Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The committee has changed a little since the last time I was here.
It's indeed a pleasure to be here for the second time to speak with the committee about Colombia and the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. I will also touch on the broader relationship between our two countries.
As I noted, the committee has changed a bit so perhaps it's best if I steal a minute or two from myself to talk about FOCAL. For those of you who were not here last time, FOCAL is the Fondation canadienne pour les Amériques. We use the French acronym to spell out the name, as it's much more interesting than the English.
We are the only independent policy research organization in Canada devoted to Canadian relations and engagement in the western hemisphere. This includes Latin America, as our name indicates, but it also has us in the Caribbean and the United States. We deal with the entire hemisphere from the 48th parallel down to Tierra del Fuego.
You will see us in several places throughout the hemisphere. In Port of Spain, at the Summit of the Americas, we were leading a coalition of think tanks from throughout the hemisphere to support the summit process, bringing in a new resource to help a vital and strategic Canadian interest, the summit, our one connection and the only heads-of-state meeting in the hemisphere to which we are invited.
You will also see us in such places as Mexico, where we have just launched a new initiative on the Canada-Mexico relationship, trying to strengthen and reinforce a relationship between the two countries. This is something that really hasn't been done before. There was a lack of institutes and activity in Canada working on Mexico.
I'd be happy to talk about that privately afterwards, but I note that this initiative is being led on the Mexican side by Rosario Green, whom some of you will know as the former foreign minister and current chair of the Mexican senate foreign relations committee. On the Canadian side, it's being led by Bill Graham, a former defence minister and foreign minister. This new initiative has just been launched. We were just in Mexico and the reception there was fantastic, as was the reception in Toronto.
You'll also see us in places such as Panama, where we were helping out on a conference on socially responsible mining. As Chairman Richardson mentioned, that's where I met many of you about 18 months ago as you were coming back from a visit to Colombia, where you were talking about the ongoing negotiations. At that point, there was a great deal of optimism and hope surrounding the free trade agreement with Colombia. Today, eighteen months later, it,s a pleasure to be here and it's a good a chance to revisit the discussions and also look at where we are now.
The chairman mentioned “brief remarks”. I don't know how many people who come before you actually manage to deliver brief remarks, but we'll do our best in that regard. Very quickly, there are three things we'd like to talk about with the agreement.
As with any agreement, the first question that is asked is whether the agreement is good for Canada. That's the question that I imagine will preoccupy this committee. It's also a question that will preoccupy people across Canada, in cities, towns, and ridings across the country. That's the bottom-line question: is this agreement good for Canada and will it benefit us?
A second question that we ask—and we ask this because this is Canada and not the United States—is whether the agreement will also benefit Colombia. In this case, we think it certainly will.
Finally, the third question is not normally dealt with in free trade agreements. But because of the situation in Colombia and because of the discourse that has grown around Colombia, we need to touch on the human rights situation. I've provided some new information, empirical research that's coming out of Colombia about the situation vis-à-vis human rights, and I'll talk about that briefly at the end.
I'll also leave the facts and figures of my presentation for that part of the discussion. I won't bore you with figures on trade and the $1.3 billion bilateral. I'm sure you've heard this ad nauseam, so we'll focus instead on some new information.
First, is the agreement of benefit to Canada? According to our analysis and our conversations with academics and other think tanks throughout the hemisphere, people that work on trade at multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and through attending seminars and talking with Colombians and with academics, there are two reasons why this agreement is important for Canada.
The first has to do with competitiveness and job protection. Obviously, given that the bulk of our trade is with the United States, any free trade agreements we sign and any new trade deals we're looking at are not going to have huge numbers. They are incremental changes and incremental additions, yet given the status of the Canadian economy and given where we are in our recovery, we're at the point now where every job is important. The Colombia free trade agreement gives us the opportunity to grow jobs in certain sectors in Canada and also to protect jobs.
It's important to note that in Colombia our trade is complementary. We're not displacing Colombian producers when we ship wheat. Colombians don't grow wheat. As for off-road all-terrain vehicles used in mining exploration, these aren't being made in Colombia. They're being made in Canada. The agricultural products and the minerals we pull up are complementary to things we have or produce in Canada.
Yet the competition and the displacement in Colombia will come vis-à-vis the Americans. We compete head to head with the United States in pretty much everything we sell to Colombia. Whoever signs a free trade agreement first with Colombia is going to have the competitive advantage in that market.
Again, there won't be a huge difference for us, but given the current status of our recovery, I think every job is important. And it's really difficult, I think, to go around the country and tell certain people that jobs are expendable and that we're not doing enough to protect those jobs. I would urge that it be.... Even though these are not huge amounts, again, every little bit is important.
The other reason the agreement is important and is good for Canada is the larger competitive picture. Through the 1990s and early 2000s we focused our trade agenda on signing multilateral agreements. This simply made sense. This was the best idea at the time. Other countries were doing the same thing with the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, the World Trade Organization, the Doha Round, and the subsequent rounds. We put our efforts and our beliefs in multilateralism into multilateral trade agreements.
Recently it's become painfully clear that this process is dead. The FTAA, the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, is not going any place. The WTO is stalled. As a response, we've seen countries around the world rush to sign bilateral agreements, and in this regard, it's important for competitiveness and it's important for job growth. It's also important in Canada and abroad.
The bad news is that Canada has lagged behind in this. We have, I believe, about four free trade agreements in effect and another couple have been signed. If you look at the competitive picture vis-à-vis the Americas, we are close to the bottom in terms of competitiveness vis-à-vis free trade agreements.
Even in North America we are the laggards. A major blow to North American competitiveness has been our lack of signing free trade agreements. Look at the Americans, who have 17. Look at Mexico. Mexico has agreements with 30 countries. The Mexicans are looking at us and wondering what the holdup is.
So in terms of competitiveness, signing these agreements is important. It's a reaction to the post-WTO round, to the failure of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas. It's a great signal that this government has decided to push free trade agreements, but it's an even better signal that the women and men of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade have done such a remarkable job in getting these agreements negotiated and signed.
The progress on the Panama agreement was simply outstanding. I would like to take a moment to commend DFAIT for the job it's doing. When push comes to shove, it's the men and women of DFAIT who get things done. This time, they've really come through.
Is the agreement good for Colombia? Yes. Colombia is currently facing stress on its economy due to the shutdown of trade with Venezuela, a major trading partner. The Venezuelans are starting to cut off the ability of the Colombians to ship out flowers through the airport in Caracas. KLM and several of the big European suppliers have been flying flowers out, consolidating shipments in Caracas, and that's been cut off. That's been a terrible blow to the Venezuelans and they're seriously worried about the impact on the economy.
But this also has the ability for Colombia to grow trade and jobs with Canada and they're very anxious for this. Interestingly, we also have support for the free trade agreement from some unions in Colombia. Our ambassador in Medellín has just met with a confederation of trade unions who were announcing support for the free trade agreement.
