups are usually linked to companies.

I also want to say that I've been the target of seven murder attempts in Colombia. That happened to me in San Alberto, in the department of del Cesar. We had a negotiation there, and the Black Eagles killed the president of the board of directors' brother, Juan de Jesús Gómez, who was the president or the chair of the union, because he was negotiating a collective agreement. I saved my life because God didn't want me by his side that day.

These are concrete facts, evidence that shows that these groups are fighting the trade union movement.

The employers are benefiting because the trade union movement is disappearing. There is no doubt that the Colombian economy has been growing at a rate of over 6% a year, but poverty and misery among the people and the workers in Colombia is widening. The employers are getting all the fringe benefits as a result of a labour amendment fostered by the government. They have kept over six billion pesos. They cancel guarantees, they cancel salaries, they cancel a lot of claims by the workers for the employers to generate jobs--but that remains to be seen. There are no jobs and they are keeping the money. So this is the result.

There is no equity. There are no conditions that we could call favourable to workers and the people in Colombia. So this government is clearly supporting the employers. I say also that many of these paramilitary leaders that were extradited to the United States were extradited so they will not speak up in Colombia. Because they are interested in re-election, they take the scandal out of Colombia. They don't want them to speak in Colombia.

Over 50 members of the Colombian congress who are supporters of Uribe are being investigated by the supreme court in Colombia. It is obvious that they are close to the president. The members of Parliament who are being investigated are members of the party or supporters of Uribe.

There's no grey zone here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I'm sorry, but we're going to have to cut you off. We're two and half minutes over already, and we have two other witnesses to hear.

Thank you for your time.

Sorry if I wasn't clear at the beginning. We have to try to keep these opening remarks to 10 minutes, because we have a number of members who wish to ask questions.

I'll proceed now to Washington, and we will hear from Jeffrey Schott, who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Mr. Schott.

[Jeffrey J. Schott]

Good afternoon.

I greatly appreciate the opportunity to appear again before the standing committee, as I have in the past on NAFTA. I commend the decision to conduct this part of the hearing via video conference. While I would prefer to be in Ottawa at this time of the year, as an economist interested and concerned about the environment, I take satisfaction in the fact that the carbon footprint from my participation is much smaller as a result of not taking an airplane.

My short statement today will summarize U.S.-Colombia trade issues and negotiations. In many ways, they are issues that parallel talks that are going on between Canada and Colombia. They build on a book I wrote at the institute on the U.S.-Colombia negotiations, which was published two years ago. At the committee's request I will give particular attention to the environmental provisions.

Like all their trade initiatives, U.S. trade officials had both economic and foreign policy goals in mind when they launched free trade negotiations with Colombia four years ago. Most important, however, they had and still have a strong vested interest in Colombia's economic development. That development is critical to its success in the war against drugs and ending the prolonged armed insurrection in the country. These foreign policy objectives are a key reason why Colombia rose to the top of the FTA queue in the United States.

In a nutshell, the facts ought to make permanent the U.S. trade preferences that accord duty-free status to most imports from Colombia. As a result, that would provide incentives for companies to invest and create employment in Colombia. It was also meant to spur economic reforms in Colombia--some of which had already been introduced--that would create new opportunities for production and employment, particularly in rural areas where the drug trade and armed insurrection comingled. Of course, it was also meant to complement and support Plan Columbia, which the United States has worked on with the Colombian government for the past eight years.

Talks were not completed until late February 2006, but there was haggling over agricultural provisions and the pact wasn't signed until November 2006. It has not yet been acted on by the U.S. Congress.

The terms of the agreement were revised in June last year to incorporate new provisions on labour and the environment required by a bipartisan agreement between the Democratic leadership of the Congress and the Bush administration. In February this year, Congress agreed to extend Colombia's trade preferences until the end of the year. On April 7 this year, the Bush administration tabled implementing legislation under our so-called fast-track procedures. Soon after, however, the House voted to amend their rules that set time constraints on the debate over the Colombia legislation, which is now in legislative limbo, with long odds that a vote will be taken this year. So that's where things stand on the U.S. agreement.

Let me turn briefly to the environmental provisions of the trade pacts.

As a former U.S. trade negotiator, I know very well that trade negotiators learn by doing. Each iteration of trade agreements builds on, and hopefully improves, the substantive content and legal structure of rights and obligations. This proposition applies across the range of issues covered by trade pacts but is particularly true in the areas of interest in today's hearing on labour and the environment.

