International Trade Committee on April 27th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Mr. Julian is here. We can get started.

We had a motion that if you weren't here for the presentations, you wouldn't be allowed questions, so we thought we'd give you another ten minutes. I'm glad you've arrived.

We are going to get under way. This is the 12th meeting in the third session of the 40th Parliament of the Standing Committee on International Trade.

I am delighted that we have as witnesses today representatives from the Republic of Colombia. This is pursuant to the order of reference, an act to implement the free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia. This bill has been referred to the committee.

The committee is very pleased to have with us today, from the Republic of Colombia, the Minister of International Trade, Luis-Guillermo Plata.

Of course, we have our old friend as well, who has appeared before the committee and has been helpful to the committee in this regard, His Excellency Jaime Giron Duarte, Ambassador of the Republic of Colombia to Canada. Welcome again, Mr. Duarte.

In addition to that we have an adviser to the President of Colombia on mining and energy matters, José-Raphael Unda. From Ceniflores, Rebecca Lee is the director and representative of the Colombian Association of Flower Growers. We appreciate your attendance.

We're going to have a wide variety of discussion today, and these people from Colombia will be very helpful.

In addition to that, we have a union member. From the Union of Antioquia's Industrial Workers, we have Walter Navarro, president of SINPRO, and you're going to have to tell us, Mr. Navarro, what that means. I hope there's an English translation.

As an individual, we also have a former Canadian ambassador to Colombia, the very distinguished Gaëtan Lavertu. Thank you very much for joining us today.

It's going to be a crowded day. We're going to have a little business at the end, but I'm going to give the committee as much time as we'd like. I'd like to have some opening statements to set the trend. First I'm going to ask the trade minister from Colombia to have opening remarks. That would be followed by Mr. Navarro, because it's a different point of view, a union voice--if you could perhaps give a short opening of your experience of late with regard to unions and trade in Colombia. We'll follow that, Your Excellency, with a former ambassador, Mr. Lavertu.

I'm going to ask Luis-Guillermo Plata, Minister of International Trade, to begin.

[Luis-Guillermo Plata, Minister of International Trade, Republic of Colombia]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good afternoon, honourable congressmen.

It's a pleasure for me to be back here. The last time I was here was June of last year, when we came with President Uribe before this committee. I'm very happy to see that the FTA between Canada and Colombia is moving ahead, that you had a vote last week in the House, and that the vote was in favour of proceeding with discussion of the agreement by 183 votes in favour to 78 against.

I'm also very pleased to be here to report on all the progress Colombia has made, not only in the last year since I was here, but throughout these past eight years with the Uribe government and the leadership of President Uribe.

Let me share a bit of a personal story with you. My family was one of those Colombian families who left the country in the late eighties due to the violence and all the challenges we faced at the time. I was drafted at the age of 17 to go into the Colombian army, and I suffered through a lot of the challenges we were facing. Nonetheless, I decided to go back to Colombia in 2002 to work on the reconstruction of a country. When I say “reconstruction of a country”, it's exactly that. I think Colombia was on the verge of becoming a failed state. The situation was clearly not viable any longer.

Colombians were fleeing the country in the eighties and the nineties. We faced a tremendous economic downturn--negative 4% in 1999. The economy was growing at 1% thereafter. We had the highest violence levels in the world. We actually had the highest murder rate in the world, with 66 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. We had the highest kidnapping rate in the world, with over 4,000 kidnappings per year. Really, the country was in a situation where it could not continue the way it was going.

Nonetheless, through the leadership of President Uribe, with whom I started working in 2002, we've seen a tremendous change in Colombia.

I didn't study to be in government. I didn't study to be in politics. I was in business in the private sector. I thought maybe, if I was lucky, I would get the chance to be part of a turnaround of a company at some point in my life. But I was able to be part of a turnaround of a country, which is something quite different and that probably most people will never have a chance to experience in their lives.

We could not travel from one city to the next in Colombia. You could not take your car and drive; you would fear being kidnapped or being killed. You would not go out late at night for fear that if you did this you might lose your life. Bombs would go off in shopping malls at different times.

Even when President Uribe was sworn in on the 7th of August 2002, there was a severe attack by FARC terrorists with mortars on the presidential house, killing more than 30 people. They missed the presidential house. The bombs landed in a neighbourhood nearby and killed many people, most of them poor people or people living on the streets.

