International Trade Committee on May 25th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

We're a few minutes behind. We're going to open the meeting of the Standing Committee on International Trade, meeting number 18 of this session.

We are continuing our discussion of Bill C-2, an act to implement the free trade agreement between Canada and the Republic of Colombia, the agreement on the environment between Canada and the Republic of Colombia, and the agreement on labour cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Colombia.

As has been our practice for almost two years now, we're hearing witnesses on this subject. Today we will continue that practice and process with four witnesses from a long distance away.

I'm going to introduce the witnesses, we'll have a brief comment from them—hopefully opening statements that will assuredly be under ten minutes each—and then we'll proceed to questions. Let me start by introducing our witnesses.

With us here in Ottawa we have Steven Shrybman, who is a partner with Sack, Goldblatt and Mitchell, who has appeared before the committee before. Welcome back, Mr. Shrybman.

We have from Coventry, England, from the University of Warwick, James Harrison, who's an associate professor at the Warwick School of Law. Welcome, Professor Harrison.

Visiting us from Vancouver via video conference, as an individual, is Dawn Paley, a journalist. Welcome, Ms. Paley.

As well, via video conference from New York, we have Nazih Richani, who is also a professor. I'm sorry that I don't know where you're instructing these days, so before you begin your allotted ten minutes for statements, perhaps you could do a brief further introduction.

Again, the format is that I'm going to ask each of you for an opening statement, followed by questions. I hope we can keep these opening presentations under ten minutes so that we have ample time for the committee to ask questions.

I have an indication here that our guest with us in Ottawa would like to speak last, so I'm going to start with Mr. Harrison, from Coventry, England, who is coming to us via video conference.

Professor Harrison.

[Dr. James Harrison, Associate Professor, School of Law, University of Warwick]

Good afternoon, and good evening from England, as it is now. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you.

I am an academic. I work in the University of Warwick, and I specialize in issues of trade law and human rights law. I engage in a particular area of research on human rights impact assessments, both for trade agreements specifically and of human rights impact assessments methodologies generally. It is a great pleasure to talk on the subject and hopefully to raise some issues that may be useful to you in your deliberations about human rights impact assessments and reporting on the human rights aspect of the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, which, as I understand it, is being proposed in an amendment to the current bill.

There is much interest in this topic internationally. UN treaty bodies have been calling for human rights impact assessments for many years. I've spoken recently to the WTO on this issue. I've spoken with politicians, civil societies, and many in the academic community, so the Canadian proposal is exciting and could become a model in this area, because no other country has yet included this within the scope of a trade agreement.

Hopefully you will have a copy of the one-page sheet I sent to you in advance. I set out there the original recommendation of the standing committee, with which I am sure you are all more familiar than I am, and the current proposal, as I have seen and understand it, for an amendment within the bill. It's the second proposal in particular on which I have some thoughts here and hopefully will shed some light on the way in which current thinking around human rights impact assessment may correlate with it.

What is a human rights impact assessment and why is it important? A human rights impact assessment is increasingly a term of art used to describe a particular process, and is being used in development projects, in parliamentary activities, in monitoring multinational corporations. So we have a lot of methodological guidance there. In the trade field, it builds upon work on social impact assessment done, for instance, by the EU, UNEP, and various ad hoc assessments. We have a body of work there about how social impact assessment of trade agreements takes place, which we can then apply in the human rights field. A limited number of human rights impact assessments have taken place as well, in Thailand, Costa Rica, Ghana, Honduras, Indonesia.

The key to a human rights impact assessment is that it must involve some form of evidence-based analysis of the trade agreement in question. So this is a technical process. It doesn't tell you anything ideological about whether a country deserves or does not deserve a trade agreement, nor about its overall human rights record or situation. What it aims to do is to look at the trade agreement itself and assess the degree to which that trade agreement will have or has had beneficial or negative human rights impacts.

In light of that, I want to go through some of the key characteristics of a human rights impact assessment that I think are particularly important for the proposed amendment to this bill.

First of all, on methodology, the legal obligations and key principles of human rights must be central to a human rights impact assessment, and indicators must be developed to tell us the measure of the human rights impacts of the agreement. This is a technical process that involves rigorous collection and analysis of data. We're talking about techniques like economic modelling, particular case studies, causal chain analysis, surveys, and expert opinion all being utilized to give us a picture of the human rights impacts of aspects of the agreement.