Just think back 15 years ago. NAFTA was state-of-the-art, with side accords on labour and the environment, despite some important shortcomings. It needed updating, and subsequently has been improved. Recent free trade agreements have incorporated more extensive obligations in the core treaty text and supplemented the trade provisions with commitments to develop programs that attack environmental problems in the partner country. These new provisions have had a modest but beneficial impact, primarily by highlighting areas or issues that require urgent action.

In this area, the recent agreements with Peru and Colombia contain the most refined set of obligations, including those mandated by the democratic leadership of the Congress in their deal with the Bush administration last May.

Among the key provisions in the environmental chapter are that the FTA requires signatories to implement and enforce seven multilateral environmental agreements, including the CITES and the Montreal Protocol, and to effectively enforce national laws and regulations. All these obligations are subject to these pacts' general dispute settlement procedures, unlike NAFTA. Also innovative are new obligations regarding public participation in the rule-making and regulatory process, provisions that were developed in conjunction with NGOs and private sector advisors in both countries.

Because of its critical importance in both Peru and Colombia, both agreements promote the protection of biodiversity. The Peru-U.S. pact also includes an annex on forest sector governments to address the problem of illegal logging. In addition to the FTA, both countries also signed an environmental cooperation agreement for pursuing environmental capacity-building in Colombia.

Neither of these pacts, however, contains a dedicated source of funding for environmental programs. If the Government of Canada follows a similar path, I would strongly encourage you to ensure that there is adequate funding so that cooperative programs can get beyond the planning stage and into actual implementation, where they can do good. This is true whether one is talking about environmental programs or whether you are supporting labour programs under the supplementary labour accord, such as the one signed between Canada and Peru just last week.

Let me conclude with a brief comment about how an FTA can address environmental challenges going forward, particularly given our common interest in crafting a post-Kyoto global climate change regime.

Free trade agreements create special relationships between partner countries that can facilitate work on a broad range of bilateral economic issues and cooperative approaches to regional and multilateral initiatives. For example, such goodwill helped forge coalitions in support of launching global trade negotiations in the Doha Round in late 2001. Free trade agreements have also served as negotiating laboratories for new issues that have not been vetted in previous multilateral forums. You will recall that the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement established important precedents for the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

In a similar fashion, regional cooperation can serve as a model for global solutions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. We should use the partnership on environmental matters embodied in our FTAs to develop a broader consensus on how to meld the interests of developed and developing countries to address the problems of global warming.

Hopefully these efforts would yield useful precedents that then could be applied when negotiations shift to Copenhagen in 2009, where negotiations will hopefully design a new global climate change regime. This is a way we can work with our partners, both bilaterally and regionally, to achieve goals and objectives that are important to both of our countries. But we need to have the support of both developed and developing countries around the world to have a successful result. I encourage the Government of Canada to do that to hopefully provide some useful precedents that can be adopted down here in Washington.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Mr. Schott. And thank you for watching our time here.

We're going to go now to Maria McFarland, who is a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

Go ahead, Ms. McFarland.

[Maria McFarland]

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman and honourable committee members, I am honoured to appear before you today. Thank you for your invitation to address the problem of violence against trade unionists in Colombia and the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement.

I would like to request that my written remarks, which I have already submitted, be incorporated into the record of this hearing.

I am the senior Americas researcher who covers Colombia for Human Rights Watch, the largest international human rights organization based in the United States. Human Rights Watch is an independent non-governmental organization supported by contributions from private individuals and foundations worldwide. We accept no government funds, directly or indirectly. We have offices in numerous cities around the world, including an office in Toronto, which has been very active in raising awareness about human rights issues in Canada.

Human Rights Watch has monitored Colombia's human rights situation for nearly two decades. We have covered abuses by government forces as well as by the left-wing FARC and the ELN guerillas who engage in systematic and horrific violations of the laws of war, including kidnappings and the use of child soldiers.

We have also reported on abuses by drug-running paramilitaries who have engaged in widespread atrocities, massacres, killings, and extortion, often with a toleration and sometimes with the collaboration of military units.

Human Rights Watch does not have a position on free trade agreements per se, with one exception. We believe that any free trade agreement should be premised on respect for fundamental human rights, including especially the rights of the workers who are producing the goods that are to be traded.

I think if you agree with this basic point, then you must also agree that at this time Canada should not enter a free trade agreement with Colombia.