We've been able to bring that violence down as a whole. It's a main challenge of the country. We still have it, but the murder rate in Colombia has been reduced by over 55%. Today there are 32 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. That's still high, but it's lower than Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Rio, and it's even lower than Washington, D.C., or Baltimore.

We need to continue working in that direction, because the most important thing is to re-establish security and confidence in the country. We've been able to drop the kidnapping rate by 86%. From almost 4,000 kidnappings at the time, right now we still have a few--more than 100--but it certainly is a tremendous reduction.

One of the topics we'll be discussing today is that same situation of violence in the case of unions and union members. While violence as a whole is a challenge for Colombia, not only for the unions and union members, we have been able to cut violence and the murder rate by 55% in the case of the general population, and that has been reduced even further in the case of the unions. We have been able to reduce that rate by 86%, to two per 100,000.

When President Uribe started back in 2002, 196 union members were killed in Colombia that year. Last year, the number was 28. While I'm not saying 28 is okay, and I'm not justifying the murder of 28 innocent people in Colombia, what I'm saying is that we're making tremendous efforts. You don't do this overnight. You don't make these changes without a lot of commitment, a lot of effort, and it takes a long time to do this. Obviously, the right number is zero, but getting there is a process. So coming down from 196 to 28 is a big difference.

Some people may argue it's not 28, that the right number is 32 or 35. Maybe so. It doesn't really matter. It's the orders of magnitude where things are changing in Colombia, and how we realize this is a challenge, and a challenge that we need to continue addressing.

Of course, when you have a lot of violence, you also have a lot of impunity, because the caseload tends to be much larger. So the judges are swamped with new cases. And of course when you have such levels of violence like we had in Colombia, the level of work piling up is huge.

Let me just refer to the case of impunity against crimes committed against union members. Actually, from 1991 through 2001, we had two convictions, two sentences, in cases against union members. That, by all means, is completely unacceptable. We've made a tremendous effort since, and over the past seven and a half years we've been able to increase that number from two in 10 years to 236 convictions. There have been 334 people sentenced, and out of those 334, 190 are in jail today. You may be wondering why all 334 are not in jail today. Well, it's not that easy. One thing is to sentence them, but the other one is to capture them and actually put them in jail, which we're doing, but obviously it's a challenge. People run away, people hide, and of course we need to continue working in that direction. But the point here is that we've increased the rate of conviction by 100 times, so we've been able to increase this a hundredfold.

Of course, maybe the right number is not 236; maybe it should be 500, 800, or 1,000. I don't know the right number. The point is we need to make an effort. We're making that effort, and we need to continue making those efforts to make sure that anybody—anybody—in Colombia who commits a crime against a union member, or an African Colombian, or a Jewish Colombian, or a white Colombian, or whatever type of Colombian there is, will go to jail.

The problem is much bigger than just violence against union members, or impunity, in the case of union members. It's a problem of violence as a whole and impunity as a whole that we need to fight as a country. And we need to fight this as a country not because of an FTA with Canada, not because of an FTA with the U.S., not because the UN says so, not because anybody says so; we need to fight this because that's what a government is supposed to do. That's what governments get elected for: to protect people and to make sure that bad people who do bad things go to jail and pay for what they're doing.

So the Colombian government is committed to doing this. We still have a long way to go, but the reason for doing that really is that we need to do it for our own selves, for our own country, for our own people.

We have right now over 1,450 union leaders under protection. That means they have police escorts or they have some kind of protection, and so far, not one of them has been killed. The protection budget in Colombia went from $6.9 million to $11.9 million, and while those figures may sound small for Canada, because the purchasing power is much different from that of Colombia, it is a big number in Colombia. As you see, we've almost doubled the budget in protection.

I'm actually one of those protected people in Colombia, by the way, and I have to go around with a police escort. As members of cabinet, we don't take chances, and we have to make sure that people who may be in positions of risk are properly protected.

Most importantly, over the last seven years we have seen a growth in unions, numbers of unions, and union activity in Colombia, and this is very important. I was once giving an interview at a famous newspaper and I was sharing with them the fact that the murder rate against union members had decreased dramatically, and somebody said, “Well, that's very simple. That's because there's no one else left to kill.” That's an absolute lie, and I was very infuriated with that stupid joke, because the reality is that union membership in Colombia has been thriving.

Actually, back in 2002 we had 853,934 union members. Last year the number was 1,503,629. So that's an increase of 76% in union membership in Colombia.

As far as unions in Colombia, we've gone from having 1,444 unions in the country in 2002 to having 2,135 unions in Colombia last year. Those are all official figures, by the way.