As a result of that, we require a multi-skilled interdisciplinary team with knowledge of economics, social science methodologies, and human rights standards. And we require an independent team, a team of experts rather than a team of people who are part of any kind of political process. We require participation from affected communities; that is an integral part of the human rights methodology, and it should be transparent and have open procedures adopted throughout. I won't go into the detail of that here, given there are time limits.

Going to the timing and the frequency of the assessment, a human rights impact assessment can be ex ante, so it would take place before the agreement--that was the original proposal of the standing committee--or it can take place afterwards, an ex post assessment.

That I think is the proposal we have before us now. It should become cyclical, so it should not be a one-off process, but it should be something that is repeated to assess how impacts are changing over time. Again, I think the current proposal is advocating a cyclical process.

The frequency of the assessment should depend on the scope of what is being assessed and the resources available. So in terms of scope, human rights impact assessments should be limited to specific impacts of specific provisions of the trade agreement identified by a scoping study. If we look at the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, I think we have 23 chapters with a huge range of provisions on goods, services, investment, technical regulations, etc. The danger is that an assessment of all these different provisions without a previous identification of where the most important human rights issues may be occurring, particularly if they're occurring on an annual basis, may become a superficial exercise that is not able to appropriately use the methodologies, which will require extensive time and resources.

Obviously the scope of the assessment does to a certain extent depend on the resources available, so it is very resource-intensive. The more experts you have undertaking the assessment and the more money to do primary rather than secondary research, the more quickly you can do an assessment and the bigger the scope you can hope to achieve in terms of the chapters of the agreement you can analyze. So there is some consideration there of scope and resources together.

Finally, the results: you need precise, directed conclusions and recommendations and actions to be concluded at the end of any assessment. Many of the assessments that fail to have an impact are those that do not include precise recommendations directed to particular actors who are in a position to take effective action on the recommendations that are made.

In conclusion, and I hope I haven't gone over time, there is a lack of detail in the current proposal, which means it is difficult to assess it fully in terms of the final procedure that might be adopted. But my experience suggests that a more detailed blueprint that can be put together when a proposal is first on the table and that can be transcribed does help guard against problems of uncertainty at a later stage.

There may be concerns in the current process about people, scope, frequency, and results. In terms of people, there's the importance of independent expertise being at the centre of the impact assessment process. In terms of scope, as I said, the huge range of chapters of the trade agreement mean that it needs to be honed to deal with those particularly significant impacts. Frequency again depends on the resources available to the assessment, but that issue of scope and frequency must be thought of together. Finally, on results, in terms of an effective impact assessment that will have an impact on policy, there needs to be a clear setting out of the way in which results will be set out in the assessment and then acted upon by relevant actors.

I hope those brief thoughts help the committee in deliberations, and I'm happy to take any questions when needed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you. We appreciate your remarks and also your good timing.

We're going to go now to New York to hear from Nazih Richani, who is a professor, I believe, at Kean University in New Jersey. He's coming to us via video conference from New York.

Mr. Richani.

[Dr. Nazih Richani, Professor, As an Individual]

I'm Nazih Richani, a political scientist at Kean University. I've been studying the Colombian conflict for about 16 years, and in this respect I have a book and several other academic publications. The title of my brief presentation is going to be "Free Trade with What State? A Fragmented Sovereignty or a Co-opted State".

For the purpose of this hearing, two critical issues are imperative to consider. One is what type of state we have today in Colombia, and second is the possible impact this agreement could have on the rural economy and the long-term food security of the country and consequently on its civil war. Let me start on the type of state.

During the last decade, the state-making process in Colombia has almost graduated from a condition of fragmented sovereignty in which the central government in Bogota shared authority with regional caudillos, or political bosses, right-wing narco-paramilitaries, and leftist guerrillas. This fragmented sovereignty has characterized the country's history since its independence in the early 19th century. However, during the course of the last decade, the state-making process has entered into a phase whereby the state's coercive apparatus has expanded its radius of operations for almost all the country's--

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Excuse me, Professor Richani. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we are doing simultaneous translation here, and it's sometimes difficult to keep up. I'd be happy to let you slow down just a little bit.

