I'd like to pay the parliamentary secretary a compliment. He speaks very smoothly, and it's not until afterwards that you think, hold on, what he just said contradicts what the government has actually done.
On the human rights issue, it's the government itself that put out the key areas they were negotiating. It's not something the journalists made up. This is what the government has been spinning. What they've been spinning is that human rights aren't on the list. What is on the list is origin of rules, telecommunications, and public purchases. So for them to say it is, it's just not part of what we're publicly rolling out, even though many Canadians have expressed concerns about it.... It just doesn't make sense.
Mr. Chair, as you know, we're still waiting on FTAA, which is supposedly something that was going to be brought promptly back to the House and to this committee. There are real contradictions between what the government has actually done and what the parliamentary secretary is telling us. I think members of the committee need to be very clear on that.
I do want to come back to the human rights issues. I could read into the record page after page after page of testimony. I assume, Mr. Chair, that every member of the committee has prepared adequately for this committee hearing. As a result, they've read the human rights reports from Human Rights Watch, from Amnesty International, from the bishops who have come to Canada to speak on this issue, and from the labour movement, which has raised real concerns. I would expect that members of this committee have read those reports. If they have read those reports, there is no doubt that there is a substantial problem in Colombia.