International Trade Committee on May 25th, 2010

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

In a way, your presentation did not specifically address the current human rights situation in Colombia. You looked at the proposal, the current free trade agreement, the original proposal for an independent pre-study on the human rights situation in Colombia. You compared that with the current proposal of conducting a study at governmental level after the agreement is signed.

Could you tell me what your opinion is? If this agreement is so important and so beneficial for Colombia economically and if it is beneficial for Canada, do you not think that the agreement is strong enough to allow Canada to insist that Colombia improve its human rights situation before the agreement is signed?

So, if an agreement like that really is as important as everyone says, is it not a strategic tool that Canada should use to move the human rights situation forward in Colombia, rather than signing the agreement first and carrying out a study later?

[Dr. James Harrison]

Yes. If I've understood your question correctly, then clearly the optimum scenario from a human rights situation is that you have what we would call an ex ante assessment. An ex ante assessment would take place before the agreement came into place, because then you're in a position to, as it were, deal with any negative human rights implications before they arise. From a human rights perspective, you do not want negative human rights implications, be they of agricultural workers or whoever may be affected by the agreement, and then have to react, have to mitigate, have to take action to compensate, or whatever.

What you want to do in an ideal scenario is to undertake the impact assessments before the agreement takes place--this is what the EU does with its social impact assessments--and then react accordingly, in terms of making amendments to the agreement, taking whatever other action may be needed. So certainly an ex ante assessment is the preferable option.

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

As you said earlier, this assessment has to be done independently and not by the current governments.

[Dr. James Harrison]

Again, absolutely yes. The assessment process is and should be a rigorous and scientific one, undertaken by experts in the field. That means experts in economics, experts in human rights, experts in social science methodologies for undertaking the form of participatory assessment that's vital in this kind of human rights impact assessment. And the rigor of the process is only going to be assured if there are independent people undertaking the assessment. What we see in leading models of human rights impact assessment, not in the field of trade but in other fields globally, is that for a rigorous assessment to take place there needs to be an appointment of independent experts in order to undertake that process.

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

Thank you, Mr. Harrison.

I have a question for Ms. Paley.

A little earlier, you said that, in your opinion, signing a free trade agreement is, in a way, the result of pressure from the natural resource extraction sector in Canada. You said that lobbyists have met with members of Parliament.

Could you give us more details about that? What are the names of the members and the lobbyists? When was that pressure exerted?

[Dawn Paley]

Thank you for your question.

I don't have the dates in front of me. It was only through a cursory search of the Registry of Lobbyists in Canada. You could see that the companies, Nexen, Petrobank Energy and Resources Limited, as well as Talisman Energy, have all had lobbyists speak to MPs regarding the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, as well as a few others, including the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and Human Rights Watch.

I'd be happy to pass on more specific details, or perhaps one of your aides could assist you with that in the future.

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

I would like that, Ms. Paley.

I have no other questions, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

I think most of the witnesses she spoke about appeared before this committee. Certainly in Colombia we heard from representatives of those Canadian companies. Whether that's construed as lobbying or not, I don't know.

Is this construed as lobbying? Did you register to come today? There you go.

Mr. Julian, seven minutes.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all witnesses for coming forward today.

I'm going to move along fairly quickly, and I'll start with you, Dr. Harrison. You're quite right to be worried about the phantom amendment, the amendment that never gets tabled, that basically forces the Colombian government to do what it already does, which is whitewash human rights violations on an annual basis.

You may be interested to know that we had the Colombian government and the Canadian government before this committee and they said exactly the same things about human rights, that the situation was marvellous, really, and when looking at the details such as the DAS scandal, they simply did not talk about the bulk of the concerns around human rights: African Colombians, forced displacement. None of that ever appeared.

So the issue around whether compelling the Colombian government to do what it already does—whitewash human rights by publishing an annual report—is in any way credible is a very good question. Many of our witnesses, when they've commented on it, have said it lacks credibility. But you've spelled out a very clear blueprint about what would actually constitute a human rights impact analysis. So knowing what you know now, that the Colombian government reports on itself, does it need in any way the blueprint that you've set out?