Regarding workers' rights in Colombia, we're making tremendous efforts there as well. We are working very closely with the ILO, which is the ruling body on labour in the world. If you will allow me, Mr. Chairman, I would like to read an excerpt from a report about Colombia by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, from the ILO, which was just released on February 26, 2010. This is regarding freedom of association and the protection of the right to organize in Colombia. If you will allow me, it says the following:

the Committee recognizes all the measures, of a practical and legislative nature, that the Government has been adopting recently to combat violence in general and violence against the trade union movement, and it notes a decrease in the murders of trade unionists between 2008 and 2009, and in violence in general.

That is on page 104. Furthermore, it says:

The Committee further notes with satisfaction the adoption of Act No. 1309 of 2009, concerning the examination of which the Government had provided information to the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards, and which: (1) provides that the time limit for the prescription of acts punishable as murder of a member of a legally recognized trade union organization shall be 30 years;

That means that now, even for old crimes, people will go to jail.

(2) considers as an aggravating circumstance for the imposition of penalties crimes against members of a trade union organization or human rights ombudsperson; (3) provides that any person who prevents or disturbs a lawful assembly or the exercise of rights granted by labour laws or engages in reprisals on grounds of strike action, assembly or legitimate association, shall be liable to a fine of between 100 and 300 minimum monthly wages as established by law; and (4) provides that, in the event of threats or intimidation against a member of a trade union organization, the penalty shall be increased by one third.

This is from the report of the Committee of Experts from the ILO that was just released on February 26 of this year.

In the case of the Canada-Colombia trade agreement, I think we have a very strong agreement here. It's a strong agreement on trade. It's a strong agreement on the environment. It's a strong agreement on labour.

We have a labour chapter, as we do in most trade agreements we negotiate, but there's also a separate agreement on labour cooperation. This ensures that for this agreement to take place, Colombia has to maintain its standards and has to comply with ILO standards. In other words, we cannot do what people call “social dumping”, which is when countries deliberately pay people less or don't pay for social security or health or pensions in order to reduce the cost of labour and make the products of such countries more competitive in the country with which the trade agreement is negotiated.

I think we have a strong chapter here. It complements the agreement. It's a solid agreement. It's a latest-generation agreement in all senses, and it's an agreement that is good for Canada and good for Colombia. We've seen that even without the agreement, recently, there has been more activity of Canadian companies in Colombia. We've also seen a growth of Colombian trade towards Canada. We think that by enacting this trade agreement, things will only grow even faster. Certainly, new opportunities will be created both for Canadians in Colombia and for Colombians in Canada.

To the question of why we should have an FTA with Canada, this was an idea President Uribe discussed in 2002--right after he became president--with Prime Minister Chrétien. Actually, when he was president-elect, he came here and proposed that we negotiate an FTA. Prime Minister Chrétien answered that he would move in that direction.

Why are we doing this? As a country, we've realized that countries that are engaging with the world and trading with the world have been more successful than countries that have grown only a domestic market or trading partners. We've seen many examples among Asian countries.

Colombia was a country that used to send aid to Korea in the 1950s. You look at Korea these days and it's doing much better than Colombia. And we've realized that if Colombia wants to grow, it had better engage with the rest of the world. That's why we're pursuing a policy of internationalization of our economy. So it's not just the FTA with Canada. We signed an FTA with the Mercosur countries. We signed an FTA with Chile. We signed an FTA with Central America. We have been negotiating an FTA we have with Mexico to make it more comprehensive. We have negotiated an FTA with the U.S., which is pending approval in the U.S. Congress and which we hope will be approved in the near future.

Of course, there's the FTA with Canada, which could be a very important trading partner with Colombia. It's becoming an important trading partner, but could be much more so. Actually, a lot of the things we sell to Canada come via the United States, and therefore when we see the trade reported, it's underreported compared to what it really is.

We've also completed an FTA with the EFTA countries in Europe. Pretty soon it will come into force with Switzerland, which has voted its approval of the FTA with EFTA, and we just closed negotiations for an FTA with the European Union last February and will be initializing that agreement in May in Spain at the European Union-Latin America summit. n

So our idea is to really engage with the world. Of course, we want to engage with Canada. We see that trade brings about opportunities. I can make thousands of arguments why a trade agreement can help Colombia improve its security situation, improve its human rights situation, improve the livelihood of many Colombians, and let more people live a dignified life. But to be honest with you, I cannot find a single argument why the trade agreement should not be in place. In other words, what Colombia is looking for from the world is not aid, is not charity, but is opportunities, ways to engage, ways to work with the world, and of course to do that in a reciprocal way.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Mr. Minister.