I have heard it said a number of times, including by Prime Minister Harper, that the FTA should not be used to address all of Colombia's human rights problems. But these statements are simply setting up a straw man. It's true that Colombia does have the worst human rights and humanitarian situation in the region, with many serious problems. But the key issue that we have raised in connection with the free trade agreement is a very specific problem, and that is the extremely high rate of violence against trade unionists in Colombia and the failure of the Colombian government to hold accountable those responsible for the violence and to dismantle the paramilitary groups to which many of the killers belong.

This is an issue that's directly related to free trade. Canada should not grant permanent duty-free access to goods that are in many cases produced by workers who cannot exercise their rights without fear of being killed.

For years Colombia has led the world in trade unionist killings. More than 2,500 unionists have been murdered in Colombia from 1986 to the present. More than 400 of them have been killed during the government of current President Alvaro Uribe, according to the National Labour School, the main non-governmental organization in Colombia documenting this violence.

The number of killings has dropped from its peak in the 1990s, but it remains extremely high. Last year, 39 trade unionists were killed, and killings are increasing substantially this year, with the National Labour School reporting 24 killings and four disappearances just through the middle of April.

According to the government statistics, which are slightly different, 22 trade unionists have been killed through April of this year, representing a 50% increase in killings of teachers who are unionized and a 400% increase in the killings of trade unionists from other sectors.

A principal factor contributing to the ongoing violence against trade unionists has been the Colombian government's persistent failure to bring the killers to justice. Despite the thousands of reported killings, in only 78 cases has anyone been convicted. Nearly one-third of those convicted have served no prison time, and the main reason there are even this many convictions is the fact that the U.S. Congress has delayed ratification of the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement. In fact, throughout most of the Uribe administration, the rate of convictions for trade unionist killings has been consistently low, all the way through 2006. There were nine convictions in 2003, eleven in 2004, nine again in 2005, and eleven again in 2006.

It was only in 2007 that the number jumped to 43. This sudden increase is due directly to the pressure from the United States Congress in connection with the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, which led to the establishment of a specialized group of prosecutors in the Colombian attorney general's office to focus on investigating these cases. The increase in convictions is a sign that when the government wants to produce results, it can. But once the pressure is lifted, the Uribe administration will lose its main motivation for supporting the investigations.

In fact, what the Colombian government often fails to mention in discussing violence against unionists is that many of the killings are committed by right-wing paramilitary death squads that openly admit to deliberately targeting trade unionists, whom they stigmatize as collaborators of left-wing guerillas. The New York Times recently described how a unionist earlier this year was forceably “disappeared”, burned with acid, and killed after he participated in protests against paramilitary violence.

The paramilitaries have typically worked closely with important sectors of the military and intelligent systems, and they have heavily infiltrated the political system. More than 60 members of the Colombian congress, nearly all of whom are part of President Uribe's coalition, are now under criminal investigation for collaborating with paramilitaries. More than 30 of them are under arrest, including Senator Mario Uribe, President Uribe's cousin and closest political partner over the last two decades.

One case of particular importance involves Jorge Noguera, President Uribe's former national intelligence director from 2002 to 2005. Noguera is under investigation for allegedly providing paramilitaries with the names of trade unionists who were later killed. The evidence against Mr. Noguera is serious enough that the U.S. has revoked his visa.

It's important to bear in mind that nearly all these investigations are the result of an initiative by the Colombian supreme court, which a couple of years ago decided to organize itself to specifically investigate the paramilitary infiltration of congress. They are not the result of any initiative by the Uribe administration. Once the investigations had started, President Uribe did provide funding to the court, but he has simultaneously taken steps that could undermine the investigations. He has repeatedly launched personal attacks against supreme court justices, and even at one point floated a proposal to allow the politicians to avoid prison entirely. He later tabled that proposal after it became evident that it would be an obstacle to ratification of the U.S.-Colombia FTA.

An additional blow to the investigations in Colombia is the fact that President Uribe recently ordered the extradition of nearly all the top paramilitary leadership to the United States to face drug charges. The fact that these criminal bosses will finally face real justice for at least some of their crimes--the drug crimes--is a positive development. The extradition also means they will no longer be able to continue ordering crimes from prison, as they were doing in Colombia.

However, the timing of the extradition raises serious concerns for us. The decision to extradite came only after some of these commanders had actually started to cooperate, and others had announced plans to do so by beginning to talk to Colombian investigators about their links with Colombian military and government officials, including generals and politicians close to the president. Now that they are in the United States, they will have little incentive to cooperate with Colombian prosecutors and will almost certainly be advised by their lawyers to remain silent. Numerous institutions that track the military demobilizations and the investigations, including the Colombian inspector general's office, and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, have expressed concerns that the investigations will be seriously affected.