[Dr. James Harrison]

As I've said before, independent reporting is at the heart of the assessment process. Without all that independent reporting process, you would have to have serious worries, particularly in the kind of scenario where there seems to be a lot of contestation about the actual kinds of human rights impacts.

So yes, independence is going to be a vital part of the process, and also, as I've said, worries about the frequency and scope, and finally the results in terms of the recommendations.

In terms of a report simply being laid before Parliament, your parliamentary processes may be somewhat different from mine, so please put it into your own political context, but in my past experience, the danger is that a report by Parliament is not necessarily acted upon unless there is a procedure specified, in whatever agreement or regulations in advance, about the kinds of actions that could be taken. That would be the final concern I would have regarding the current process, along with the other ones I've spoken about.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you very much.

Dr. Richani and Ms. Paley, I'd like to reference yesterday's Washington Post, where a former police major, Juan Carlos Meneses, has alleged that Uribe's younger brother, Sanitago Uribe, led a fearsome paramilitary group in the 1990s in a northern town in Colombia who killed what they called petty thieves, guerrilla sympathizers, and suspected subversives.

Meneses said the group's hitmen trained at La Carolina, where the Uribe family ran an agro-business in the early 1990s. This is the first time the Uribe family has been directly implicated in the killings. Before then, we've had what Uribe has called, I guess, “deniability”. We have direct implication.

At the same time, we have a motion to cut off witnesses, and both of you have referenced the issue around rural Colombians, the impact on Afro-Colombians, on aboriginal Colombians, and the concerns around this agreement making things much worse for those individuals.

My first question is how do you feel the direct implication of the Uribe family in brutal killings will change the debate around the Colombian trade deal in places such as the U.S. Congress?

Secondly, do you not feel it important for this committee to hear from African Colombians, from the free trade union movement, and from aboriginal Colombians, none of whom have had the opportunity to come before the committee and all of whom have asked to come before the committee in the next few days?

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Mr. Richani.

[Dr. Nazih Richani]

Let me just make a correction. I think his cousin was also implicated before. In other words, it's not the first time that Uribe's family was implicated with narco-paramilitary groups or paramilitary groups, so maybe other members of his family were also implicated before.

Again, the issue is not really Uribe. It's the heavy penetration of organized crime in the state. That's essential to keep in mind. We have a state that is heavily penetrated, and you will see the consequence of that penetration even after the elections. Therefore it is going to take the Colombian state many years to purify itself of this penetration process. It is really a very serious concern. In the Latin American context maybe Guatemala is second and maybe Mexico is third. But definitely Colombia is really high in terms of the level of penetration, so it goes beyond Uribe and his family, his cousin, and his brother. It is the whole apparatus of the state itself, and that's the most dangerous aspect that is attracting the attention of this committee to pay extra care. I've been studying that. I'm warning you—in other words, that's a warning shot. You have a state that is compromised, its legitimacy is compromised. Can you imagine 30% of the congress, 30% of the police force, the entire DAS department compromised? What kind of a state is this? That's the fundamental question.

On the implications of the free trade agreement, again, the economic consequences of that is basically to undermine an ongoing process of the food security of the country itself. According to the free trade agreement, the key sectors that will be affected immediately are, for instance, the growers of lentils, barley, wheat, and peas. We're talking about the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people who might be affected. Just two days ago, as you may know, the president signed an agreement with the EU. Immediately, the reaction was that the cattle ranchers and the small-cattle ranchers were saying that 400,000 people will be affected by this type of an agreement. If you take the agreement of Canada in the context of all of the agreements that Colombia is making, it's disastrous for the future of the nation in terms of food security, its political security and stability, and ongoing conflicts. Therefore it's not only about Canada and Colombia; it's about what's happening to Colombia because of these different trade agreements that Colombia's government is committed to. There's a certain part of the economic development that's not sustainable.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you, Dr. Richani.

I'll ask Ms. Paley to respond.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

I'm sorry, Mr. Julian. That is eight minutes.

We'll go to Mr. Keddy.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our witnesses. I will try to leave Mr. Cannan a bit of time. He has a couple of questions as well.

