I'll limit my comments.
I just want to pick up by highlighting the weaknesses of the enforcement provision in the Canada-Colombia labour side agreement. The particular weakness that I want to focus upon is the fact that, once again, enforcement is left up to the signatory states and the signatory bureaucracies that are assigned the task of enforcing the labour rights.
That is to say, unlike in the investment provisions, the offended parties, whether that be workers, trade unions, or human rights organizations, have no ability whatsoever to advance these cases to a dispute resolution panel on their own. All of the enforcement takes place through the states themselves. The result of that, in our experience under existing agreements, is that you never get to the dispute resolution mechanism so you never get a remedy. Nothing, frankly, ever happens when these complaints are filed.
The other substantial failing, of course, is that there is a profound limitation on the remedies that are provided. Even if you were to get to a dispute resolution panel--namely, a fine in the amount of $15 million--and the payment of that fine...into essentially a labour fund; that's essentially how the agreement works.
Again, this committee has to ask itself whether or not a $15 million fine is a substantial enough penalty and remedy to seriously deter labour rights violators in Colombia, given the history of violence and appalling labour rights violations. In our respectful submission, that sort of fine is not sufficient.
Again, I urge you to compare the labour rights provision with the investor rights provisions. The investor rights provisions, in article 8, provide an enforceable arbitration mechanism that is effective, independent, and rapid. The awards are final and binding, and they provide real remedies to investors whose rights may be violated in the agreement. Again, the contrast is stark.
In our view, because this agreement contains no real trade sanctions such as the imposition of countervailing duties or the abrogation of preferential trade status in the event that a party fails to adhere to the labour rights provisions, and given the magnitude of the labour rights violations in Colombia and the failure of the current government to prosecute the offenders, we submit that simply issuing fines against the offending government is not an acceptable sanction. Moreover, it will provide no incentive for the Colombian administration to address the current crisis and bring an end to the violent assassination of Colombian trade unionists.
In general, experience suggests that the labour provisions in trade agreements, whether in side agreements or not, are unlikely to lead to concrete improvements for workers and trade unions. In our view, the labour rights provisions in the Canada-Colombia FTA are not sufficiently robust to even begin to address the serious labour and human rights situation in Colombia.
Finally, I want to take you back a little bit to the report that this committee produced in June 2008, entitled Human Rights, the Environment and Free Trade with Colombia, when it was considering the potential impact of the Canada-Colombia agreement. The report made several good recommendations unanimously, including the following recommendations.
4: The Committee recommends that an independent, impartial, and comprehensive human rights impact assessment should be carried out by a competent body, which is subject to levels of independent scrutiny and validation; the recommendations of this assessment should be addressed before Canada considers signing, ratifying and implementing an agreement with Colombia.
That was the recommendation of this committee in June 2008.
The Liberal trade critic has proposed an additional text, an amendment. I'm not exactly sure of the exact content of this proposal, but it was read into the record, and what was read into the record reads as follows.
The Minister shall cause to be laid before each House of Parliament by March 31 of each year or, if that House is not then sitting, on any of the thirty days next thereafter that it is sitting, a report of operations for the previous calendar year, containing a general summary of all actions taken under the authority of this Act, and an analysis of the impact of these actions on human rights in Canada and Colombia.
It is, in our view, undeniable that the amendment or addition to Bill C-2 proposed by the Liberal trade critic utterly fails to comply with the recommendation that this very committee had adopted in June 2008.
It utterly fails in at least three ways.
First, the recommendation of the committee was that the human rights impact assessment be carried out before Canada considers signing, ratifying, or implementing an agreement with Colombia. The proposal currently before this committee, of course, is that the reports be produced after the agreement is already signed and ratified.
Second, the recommendation of this committee was that the assessment would be independent, impartial, and subject to levels of independent scrutiny. The proposal now before this committee and under Bill C-2 is that the human rights reports would be prepared and submitted by the signatory governments themselves. Although there is not total clarity on who exactly is going to prepare these reports, in our opinion, the proposed human rights reports are not independent in any sense of the term as contemplated in this committee's June 2008 report.
Third, and most importantly, it was clearly the case that unless the recommendations in this committee's report were satisfied, then Canada should not implement a free trade agreement with Colombia. That is to say, if the conditions of the report were not satisfied, there would be real consequences. However, the amendment currently proposed by the Liberal trade critic has no consequences whatsoever, or that I am aware of, if in fact it emerges that the human, environmental, and labour rights situation in Colombia fails to improve, or in fact gets worse, once the Canada-Colombia FTA is signed. As such, without any penalty or enforcement provision at all, it is unclear to us if the amendment to the legislation has any real benefit. Rather, it seems to us that the additional paragraph is, frankly, window dressing.
In our view, the situation on the ground in Colombia has not changed substantially since June 2008. Therefore, we fail to see the basis upon which this committee would simply abandon the recommendations made in June 2008 and advance and recommend the implementation of this trade agreement.
Thank you very much.