Thank you.

[Dr. Nazih Richani]

Okay. Thank you.

This dramatic expansion of the state security apparatus has been unprecedented in the country's history, making Colombia's one of the largest armies in Latin America, with almost 432,000 personnel in 2008, of which 286,000 are in the Colombian military and 146,000 in the police forces.

The Colombian government has increased its defence spending by 142% during the last ten years. This money was supplemented by the infusion of $6 billion provided by the United States through Plan Colombia.

This might seem like the state may have advanced significantly in executing its sovereignty, so what's the frustration? Closer examination of the social and political content upon which this newly founded sovereignty is based may shed some light on the nature of this emerging state.

A key player in this emerging sovereignty has been the narco-paramilitary. Caruso launched a barbaric counter-insurgency campaign that targeted the civilian population on what they called “the social base of the guerrilla”. This led to the killings of thousands and the displacement of about three million people.

But more important for this presentation is the narco-paramilitary strategy of the co-opting of the entire state apparatus, from the local level to the central government, targeting almost all state institutions, including its congress, military, police, judicial system, and intelligence services. This process started during the Samper period, from 1994-98, and was perfected under President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who started in 2002 and is the current president of Colombia.

This strategy has been successful to a great extent, as evidenced by the number of elected officials that are currently under investigation for their ties with the narco-paramilitary groups. The latest tally, according to the Office of the Attorney General, is about 291 investigations against 115 governors and mayors, 8 House representatives, 9 senators, 18 council members, 3 deputies, and 115 officials in 17 different departments, this to be added to about 80 other congressmen and -women, members from the 2006 elections, who are either under investigation or sentenced. This is close to 30% of the entire congress--which, incidentally, approved the free trade agreement--that is compromised.

Moreover, about 800 members of the police force are being investigated for corruption, abuse of authority, and, of course, collaborating with paramilitary groups. This is according to the national inspector general of police, Roberto Leone Riaño. He added that during 2006 alone there were 30,000 members of the police force under investigation. That is about 21% of the entire police force under investigation for corruption or collaboration with the narco-paramilitaries.

The functioning of the DAS, which is the administrative security apparatus, is not any better. Its new director, Felipe Muñoz, called for its dissolution because of the high degree of penetration by the narco-paramilitaries. It was entirely corrupted from within, including the latest new paramilitaries under Cuchillo, who is one of the commanders of the new and emerging groups of paramilitaries.

About 116 agents from the DAS at all levels, according to the director, are being investigated for links to the narco-paramilitaries. This is in addition to 38 agents who were convicted. Currently, DAS activities in several departments have been suspended because most of the officials in these departments were accused of allegedly being connected with paramilitary groups, including particularly departments such as Casanare, La Guajira, Valle, Tolima, and Bolívar, and several others will possibly close their operations as well. This is a very serious thing in departments that are key for narco-trafficking.

The military has also been penetrated by these groups at different levels. There is an inconclusive list of 150 officials mentioned by paramilitary commanders as collaborators, of which at least a dozen are at the rank of general.

These are some illustrative examples of the type of co-opted state that is emerging today in Colombia, to be considered in this discussion.

The second important component of this presentation is rural economic conditions and the possible impact that this trade agreement could have. Colombia has a rural population of 15 million, which is close to 38% of its population, of which 60% would rely on agriculture for their livelihood. The remaining 40% depend on other types of employment. However, the important thing to note here is that the small and subsistence peasants produce 63% of the total food production of the country.

This contribution of small and subsistence persons who own plots of less than two hectares is the highest in Latin America. On average, small peasant properties of 1.8 hectares are responsible for producing 41% of agricultural output for domestic consumption, producing at the regional level 51% of the maize, 77% of the beans, and 61% of the potatoes. So the average production of Colombian small peasant and subsistence farming is basically higher than the regional standards. Nonetheless, in the whole region, small peasant production is still very significant to feed the population of the region.

According to several studies, the free trade agreements that the Colombian government has pursued with Canada, the U.S., and the EU do not consider the fate of the subsistence economy and small-scale farming, which is essentially conserving the country's food security. If we consider the past global food crisis and we desire peace, stability, sustainable development, and human security, it is imperative to reconsider the interests of subsistence and small-scale farming.