Perhaps now we will just hear very briefly from Mr. Navarro.

Mr. Navarro, I know you weren't prepared to give any opening remarks. I would just like you to perhaps explain your background and who you are so that members will be familiar with that background and be able to ask questions, should they wish to. So maybe you could take three to five minutes, just for a general opening remark.

Thank you.

[Dr. Walter Navarro, President of SINPRO, Union of Antioquia's Industrial Workers]

I am Walter Navarro. I am the president of the SINPRO trade union. It is the union of public service workers, the trade union grouping of workers for homes and housing. It groups workers from the telecommunications and energy industries, but I am also representing the trade unions that support the FTA with Canada. I have a list here, the same list that I sent you at some point in time. It includes members of the plastics industry, the soft drinks trade union, and also flower growers, and shoe and textile workers. That's why in the chairman's introduction...this is not only trade unions from Antioquia. I represent the trade union of public services companies.

We support the FTA with Canada because the workers are interested in the FTA, and we belong to the industries in our country. The trade unions that are against the FTA are those that represent state workers. Their jobs would not be threatened if there were unemployment; in other words, their government jobs would not be immediately threatened.

I'm also talking about judges, teachers, people who work for government who are members of trade unions, and these are some of the most important trade unions in Colombia.

Now I don't want to speak for too long because I know there will be questions, and I will be able to respond more specifically, more clearly, to any concerns you may have.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

Now I'm going to ask for final opening comments from a witness from Canada who has spent a considerable time in Colombia. He is a former ambassador to Colombia and a former deputy of DFAIT--or External Affairs at that time--I think a deputy minister of Foreign Affairs Canada.

In any event, for our purposes here he's a distinguished former Canadian ambassador to Colombia, Gaëtan Lavertu.

[Gaëtan Lavertu, Former Canadian Ambassador to Colombia, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'm grateful to you and the members of this committee for inviting me to comment on the free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia. It's a privilege for me to be here and to address members of the committee this afternoon.

Let me salute the presence today of Luis-Guillermo Plata, the Minister of International Trade of Colombia, and the ambassador of Colombia, His Excellency Jaime Giron Duarte. It's a pleasure for me to find myself in the presence of representatives of the Government of Colombia again.

I'm here today because of my previous experience and exposure to Colombia as ambassador of Canada to that country from 1987 to 1989. I also served in two neighbouring countries, Venezuela and Ecuador, as well as more recently in Mexico. Over the years I have therefore followed the evolution of our relations with Colombia and the situation in that country with great interest.

I'm also here because I've been exposed to our relations with Colombia as deputy minister of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa from 2000-03, when negotiations for a free trade agreement were first proposed and explored.

I'd like to say how pleased I am today to see that since then, negotiations have advanced and an agreement was signed in 2008, together with agreements on labour and environmental cooperation. I'm also pleased to see that a procedure has recently been negotiated that will allow regular assessments to be prepared on the impact of the agreement on the human rights situation in our respective countries.

These agreements will add to the panoply of instruments that have been put into place between our two countries over the years and that are now making our relations a dynamic partnership.

I'd like to note here that our relations with Colombia are extensive, ranging from trade and economic relations to political dialogue, development, and governance cooperation, immigration, security and police liaison, and cultural and academic exchanges.

I remember having discussed with President Barco and his collaborators several years ago how Canada and Colombia could strengthen their economic relations in the face of a growing interest on the part of our respective business communities. These discussions have been continued by my successors with the administrations of Presidents Gaviria, Samper, Pastrana, and now Uribe. All are friends of Canada with whom I've had the privilege of working and knowing personally.

When President Uribe first visited Canada as president-elect eight years ago, he and Prime Minister Chrétien agreed on the desirability of undertaking negotiations for an FTA between the two countries. I was present at that meeting. A process of consultation was then launched across Canada to verify that there was a favourable consensus. This later led to the initiation of exploratory talks and eventually to negotiations.

These negotiations were continued under the governments of Prime Minister Martin and subsequently Prime Minister Harper, when Canada concluded agreements with Colombia, Peru, and Panama, following agreements with Chile and Costa Rica a few years earlier. Negotiations were also advanced with several other countries in Central America and the Caribbean, not to mention agreements outside the western hemisphere.

