Certainly. I'd be glad to.
There are two points I'd like to highlight. First, I would say that in addition to the problem of union violence, there's a problem with Colombian legislation, which is very bad with respect to union rights. They have imposed what is known as “associated cooperatives”, so-called, which basically have converted collective agreements and replaced them with a sort of economic relationship, and it's all set up so that our workers can't set up unions. There are some 6,000 workers in Colombian sugar cane production. All they wanted was to have their bosses recognize that they could create unions. We would like to emphasize that they don't have that right.
And this has not been corrected by the free trade agreement. I read the labour and environment side agreement between Colombia and the U.S. very carefully. It's an annex to the treaty, and there's absolutely nothing in it that enables Colombian workers to unionize and to deal with some of the labour disasters we've had to face in Colombia. We don't even have the necessary labour legislation in place.
I can tell you that the FTA with the States certainly didn't improve anything. It says all kinds of things, but it certainly didn't resolve anything to do with the right to organize. In my view, these are things we have to point out; they are facts.
With respect to whether there is progress or not, what can I say? With respect to violence against trade union activists, there were 49 assassinations last year, 25 more than the year before, and there were 16 leaders.... What would happen if last year you had 16 union leaders murdered here in Canada? How would you be feeling about that? I repeat, we have had increased assassinations, and the labour standards are not helpful. Thus, 18 years of free trade policy have shown in Colombia that we're seeing the destruction of the productive apparatus. Poverty is up, employment is down, and the jobs that are created are low-paying jobs.