As a case in point, an Oxfam study anticipates that small-scale producers of wheat and barley will be the hardest hit by the FTA with Canada. Oxfam estimated that 12,000 families, or about 48,000 individuals, will be undermined by the free trade agreement, specifically those who are producing wheat. Wheat and barley will be hard hit by this agreement, and 50% of the Colombian pork industry, which basically is informal and employs about 90,000 people, is also expected to be hit hard by this agreement. These are basic figures, but again I suspect that maybe hundreds of thousands of individuals in small-scale production will be affected by the free trade agreements, specifically in the sectors of rice, sugar, cotton, beef, and milk.

Undermining the subsistence and small peasant economy will have three important consequences to be considered very seriously. The first one is a threat to the food security of Colombia.

Second, in a country where the grievances of the rural population have led to an ongoing civil war and have facilitated the expansion of illicit plantations, these three free trade agreements, if they do not consider in their articles a clear-cut protection safeguarding these vulnerable sectors, would be as if you were adding more incentives to violence and to the narco-economy.

Third and finally, if the current trends in the political economy of Colombia persist, in a decade or so it will be transformed into a net importer to feed its population, specializing in a few cash crops such as coffee, bananas, and African palm oil, alongside the mining sector for gold, coal, and oil. Such an economy, as you may know, leads to neither sustainable development nor to a sustainable peace, but rather to a continuation of what I have termed a “war system” in Colombia.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you very much.

Now we will have our final witness from outside. We're going to Vancouver, where we have Dawn Paley, a journalist.

Go ahead, please.

[Dawn Paley, Journalist, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me here this afternoon.

My name is Dawn Paley and I'm a journalist based in Vancouver. I've travelled to Colombia twice, for a total of about three months, and I've spent a great deal of time researching Canada's relationship with Colombia from here.

Most of my time in Colombia was spent in northern Cauca, which is unfortunately again in the news because of Sunday's assassination of Alex Quintero, a man who had been accompanying survivors of the 2001 Naya massacre. This massacre saw 120 civilians slaughtered by paramilitaries. Some were killed by chain saws. Quintero was targeted because of his memory and because of his work trying to bring some kind of justice to families and survivors of the Naya massacre.

I know Colombians like Quintero who have been turned into victims of the war in Colombia. I know how they are systematically ignored; how they have their rights, freedoms, and basic necessities removed; and finally, how they have their lands and their lives removed from them so that corporations and others can reap the benefits. It is thus out of great sadness that I testify before you here today.

I'd like to clarify first that I think this agreement would be more accurately referred to as a preferential trade and investment protection agreement between Canada and Colombia.

I want to open by quoting Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who said, “The links between trade liberalization and growth are far weaker than liberalization advocates claim.” I think it is important to bring up Stiglitz because some members of this committee have accused witnesses and other MPs of having an anti-trade ideology. I wish to counter that in fact their position in favour of an agreement between Canada and Colombia is an equally ideological position--a so-called pro-trade ideology. But regardless of the strength of some committee members' ideological commitment to a free trade agreement, it is not possible for them to ignore the ethical implications of signing such an agreement with a criminal regime like the one in Colombia.

At a presentation in March 2005, Christian Côté, from International Trade Canada, pointed out to his audience that there exists pressure from the natural resource community for government to improve the investment climate for target countries. I think that pressure has led us to where we are today, with some members of this committee pushing a free trade agreement on behalf of the natural resource sector and dressing it up as if it were for the benefit of your average Canadians or Colombians.

Committee members here are obviously aware of the push from the Canadian oil and gas sector to ratify this agreement. Lobbyists from Nexen Incorporated, Petrobank Energy and Resources Incorporated, and Talisman Energy Incorporated have met with Canadian government officials to lobby for this deal.

When Armando Zamora, from Colombia's National Hydrocarbons Agency, went on an international tour to promote oil and gas investment in Colombia, Toronto was his first stop. He told the Globe and Mail that they started in Toronto because that was where the decisions to invest in the country were made.

I'd like to give an example of this, which is Gran Tierra Energy Incorporated. This firm produces approximately 14,000 barrels of oil per day in the southern region of the Department of Putumayo. The Calgary-based company controls 753,376 net acres of territory in Putumayo. Calgary's Petrobank has 14 exploration blocks covering a total of 1.6 million acres in Putumayo. Also from Calgary, Parex Resources Incorporated, formerly Petro Andina, is also active in Putumayo.

