Thank you.
I would say the first thing we have to do is fight against poverty, and to do that we have to get economies operating. How do we get economies operating? You need to develop the production apparatus. You need small and medium-sized businesses and large corporations, as in the case of agriculture, where you can find work for farm workers and the major landowners.
Under capitalism, obviously we're talking about people who have good incomes and good jobs. The contributions a country can make to another country are very helpful and very welcome, but what we need to aspire to, above all, is to have an economy that's working.
In the case of Colombia, let me repeat, we have had 18 years of applying the whole free trade theory, and it has not proved at all that free trade works. In fact, it has destroyed an immense part of the Colombian productive apparatus. We are now importing eight million tonnes of foodstuffs. We didn't in the past. We have nine million hectares of land lying unused. Maybe they're being used for grazing, but it's unproductive land just gone to scrub. We have this unused land. Why? Because imports of agricultural and other products, foodstuffs coming from other countries that have superior technology and higher subsidies, mean that our local farmers can't develop their products and services.
I'd like to emphasize in the case of Colombia--and I'm not talking theory here--that free trade has clearly shown that it's degraded our productive apparatus. The same thing for our industrial apparatus. We're already underdeveloped in that area. I can tell you it's really been nailed by imports coming from other countries, and Canada is a huge economic power. The U.S. is bigger, but Canada is big, and I can tell you it's basically impossible for us to compete on fair terms.
Let's be frank, one thing that has to do with the very basis of free trade is international competition. What do we get out of “free trade”? We get low salaries. Are we seeing labour standards increase in Colombia? How do we do that? If we were to increase our labour standards, Colombia would no longer be competitive. If we had higher salaries we couldn't compete with foreign products. If salaries were to go up it would be very difficult to export our product. If Colombian salaries were higher we would probably no longer be able to have foreign investors coming in, because they wouldn't be interested. We would be competing with countries where labour standards are even lower.
The way things are organized right now, how does a country like Colombia progress? We're condemned to compete with low salaries and poverty. The whole theory that free trade agreements are going to improve labour standards is running completely counter to reality. We've had four labour reform pieces of legislation in 18 years, since the beginning of free trade in Colombia, and I can tell you none of them really improved the situation.