There's no doubt in my mind that the Canada-Colombia agreement will bring considerable support to the economic actors concerned in both countries by eliminating or reducing tariffs and facilitating access for a whole range of products. In particular, it will help Canadian exporters of wheat, pulses, barley, paper products, heavy equipment, and services, as well as Colombian exporters of coffee, coal, flowers, and bananas, among other products. The agreement would also provide greater protection for corporations investing in our respective countries in areas like manufacturing, financial services, oil and gas, and mining.

At the same time, the FTA should help create economic opportunities, including jobs in both countries, and stimulate Colombia's economic development.

Colombia has made significant economic progress in recent years with a growth oscillating between 5% and 7% of GDP. This has led to a considerable improvement in socio-economic indicators. At the same time, this growth has offered important opportunities for the Canadian firms and workers involved in our export industries, and the agreement will help them in their pursuits.

I should note here that economic expansion in Colombia would not have been possible without a substantial improvement in the public safety situation due to initiatives by President Uribe to strengthen the security forces to provide greater security in cities and the countryside.

Colombia's prospects have also improved as a result of the significant effort of the Colombian government to reintegrate into the political process and civil society many of the elements that had been responsible for violent activities, notably the insurgents and paramilitary groups. Consequently, there has been a considerable reduction in the number of acts of violence in recent years, with benefits in terms of public peace, law and order, and including in the area of human rights.

Canada has been very much involved in this process by supporting a number of projects of the Colombian authorities to promote reconciliation, demobilization, reintegration, rehabilitation, and human rights. As a consequence, Colombia's political institutions have been reinforced, allowing the country to better pursue its tradition of electoral democracy, as the presidential elections to be held next month will further illustrate.

Challenges remain, of course, notably with respect to poverty and drug violence, but Colombia has made significant progress over the years in terms of what we would call in Canada, peace, order, and good government issues. Colombia is a more stable and prosperous country today than when I was ambassador there. I am confident that the FTA will help support these trends in the future. The FTA will also provide another instrument to build up the relationship and allow us to engage more fully with the Colombian authorities on a whole range of issues, including human rights.

Beyond the bilateral discussion, the FTA will give substance to the stated desire of Canada to engage more fully with its partners in the western hemisphere. Successive Canadian governments have taken initiatives to strengthen relations with the Americas, from the governments of Prime Ministers Trudeau and Mulroney to that of Prime Minister Harper, with a strategy of closer engagement launched four years ago.

As a result, thousands of Canadians are now engaged in that effort, from businessmen to academics to the NGO community, which is making a significant contribution in areas like development assistance and governance cooperation. The agreement will therefore help advance our broad interests, not only in the economic area but also with respect to our political security and development objectives.

With respect to Canada's trade policy, the FTA is another important step in the direction of a policy that has increasingly taken on bilateral and regional overtones in addition to a multilateral dimension. Most governments nowadays have an active bilateral agenda to supplement their negotiations in the framework of the World Trade Organization. There has been a proliferation of FTAs on all continents, as we have seen in Europe, where the European Union is at the centre of a network of partnerships, and in Asia, where numerous FTAs have been negotiated in the last decade. That is also true in the western hemisphere, where our partners in NAFTA, the United States and Mexico, have concluded FTAs with Colombia, among other countries.

Most countries of the Americas have in fact embarked on a series of bilateral and regional economic agreements leading to the emergence of new institutions, like the Union of South American Nations, and Latin American and Caribbean summits, to better coordinate their economic integration.

It is therefore important that Canada connect with these countries, particularly in the face of very strong competition, not only from our partners in the region, but also from Asia and Europe, with players like Japan, China, India, Spain, Germany, and France being very active.

There are many opportunities for Canada to seize in countries like Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, each with a substantial population and growing economy open to the world. We must therefore be equipped with the instruments that will allow us to have a policy of presence and be successful in the defence and promotion of Canadian interests.

Mr. Chairman, the agreement signed between Colombia and Canada will help us do that, and I would therefore strongly encourage the committee to ratify the agreement.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Your Excellency.

Before we continue, I would like to hear from Ms. Lee as well. When the committee visited Colombia, one of the industries we met with was the flower industry, which is a very large exporter that does a lot of business with Canada.

It would be helpful to the committee, if you wouldn't mind, to maybe give three to five minutes of background in case there are further questions. Then we'll go on to general questions.

[Rebecca Lee, Director, Representative of the Colombian Association of Flower Growers, CENIFLORES]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and committee members, for this opportunity.

I work with the Colombian flower sector. I'm a Canadian and I've been living in Colombia for the last 18 years. This is my latest position, which I've held for the last seven years there.