Oil drilling there is in the land of the Cofán peoples, who have been displaced as part of a concerted strategy to make the lands they occupy available for mega-projects. In 2006 there were 4,500 soldiers guarding oil facilities in Putumayo, as well as two extra brigades and one special brigade trained by the U.S. army. This oil is fueling bloody conflicts between the state, paramilitaries, and guerrillas. But it is also a war on the people, who are subject to terror and displaced by all armed actors, as well as through other instruments of the U.S.'s Plan Colombia, including aerial fumigation.

The victims are civilians, particularly indigenous peoples. In a classic case of the resource curse, an estimated 80% of the 250,000 people in Putumayo live below the poverty line. According to a report by the Colombian Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement, 30,000 people--more than one in ten living in Putumayo, where these companies are based--have been forcibly displaced.

According to another study of the region, there is little to no civilian state presence in Putumayo. Instead, guerrilla groups, paramilitaries, and the Colombian army, acting with U.S. assistance, control the territory.

The operations of these oil companies are most often not unionized, and these companies--not necessarily the particular Canadian companies--have a history of collaborating in the past. We know, for example, about BP collaborating with paramilitary forces and the Colombian army in order to maintain operations.

Arguing that this agreement will benefit the bottom lines of Calgary-based oil companies is separate from arguing that this agreement will actually improve the lives of ordinary Canadians or ordinary Colombians through so-called free trade. I think if we presented this agreement to Canadians as one designed in large part to benefit Calgary's oil and gas elites at such a great social and environmental cost in Colombia, ordinary Canadians would be revolted.

Although this agreement might satisfy powerful constituents, especially in the eight Calgary ridings today held by the Conservative Party, it is only by ignoring and discarding the voices of the victims of terror that the Canadian Parliament could promote a free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

We'll hear now from Mr. Shrybman, a partner at Sack Goldblatt Mitchell.

[Steven Shrybman, Partner, Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be here today in person.

You actually have a copy of the gist of my remarks here as a chapter to a report prepared by the CCIC, the Canadian Conference of International Cooperation. The chapter that I contributed to that work deals with the environmental side agreement to this treaty. I'll primarily focus on that agreement, but I will offer a few comments about this proposal to attach some type of human rights assessment conditionality to the agreement as well.

Let me begin by relating a little history, because it provides the context within which I think we can better understand what these side agreements and assessment proposals really mean in the larger framework of international law.

It wasn't very long ago that most international agreements were of one type. They were largely expressions of good-faith commitment by nation-states that were binding on them as a matter of international law, but with respect to which there was no meaningful compliance or enforcement mechanism. That wasn't only true of environmental agreements and human rights agreements, such as those articulated with the founding of the United Nations in 1948; it was also true of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

As members of the committee should know, until the advent of the WTO, you would not be the subject of sanctions under the GATT unless you agreed. In other words, if someone filed a complaint against you under the GATT and the tribunal found you were out of compliance with GATT rules, you basically had to agree to fix the problem. If you didn't, there were no sanctions that could be imposed by the GATT without your consent, because the rule was one of consensus.

That changed. That level playing field for international law, human rights law, commercial law, environmental law, changed rather dramatically in the mid-1990s—not long ago—with the advent of the WTO and NAFTA.

Let me start first with the WTO. Under the WTO, the rule with respect to the imposition of sanctions changed fundamentally. Unless blocked by a consensus of WTO members, sanctions would be applied if approved by the appellate body of the WTO. We went from a system in which there was a consensus required for sanctions to be applied, to a system in which unless there was a consensus to block a decision by the appellate body that you were out of compliance with the WTO, sanctions would be imposed. That represented a sea change in terms of the enforceability of the WTO.

But something had happened previously that was even more fundamental, as a departure from the norms of international law, and that was to be found in the investment chapters of NAFTA. Under that chapter, for the first time—there were some antecedents, but certainly for the first time in a trade agreement—private parties, private investors, private companies were given the right to seek damages for non-compliance with the provisions of a treaty with respect to which they were not parties, and under which they had no obligation. Think of arbitration without consent. You don't have any obligations under this agreement, but you have the right to enforce it. That was a radical departure from the norms of international commercial law, because the rights being asserted weren't fundamentally commercial. We've seen this instrument being invoked to challenge environmental laws and privatization schemes that have gone sour. They're not about commercial arrangements. It was a fundamental departure from international law, where you allowed a third party the right to enforce agreement to which they weren't a party.