My first question is to Mr. Harrison. Mr. Harrison, you present yourself as an expert in human rights assessments, and I appreciate that. Hopefully you understand that this is a new process here. It's not one that we've followed up on with free trade agreements in the past. If you will, we're going into unchartered territory, territory that quite frankly I think is positive for this trade agreement. The reaction and the answer I'm looking for from you is the fact that, as I see this at least, what we're doing, first of all, is having rules-based trading. That puts parameters on a whole number of areas. By adding the human rights assessment to that, we've put parameters in another area that traditionally would be outside of free trade agreements.

You've talked about the assessment process and the importance of it being independent, and I would agree with that. But the importance of adding it to the agreement is that no one is trying to say that every free trade is perfect. No one is trying to say that human rights in Colombia has been perfect. What we are saying is we do believe, and every indication has proven, that human rights have improved in the last decade in Colombia. There's still work to be done, but certainly we're moving in the right direction. So adding this human rights impact assessment to the free trade agreement, moving forward with a rules-based agenda on human rights, I would expect should be a positive step in this agreement.

[Dr. James Harrison]

Thank you very much for your question.

First of all, I don't purport to be an expert on the human rights situation in Colombia.You have experts before your committee who can talk to you on that. So I'll concentrate on the human rights impact assessment process.

You are right, we are at the forefront of a new process here in Canada, and these models are being developed globally. There is, as I said, an existing corpus of human rights impact assessment data to draw upon in terms of good practice for how this should be done, and that's not just a human rights impact assessment of trade agreements, of which there are few, but human rights assessments more generally. I've been researching a number of different models in a number of different areas, and there are core principles that come out of those impact assessment methodologies. Independence, which you've touched upon, is one of them. The others I set out briefly in the paper that you have, and I can go into those in more detail.

My concern is that when one adopts terminology like human rights impact assessment, one also adopts, and rightly so, the baggage of that terminology, so that there should be a whole range of recognized procedures to go with that. My worry about the current proposal as it stands—and as I say, there is not enough detail there to judge it in full—is that it may not have the rigour of what I would say is existing good practice in this field. So when we talk about rules-based trading, we need to be able to assess through human rights methodology the impacts of those rules on affected persons. That's what this form of impact assessment purports to do. My worry is that.... Sorry, I'll stop there.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Thank you, because I do have a couple more questions. I appreciate your answer and some of the challenges that I think lie ahead of us.

To Mr. Richani, I listened closely to your testimony, and I really can't quite figure out if the glass is half full or half empty. You stated at the beginning that about 70,000 farmers could be displaced because of agricultural imports. Then you stated it could be hundreds of thousands, and finally you just stated it could be in excess of 400,000 farmers who could be displaced. I'm not questioning numbers here—I really don't know—but again I want to go back to the whole idea of food stability.

Food stability—and I think Mr. Brison started to pick up on this—is based not just on subsistence farming, but on people having jobs and having opportunity, first of all having supplies of food they can purchase and second of all having the money to purchase it. So there are a number of things when we talk about food stability.

You also talked about the increase in the budget in military spending, but quite frankly in the last ten years human rights has improved remarkably in Colombia, and I mean by every conceivable measure. I'll repeat myself: no one is saying that human rights in Colombia is perfect. Government officials themselves don't pretend to say that, and never have. So my question to you is, if an increase in the military gives you increased stability in the country, more ability to travel, and more ability to pursue your livelihood, isn't that a good thing for Colombians? How can that be seen as a negative thing?

[Dr. Nazih Richani]

I gave you figures from different sectors that could be affected. Therefore, to answer you specifically, you have to add them up. In other words, the 400,000 are the ones that are small producers of milk. These would be affected directly by the latest agreement between Colombia's government and the EU, according to some statistics. And the other figures that I provided you are from other sectors.

If you want the overall assessment, I would think that all these free trade agreements will impact food security. We're not talking about having money. It's the people who are producing food themselves who will be displaced. That's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about people having money to buy food, we're talking about the ones who are producing now. These free trade agreements will displace them to the cities, and they will become consumers of food rather than producers of food. That's the dilemma.