Just like the minister of trade, I'd like to share a private experience. I was an unfortunate witness to and a participant in kidnappings. The family I married into had a number of cases. One was in 1999, when a brother-in-law, a sister-in-law, and I were taken. Fortunately, I was released at the end of the day, but they were there for six months and 11 months. In 2003, there was a second kidnapping of another brother-in-law.

So I've lived this first-hand, and I'm certainly witness to the fact that not only has the security level decreased drastically with President Uribe's policies and management, but I can also travel the country, which I couldn't do when I first arrived. So I've been able to see a lot more of the country and get to know it a lot better.

From the point of view of Asocolflores, the Colombian Flower Exporter Association, this free trade agreement is very important. Asocolflores represents 70% of flower exports, and we work very closely with governments at different levels, including participating in the free trade agreements the government leads.

The sector provides nearly 200,000 direct and indirect jobs, and 60% of the workers are women who would otherwise not have possibilities for employment. These jobs provide a buffer to the migration into the city, provide much-needed income to rural municipalities, and reduce the impact on large cities, such as Bogota and Medellin.

Some of you may know that the association introduced Florverde in 1996 as our socio-environmental program. There are over 150 different variables that have to be complied with in order to be certified, which is done by outside parties. That helps ensure that the flower growers include social responsibility. For us it is very important to have labour rights adhered to. In fact, some of the criteria for membership go above those requirements and make sure companies that are members, or are applying to be members, adhere to Colombian law in that sense.

The free trade agreement between Colombia and Canada is very important for the sector. Not only will it help maintain exports to this country; it will also help maintain economic sustenance for the municipalities that depend on this income and the maintenance of these 200,000 jobs.

I'm open to any questions to clear up or go any deeper into any of these aspects.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you very much. I wish to say thank you to all of those who have given opening remarks.

That brings us to about 4:20 p.m. I think we'll just make a judgment call here. I am going to suggest that if it's all right with the witnesses, we're going to go until 5:30 on this subject. We were going to introduce another subject at the end of the day. We could put that off until Thursday, when we will be primarily on this subject again. I am going to take a half an hour at the end of the next meeting, that would be Thursday, to complete the other matter that was on the agenda. We will follow that next week with subsequent further meetings with the witnesses on C-2.

Having said that, again, thank you for those marvellous opening statements. It's wonderful that we have you here. This is an excellent panel that we have the opportunity to hear from today.

I'm going to be a little firm with questioning, to give everybody a chance to ask questions today. We're going to try to keep the first round to seven minutes, with questions and answers, so I will advise our members again and also the witnesses that we'll be keeping an eye on the clock and hope that you can answer questions that will be short within the seven-minute period. We will proceed, then, with five-minute rounds for as much time as we have.

We're going to start today's questioning with Mr. Brison.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I want to thank each of our witnesses for joining us today. As Canadians, sometimes I think it's difficult for us to imagine what Colombia has been through over the last 40 years, with a civil war that began along ideological grounds and has become more of a drug war, in fact. It is clearly in the interests of the people of Colombia, in fact, in the interests of the people of Canada, for all of us, and for the stability of the Andean region to provide real economic opportunities to the people of Colombia to wean them off the sources of that conflict, the drug war.

I also want to thank Ambassador Lavertu for being here. We have a very strong and professional Canadian public service, and he is a reminder that even after they retire, they can continue to contribute significantly and positively to Canadian public policy and decision-making in Parliament.

I have a series of questions for Mr. Plata on the bilateral agreement between the Colombian government and the Canadian government on human rights reported to our respective parliaments. What do you see as the purpose of the new bilateral agreement between Canada and Colombia that establishes a human rights reportage mechanism?

[Luis-Guillermo Plata]

Thank you, Mr. Brison, for your questions and for your interest in Colombia, for having visited our country and seeing firsthand what's happened in Colombia. I think there is no better assessment than actually seeing things and getting a personal impression of things.

This new agreement that has been proposed and that the Colombian government has embraced, or is embracing, is very significant because it complements what we already have within the base agreement. Basically it allows us to assess the impact of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement on human rights in both Canada and Colombia, and it allows us, through that, to strengthen the public engagement and the oversight of human rights in both Canada and Colombia. So I see it as a step forward. I see it as something that complements what we already have. Definitely Colombia feels confident to have this addenda or this new agreement. We are pleased to report what we are doing; we're pleased to report what improvements we're having. And I'm very honest in saying that we have not resolved these issues. We have issues in Colombia. We've made progress, but we have issues, and it's important for us to continue working on them and to continue reviewing them on a constant basis.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

As part of this bilateral human rights mechanism, what are Canada's commitments?

