We don't think that's anywhere near sufficient. Two years ago June, this committee was in a different space. It was asking for an independent human rights assessment in advance of a deal being signed.
Your question relates to one of the previous questions. Canada serves on and sits at the ILO, and it makes a useful contribution there, in my view. So does Colombia. The ILO has set up a special office in Colombia, which is not a normal situation, to deal with labour rights violations in Colombia.
The previous questioner said that in the absence of a deal, how can we communicate? How do we do business with Colombia?
As Canada does with other countries around the world at the ILO, Canada should be asking all countries that are signatory to ILO conventions, which is a laborious process--in our case ten provinces, two territories, and the federal government ratified.... In Canada we've given life to those ILO covenants by way of legislation. Here in Parliament we have legislation giving rights to federally regulated employees should they choose to unionize. That doesn't exist in Colombia.
I didn't expect the Minister of Labour in Colombia could answer the technical question. He had seven officials with him--four assistant deputy ministers--and my question was a simple one. They privatized the post office in Colombia. They have the right to do that. It's not my business to comment on that; I have my own views on it. The workers are privatized. One hundred percent of them want to sign a union card to form a union. You take that card to a government office and you unionize. Explain that process to me in Colombia. It's privatized. There are 3,000 workers who no longer have a union. A private company is delivering the mail. All 3,000 want to join the union.
There were seven employees of the Government of Colombia in the presence of their minister--staff in this room would jump to a ministerial request for information. How does one join a union in Colombia? Why is it down to 123,000 workers who are covered by a collective agreement out of 18 million? They've signed the cards. The minister got mad at the Canadian delegation because we couldn't accept that there was no answer to the question.
In Canada, there's an answer. In 189 countries in the world, there's an answer to that simple question of wanting to join a union.
So I don't know. I agreed with Mr. Mulroney 25 years ago when he led the Parliament of Canada and said we will not sign any deals with the state of South Africa, for well-documented reasons.
If you need any more statistics, please hear the delegation from the International Pre-Electoral Observation Mission of Colombia, who said that in the past three years133 Congress members were investigated because of ties to paramilitaries.
There's nothing wrong with being investigated.
It goes on: Of these, 71 have been called in for questioning; 50 are currently being detained--no bail; 42 have waived their rights as a member of Congress; 18 are in the process of being tried; 13 have pled guilty to charges related to their activities with paramilitaries; seven have been convicted.
These are the elected representatives of Colombia. You're going to sign a deal in our name? This Parliament, two weeks ago, had a former cabinet minister and a former parliamentarian being held to account. So be it. There are standards if you want to serve in the Parliament of Canada--ethical standards.
When I was there in 2008, one-third of the Congress was in jail. That's my answer to your question.