The second component is to have security, but security at what cost? Who is benefiting from this security? And the provider of security itself is being compromised. The reason I provided all this intervention is to tell you that it is true that Colombia has more army and it has more security, but the security has a social content, and that's what we're talking about here. We could establish a fascist regime where security is very well done, but to benefit whom? That's the critical question.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

We're moving now to round two. These will be five-minute questions and answers.

Mr. Silva.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also thank the witnesses for their presentations.

Dr. Harrison, it's been a struggle, at least for me as a member of the committee, trying to figure out how one goes about doing an independent human rights assessment. I've always been in favour of that idea, but even speaking with NGOs, I've always struggled with how one goes about doing it. The reason I say that, to give you a context as to why it is a challenge here, is that it seems that some of the NGOs who come forward and even labour and even government officials have a certain perspective and a viewpoint. I wonder if you invite independent experts....

Most people who have knowledge of Colombia seem to have a viewpoint one way or the other. They are either for or against the agreement, or they focus on the human rights and no development, or they see the human development and the progress that's taking place and sometimes suppress the human rights issues. So there are almost polar opposite views.

Some of the attacks, for example, on the Uribe government.... It is a government that was democratically elected and at one time many independent polls had its popularity at 80%. Yet the reports I've received from labour, for example, call it a dictatorial government. So it becomes very hard to read the assessment of human rights if you start labelling in a black and white scenario.

As a member of this committee, I'm trying to figure out where independence and fair-mindedness come into play. How does one arrive at that? What individuals do we call upon when it seems that academia and government and labour all have a different, polar opposite viewpoint on the situation that's taking place in Colombia?

[Dr. James Harrison]

Thank you very much for your question.

Again, what we need to be careful about is what we're talking about with the human rights impact assessment, the process of analyzing the human rights implications of the agreement itself. So yes, you may have all kinds of disagreements about the overall behaviour in Colombia on human rights terms, and there is far more expertise out there than I have on that.

But in terms of the process, when you hear the kinds of disagreements that I am hearing now between people talking, for instance, about the issue of food and the issue of how the free trade agreement will impact on subsistence farmers in Colombia, the idea is that by undertaking concrete, empirical research, which is human-rights-focused, on these kinds of issues--as I said, in preference in advance of the agreement being signed but as a second option, what we call an ex post assessment--you will cut through that ideological discussion. And instead, you may bring people together on the minutia of what's happening in the country. So the idea would be that it would then become a source of empirical data, which will feed into these arguments.

Who conducts the assessment is the second part of your question. There are independent experts doing this kind of work globally. I've just been invited to get involved in work like that in the Pacific, and I saw the other experts who were invited to tender for that work. That told me how many experts there are globally working on human rights and trade issues. So if you have to reach outside Canada and Colombia for expertise on this issue, that is perfectly possible, I think.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

How do you get a group of eminent individuals, and do they have to have agreement on the report? How many would you call upon, and would they be from different sectors? Certain sectors will have a certain perspective and bias towards one thing or another. I'm still struggling to understand how this would be independent.

If you're going to have acceptance by all sides—labour, government, business, academia—then you probably would want to include one of those types of individuals in it. How do you go about getting agreement from people who might come in already having their own perspectives on trade agreements, for example?

[Dr. James Harrison]

There are probably three different ways in which you might tackle those problems. The first might be with oversight of the actual impact assessment process. There's a decision that has to be made about the committee, or whatever structure would be appropriate in the Canadian context, that would oversee the process and set the parameters of the impact assessment. There you may opt for a model that gives you a range of different stakeholders.

In terms of the assessment team itself, the key there is in the members' expertise in the subject matter. You're going to need someone with expertise in economics assessment, someone with expertise in human rights, and someone with expertise in social science methodologies.

Then it's a question of who you consult as part of that process. The consultation process and the way that consultation process feeds into the final report is another way in which you can try to balance the views that are heard within the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Lee Richardson]

Thank you.

We're just getting our timing down. People are right on schedule today.

Go ahead, Mr. Cannan.