[Luis-Guillermo Plata]

We don't have the finalized copy yet. I'm expecting to receive that from Minister Van Loan at some point, hopefully within the next couple of days. I wish that were the case...so that we can move forward. But basically we have the following commitments. They're commitments on the part of both Canada and Colombia.

In the case of Canada, as we've said, Canada will provide annual reports to its own Parliament on the impact of the Canada-Columbia free trade agreement on human rights in Canada and Colombia. Each report will be made available to the public at the same time it is provided to the Parliament of Canada. The Government of Canada will be responsible for the contents of this report to be provided to Parliament, and this responsibility ensures that each report is accurate and comprehensive. That's the basic wording we've established so far. As I've said, it's not the final draft, as we have not received it from Minister Van Loan, but it's something we'd be happy to live with.

Colombia agrees to provide annual reports to its own Congress on the impact of the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement on human rights in Canada and Colombia, and by the same token, each report is available to the public at the same time it's provided to Congress. And of course we assume the responsibility for the quality, the level, and the standard of information in every single report, ensuring that it's accurate and comprehensive. Of course, other sources like the Red Cross or the Human Rights Commission from the UN, can be cited in the report and complement that report as well.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I would appreciate the perspective of Ambassador Lavertu on this as well. Does this provide an opportunity for the sharing of information between Canada and the U.S. and best practices and a deepening of the cooperation on human rights issues for Colombia and Canada?

I would like to hear from both of you on that. How do you see this contributing to deepening the dialogue on human rights in Colombia between Canada and Colombia?

[Gaëtan Lavertu]

Canada and Colombia have had a dialogue on human rights for many years. I remember when I was ambassador there, I worked very closely with Mr. Mariano Tirado, who was appointed by President Barco at the time as commissioner for human rights. Canada helped put in place that institution and also helped train various members of the Colombian administration in the area of human rights. Subsequently, CIDA and Foreign Affairs funded a number of projects related to human rights. So there is an established basis.

But this agreement will provide us with a further opportunity. We have an annual rendezvous with respect to discussing the human rights situation. We'll be able to proceed to an assessment. I think it's great that we have an opportunity to review the impact of the agreement. We should probably do that for all agreements. It's not enough to just sign agreements; we have to see once in a while what the implications have been, what the results have been, and I think that will be very useful. It will provide us with an opportunity to discuss human rights not only multilaterally but also bilaterally on a much more extensive basis.

[Luis-Guillermo Plata]

If I may just complement the answer, I think Canada is a recognized world leader in matters such as human rights and the environment. In this case, relating to human rights, I think Canada can provide a positive influence to Colombia. There can be best practices that could be transferred from Canada to Colombia. And I think a lot of what Canada has been able to accomplish and lead in the world in this respect to a large extent could be transferred and used in Colombia as a basis for improving our situation.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

I have one final question, Mr. Chair.

How would the Colombian government engage the public as it fulfills this reporting requirement? Will civil society organizations, labour unions, human rights organizations be fully engaged in this process? And also, will there be engagement of the UN commissioner on human rights and the ILO and some of the other international organizations?

[Luis-Guillermo Plata]

Yes. It is different from other agreements, where reporting tends to be of a private nature and in close quarters. This agreement states that we should engage the public in doing so, and I think that's an important difference in the way things are done. The idea is to do this report in a public audience setting--of course, within the formal setting of the Congress, but allowing for the civil side to participate: NGOs, unions, and anybody who has anything to say to be part of this.

Furthermore, since it's been taking place in Congress, we should make sure it's also televised. I think that would add a lot of credibility. Certainly it's not in the agreement per se--it doesn't say it needs to be televised--but it's something I would encourage that we do in a public and open way.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you, Mr. Brison, and thank you to the panellists.

We'll move next to the Bloc. Mr. Laforest.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Minister.

I listened to the Minister of International Trade for the Republic of Colombia report to us on the situation. The cases of heavy-handedness against defenders of human rights, the number of murders, the number of trade unionists who are impacted by the situation, even assassinated; they have all decreased in Colombia, making it look like the picture is now pretty enough to justify the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Colombia. But, as you said yourself, despite everything, the figures are still very high.