Meanwhile, paramilitary organizations continue operating and engaging in violence under new leadership. The Colombian government claims most of these organizations have demobilized and are now extinct; however, nearly all the 30,000 people who supposedly demobilized are free and have never been investigated. Dozens of new groups that are closely linked to the paramilitary, such as the Black Eagles, are operating all over the country, engaging in extortion, killings, forced displacement, and drug trafficking.

Eight foreign embassies in Bogota, the Organization of American States' mission verifying the demobilization, and scores of human rights defenders and trade unionists have reported receiving threats from these new groups in recent months. I have personally interviewed several victims of these new groups, who have seen their sons and sisters horrifically tortured and murdered. To them, the government's claim that paramilitaries are now extinct is a pretty cruel joke.

Let me emphasize again, as I'm wrapping up, that it is our view that any free trade agreement should be based on respect for fundamental human rights, particularly the rights of the workers producing the goods to be traded. Colombia does not meet that standard at this time. By delaying consideration of the free trade deal, Canada would be creating valuable leverage that could be used to finally get Colombia's government to seriously address anti-union violence and impunity in a sustained manner.

This opportunity would be squandered if Canada were to approve an FTA prematurely, at a time when the Colombian government's commitment to break the power of paramilitaries and to protect workers' rights remains ambiguous. Once a deal is approved, the Uribe government will lose its main incentive to address these serious problems.

In this context, if Canada were to enter a free trade agreement with Colombia, many Colombians and international observers would understandably believe that Canada does not mean what it says when it talks about human rights, as it would apparently be willing to overlook the plight of Colombia's workers and the influence of its murderous paramilitaries.

Canada has historically been considered one of the most important international leaders in the promotion of human rights in Colombia. I urge you to maintain that reputation by providing assistance to Colombia, to its institutions of justice, and to the promotion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, and by refusing to consider the trade deal at this time.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Ms. McFarland.

With about nine minutes to go here, we're going to have to severely limit the questions. To try to get everybody in, I'm going to say two minutes—just one quick question from each group and as brief an answer as possible. That's all we can do.

Mr. Bains.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I appreciate very much the comments you made.

I have some specific questions with respect to the killings. We received various data when we were there with regard to killings, from human rights organizations, civil society, and the government. I just want a clarification on the killings.

Ms. McFarland, could you speak to the issue raised by Mr. Miranda with respect to killings and those attributed to crime versus those related to their activities as trade unionists? The feedback we got was that these killings were an aggregate number and they included criminal activity as well. Do you have any data that could distinguish between those two?

The other question that I think is important is with regard to the informal economy. That's an issue that was raised. There are many people...I think you mentioned two-thirds. Is there an absolute number or any of the data to validate that, Mr. Miranda, with respect to this informal economy of people who don't get benefits, don't get wages, and they just happen to be working on the streets in these small shops? Do you have that number as well?

Those are my two questions, one regarding the aggregate killings of trade unionists, those attributed to, according to your data, crime versus their activities in union organizations, and the other regarding the informal economy and the number of people there.

[Maria McFarland]

I will address the first question, the issue of the number of killings and who they're attributed to. As I said before, in the overwhelming majority of cases there have been no convictions. The cases have never been investigated. But in the majority of cases where there have been convictions, where the perpetrator has been identified, the perpetrator is a member of a paramilitary group. This represents a trend. There is a small minority of cases attributable to guerillas, another portion to the military, and another portion to common crime.

So when we're talking about the aggregate number, the 2,500 killings since 1986, that includes killings by all actors, but a majority of killings are generally attributed to paramilitary groups that have deliberately targeted and persecuted trade unionists for their activity.

[Navdeep Bains, Liberal, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Miranda, with regard to the informal economy....

[Luis Hernán Correa Miranda]

Three million workers are part of the informal economy. That's out of eight million workers. About 2.8 million workers are protected by a collective agreement. That's the data we have.

Around three million workers are part of what we call the informal economy. They're people who have been fired from their jobs. We would need to add that we have also nearly three million displaced people from the farms, from the fields, people who have moved to the cities. So the economic situation for our people is really catastrophic. The workers who are covered by a contract are a minority. We estimate that nearly 66% of labour nowadays is part of the informal economy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Now we'll go to Monsieur Cardin.

I'm going to have to cut off the answers. We cannot go on this long with answers, I'm sorry.

Go ahead. You have two minutes, whatever you want to do with it. If you want to talk to me, go ahead.