So the agreement is good for Colombia. The Colombians are anxious to have the agreement signed, for several reasons, and are looking forward to it. Trade will grow. We've seen this with other countries with whom we've signed agreements. Trade has grown with these countries after we sign the agreements. We will see the same thing in the case of Colombia.
Very briefly, I'll touch on the issue of human rights. The debate about Colombia has unfortunately been clouded by—let's not beat around the bush here—a lot of misinformation about the human rights situation and the progress that Colombia has made.
We already have trade with Colombia. That trade has not been impacted by human rights violations. What we're lacking, though, is a rules-based system to make sure that our concerns about labour and other things are in place, and this agreement will give us that. It's good for both Canada and Colombia in that regard, and it's one of the few ways in which you could possibly construe that a free trade agreement would somehow impact the human rights situation.
I would direct your attention to the short synopsis paper from Professor Dan Mejía at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota. After years of discussion, after years of he-said-she-said talk about human rights in Colombia, we finally have some hard data, data reported by both the government and the unions themselves, from the Escuela Nacional Sindical, the national school for unions, which is a group out of the Medellín that provides training to unions, does research on labour activities, provides support for union causes, and advances a labour agenda in the country. It's perhaps roughly equivalent to our Canadian Labour Congress. The analogy is not perfect, but I think this is probably as close as you're going to come.
There's also a longer paper that Professor Mejía has published. He's actually presenting this in Washington, D.C., today. It hasn't been released yet, so we're not handing that out.
What the evidence shows, looking at the numbers from the ENS, from the Escuela Nacional Sindical, is that we've seen a drop in homicides of those affiliated with unions in Colombia over the past years, a steady and persistent drop. Interestingly, the drop for the earlier part, up until about five years ago, matched the overall drop in homicides in Colombia.
Recently it has begun to fall even more rapidly, a sign that the protection being provided to vulnerable populations by the government of Colombia, including people in unions, is working. The Colombians last year spent over $10 million and have some 463 state agents providing protection to vulnerable groups. Protection is assigned based on a committee with the UN High Commission for Human Rights, the government, the police, and members of the three largest unions in Colombia.
This program has worked. The Colombians have responded to criticisms. They've recognized a serious issue and they've responded. But it's also important to note that in addition to the data provided by Professor Mejía, which is interesting because it tracks the drop in homicides, he also did panel regression studies on indicators of union activity and the homicide rate. So he factored in things for each department in the country, things like organizations, strikes, negotiations, recruitment campaigns, union activities, and the press, etc. Taking into account variables such as income, size, density of population, etc., he correlated that with homicides in the provinces, and he found no statistical correlation between union activity and homicides. He did this on a state-by-state level in the country.
So what's interesting nowadays is that we're starting to get some hard, empirical econometric analysis of the situation, and it's showing fairly conclusively, according to Professor Mejía, that there is no hard link between union activity and homicides in Colombia.
The last point I'll make, before opening it up to questions--and hopefully there will be some questions--is that recently we've also had work looking at some of the trials of people accused of homicides of people affiliated with unions. The Colombian government has about 190 trials of people involved in cases of murders of people affiliated with unions.
Looking back, in 2007, the last year for which we had hard data, there were actually 125 trials under way. In these, looking at the evidence that was presented in court, union activity was a motive in only 17 cases. In the vast majority of cases, it was ordinary crime: carjacking, mugging, and home invasion.
Currently Colombia has a homicide rate of 36 per 100,000. By comparison, the rate in the United States is five-point-something, just under six per 100,000. Colombia has one of the highest homicide rates in the hemisphere. It's not as bad as Guatemala's or Jamaica's, but it's still a very high homicide rate. Given the problems in violence generally in the country, it's not surprising that all groups would somehow be impacted by violence.
Looking at the court cases, what the numbers show is that in the vast majority of cases it is common crime, and if you look at the sheet by Professor Mejía, this would explain the tracking between union deaths and overall deaths in the population. The recent sharper drop, with union deaths falling faster than deaths in the overall population, would then be attributed to the special measures of the protection program that the Colombians have instituted.
I think the Colombians have taken the issue seriously. They've responded. They've made changes to laws in the country. They've instituted a protection program. They've taken some pretty incredible measures and I think the results speak for themselves. The drops have simply been outstanding. This rate of change this quickly is rare to see, so it's a real credit to the Colombians that they have done this.
Finally, to conclude, again, given that the agreement will be important for Canadian competitiveness, given that the agreement will benefit Colombia and that it's wanted by all sectors of Colombian society, and given that the Colombians have done so much to really improve the situation, there really is no reason to hold up the agreement.
In fact, it would be just the opposite. Holding it up will send the signal that should you invest this time and effort, should you be this responsive, should you take these issues of human rights so seriously, and should you have this sort of success, the reward will be having your free trade agreement turned down. To us, that seems slightly perverse.
Thank you.