By contrast, this morning, the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is overseeing the electoral process in a sense, issued a news release in order to sound the alarm that human rights violations are being observed in Colombia. It is said that the war between the army and the Marxist rebels and paramilitaries has displaced millions of people.

What is more, a journalist reports that, one month from the presidential elections, the International Committee of the Red Cross wants to draw attention to the forgotten victims of the conflict in Colombia. The Red Cross people say that they have documented 800 violations of human rights. They also note that there are more than 3 million displaced people out of a total population of 46 million—one of the highest rates in the world. They also say that the lack of security in rural areas and the suffering of Colombians caught between the army and the rebel forces, are not issues in the current presidential campaign. They are simply not talked about.

Are you seeing the same thing?

[Luis-Guillermo Plata]

Thank you very much. I apologize. I don't speak French, so I will answer in English, if that's okay.

I have not seen that report, obviously, because I am in Canada. But I am not surprised at what has been said, and I have to say those things do happen in Colombia. I would never deny that this is not the case. Yes, we still have three million displaced people. Those are things we are addressing and we need to continue to address. By the same token, when we provide Colombian people with jobs, with opportunities, with chances to trade, to sell their products abroad, that's how we attack the problem. I think for us it's very clear that we do not win the war with soldiers and policemen alone. We win the war against terror, we win the war against drug trafficking, when we provide Colombian people with jobs, opportunities, and the possibility of living a dignified life. That's when things really change. That's precisely why the Colombian government has engaged not only in negotiating a free trade agreement with Canada but with the rest of the world.

To summarize it in one sentence, in 2002, when this government began, Colombia had trade agreements with four countries, the neighbouring countries--Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico. Our aim for this year is to complete 11 trade agreements with 47 countries, among them, of course, Canada. Why? To gain access to other markets. Of course, we give access to our own market, but to stimulate economic growth and to stimulate job creation and opportunities for people.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

You mentioned President Uribe, with whom you work since you are part of the same government. You said that steps have been taken. Since last fall, just a short time ago, have any specific measures or bills been announced? Have you voted on or passed any bills on human rights? Has anything concrete been done? Can you make a direct connection between steps like that and the improvements you have observed?

[Luis-Guillermo Plata]

Yes, there have been many, many of those measures that have taken place, and I'll read just a few. The first big measure was the constitutional reform in 2004, to completely transform our judicial system and move from what we call an inquisitorial system to an accusatory system, an oral system, which would be much faster, much more expedited. Of course, to implement this has been a challenge, but nowadays we enjoy a different or a faster, more effective judicial system, to make it possible that crimes against all Colombians--not only against trade union members, but against all Colombians--be prosecuted faster.

We have also installed a sub-unit in the office of the prosecutor general of Colombia. This is a very important distinction because the prosecutor general is independent of the government. Unlike other countries, where the prosecutor general is appointed by the president, in this case it is an appointment by the court, so we have no real mandate over him. But in this case we established a sub-unit on human rights in the prosecutor general's office, with 13 prosecutors dedicated to this. This began operations in 2007 with 13 prosecutors; now there are 19 prosecutors, 76 investigators, and 19 additional support lawyers.

We also established, together with the trade unions, a priority list of which cases were most important and should be evacuated sooner. So we're not sticking to the chronological way in which cases happen, but we--

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

If we go by what the people who have come here to meet us say, a very large majority of unions are opposed to the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Colombia. More unions are against than are in favour. You are talking to us as if you had an agreement with all unions, but I do not think that that is the case.

[Luis-Guillermo Plata]

To answer that question, we have an expert here with us who actually would know better than I do. But as he was pointing out earlier, there are two types of unions in Colombia. There are the public sector unions, encompassing teachers, judges, people in my ministry, for instance, who are public servants, and then there are the private sector unions. I would say the split between private sector and public sector unions in Colombia is probably 60-40 or 70-30, more or less, 70% being in the public sector and 30% being in the private sector. So, yes, that is a majority.

However, for those unions that are most opposed to the FTA, the FTA really has no influence on what they do. For instance, if I am a unionized teacher in the teachers' union and I'm against the FTA, the FTA has really no impact on my job as a teacher. Nonetheless, ideologically I'm inclined to be against it. But if you take the private sector unions, which this gentleman is a part of, and you ask them, the private sector unions in the flower trade or in the footwear trade or in the apparel trade, or in any of the things that we export, you will realize that the support for trade agreements--not only for this trade agreement but the support for trade agreements in general--is overwhelming.

Mr. Chairman, I still have two more laws that we changed, but I will save those for later.