That changed the landscape in a very dramatic way, but not for the protection of ecological security and human rights. Those instruments still remained hortatory instruments. There were no new enforcement mechanisms attached to the UN convention on human rights or the various charters attached to it, or to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, or the international Convention on Biodiversity. Those largely remained, primarily remained, hortatory mechanisms that represented binding obligations for states, but not obligations that they would have to meet for fear of some sanction, because no sanction was permitted.

This brings me then to the environmental side agreement of this particular proposed free trade agreement, and the precedent for that can be found in NAFTA. The problem with these agreements is that they are similarly binding, I suppose, because they're agreements, but they're non-enforceable. So you get these side agreements attached to treaties that have very powerful enforcement mechanisms, particularly the right of private enforcement built into the investment rules, but they themselves have no meaningful compliance or enforcement feature.

If you're an environmentalist, and I happen to be—I still happen to be, but I worked for years for environmental NGOs—it doesn't seem like a very reasonable bargain unless you're persuaded that somehow protecting the commercial interests of large and powerful corporations, resource corporations, and oil and gas corporations is more important than protecting the climate, preserving biodiversity, or protecting human rights. Why is the protection of corporate and commercial interests more important than the protection of these other forms of security and human rights?

I am very doubtful that Canadians would agree to the essential ordering of priorities that you now find married in these international agreements, where the protection of commercial rights is very hard, very precise. If you're a large corporation, you're entitled to damages, often in the tens of millions of dollars, if countries fail to comply with their obligations under these regimes. But if you're a victim of human rights abuses or you're an environmental NGO concerned about the decline of the environment, you're without any effective remedy to address those problems.

In the last two or three minutes I have, let me comment on this proposal to attach some requirement for human rights assessment to this free trade agreement with Colombia. You'll suspect that I'm no more enthusiastic about that than I am about the environmental side agreement to the trade agreement, and in fact the proposal for human rights assessment is far more modest than the one associated with assessing the environmental impacts of the agreement.

My primary concern arises from the fact that we actually don't need another institution to remind us that we're in trouble ecologically or that there are serious human rights problems ongoing in Colombia. What we need are effective mechanisms to address those problems, particularly if, in establishing rights of private enforcement to the benefit of large corporations, we will actually aggravate ecological and human rights problems. That's an inevitable result when you give one actor in an equation special and powerful enforcement tools but no other.

I've looked at Mr. Brison's proposal, such as it is. There aren't any details there, as Mr. Harrison indicates. I don't think the proposal is a plausible one, even if it were fleshed out. But for it to be fleshed out you would have to create an institution to preside over complaints; it would have to be transparent. There would have to be a dispute process that allowed people access to meaningful remedies free from the threat of reprisals, and that would hold not only the state but private actors to some measure of accountability under the regime.

I look forward to any questions the committee has.

Thank you very much for your patience, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you again, and thank you for recognizing our clock. I appreciate that, with four witnesses today.

We're going to begin our first round of questions. I think we will have time to get in all members if we stick to our time allotments. The committee has decided that there will be seven minutes for the first round of questioning, seven minutes to each of our committee members, and that means for questions and answers. I'm going to stick to it pretty tightly today.

I'm going to ask Mr. Brison to begin, for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank each of our witnesses for appearing before us today.

I'd like to begin with Mr. Harrison. I thank you very much for dialoguing with us today on this important issue. The details of a human rights reportage mechanism that would be put in place through the amendment and the signed agreement between the Colombian and Canadian governments have been read into the record at committee. It would require both the Government of Canada and the Government of Colombia to do annual reports on the impact of the free trade agreement on Colombia and on Canada, and the reports would come to our respective parliaments--our parliament, their congress--on an annual basis.

When we had public servants here from Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, they indicated they would draw from the NGO community and civil society groups in that reportage to help inform the reports on an ongoing basis. Would you be willing to participate in that type of process and to help inform the design and the deliberation of that group, of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, in terms of human rights reportage?

[Dr. James Harrison]

Thank you very much for the question. Clearly, in an endeavour such as this, I'd like to be of any kind of assistance in providing technical knowledge and support to make sure that the process is as rigorous as possible. I've said I think the idea of a human rights impact assessment is a great endeavour to be embarking on, but I would have, I suppose, fundamental worries about the process as it is currently set out. It may be that it's just a question of fleshing it out in more detail.

One of the fundamental points that is raised by what you just said is that it's going to be the officials of the relevant departments who are going to be undertaking the assessment, albeit with contributions from civil society actors of the two countries. This is somewhat at odds, I would say, with good practice internationally in this kind of impact assessment process, whereby we would be hoping for the appointment of independent experts who would be undertaking the report and then would be reporting back to the relevant ministries, which would then be reporting to Parliament or whatever on the trade agreement.

So that would be the technical advice I would give to the process to make it the kind of rigorous one that's being adopted, as I say, in human rights impact assessment methodologies more generally, and in processes with regard to multinational corporations or parliamentary activities, such as those of the European Parliament, and with regard to the EU social impact assessments. We do see independent actors who are independently commissioned to undertake these assessments.

The other thing I would also say is that I was worried about the scope of the current proposal and worried that undertaking a report on all the provisions of the trade agreement each year would seem to me in a way to be setting oneself up to fail in terms of the rigour of the process. Those would be my immediate comments, but I am of course very available to help on any kind of ongoing basis.

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

Thank you, Mr. Harrison.

Are you aware of another free trade agreement that has a binding human rights reportage mechanism requiring an annual human rights impact assessment, an ex ante assessment effectively of the agreement? Are you aware of any other FTA with similar binding provisions on human rights reportage?

[Dr. James Harrison]

No. As I said, I think this will be the first time this will take place, which is partly why I'm keen to get the model up and running in the best way possible and to use the good practice, which we can see in other fields of human rights impact assessment, to make sure the terminology that we're using--human rights impact assessment--reflects, as I say, best practice elsewhere. And there are social impact assessments produced by actors like the EU and the UNEP, which we can draw upon as well for help in this endeavour.

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

Thank you.

Professor Richani, do you view the UN Commissioner on Human Rights as a credible source of perspective or opinion on Colombia and the human rights situation?

[Dr. Nazih Richani]

Yes.

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

Would you agree with the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in her report of September 2009, when she said:

I first want to commend the Government for the significant improvement in the overall security situation in the country since 2002. Respect for the right to life and the exercise of fundamental freedoms for Colombian citizens have improved.

[Dr. Nazih Richani]

We can problematize this statement.

I'm an expert on Colombia. That's the reason I'm telling you about the co-optation of the state itself from within. In other words, this aspect of Colombia's development has not been covered by that report you mentioned. We should pay attention to what's really going on and what has happened within the state itself. This report has not covered that damage, so therefore I don't think it's quite relevant.

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

You referred to the drug trade and the violence caused by the drug trade in Colombia. Why do you believe that people get involved in the drug trade?

[Dr. Nazih Richani]

Briefly, there is a lack of other options. That's why, for instance, I'm referring to disagreement on other agreements of a nature that could impact the rural economy and lead to hundreds of thousands of peasants losing their livelihood. One of the only options they have is the drug trade. The other option may be joining the new narco-paramilitary groups. The third option is joining the guerrilla movement, and the fourth option is organized crime.

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

At some point, sir, you're losing me on this. You're saying that the provision of legitimate free trade that is not drug-related wouldn't improve the situation and it would actually hurt the situation. I don't understand the rather circular argument that more legitimate trade will put more people in the drug trade. That doesn't make a lot of sense somehow.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Sorry, we're going to have to pursue that in the next round. You've run out of time, Mr. Brison. You will have an opportunity in the next round.

Mr. Laforest.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon to all the witnesses.

First, I have a question for Mr. Harrison.

You told us that you are, in a way, an expert in human rights.

Is that what you do at the university? You look at what is happening in places around the world where human rights are not respected or in connection with free trade agreements. Is that your specialty?

[Dr. James Harrison]

I missed some of that; I think there was a problem with the sound. But if you're asking about my speciality, it's on trade and human rights issues, and to a lesser extent on environmental issues.