Yes, I am, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.
The first is, of course, amendment NDP-01, and it would amend paragraph (h), from “promote sustainable development” to add the words, “including sustainable human development”, Mr. Chair. And I'll speak to that.
From the partially aborted hearings we had, which excluded a number of the organizations that wanted to come before this committee, it was very clear that neither the agreement as is nor any of the so-called amendments to it really dealt in a fundamental way with the issue of human rights. People from a wide spectrum of backgrounds--from human rights organizations, from labour organizations--are concerned that this agreement does not in any way respect the broad concerns that are out there in Canadian society about the human rights situation in Colombia.
The fact that we have the secret police of the government, the paramilitary, and military forces systematically killing with impunity--those are the words used by these human rights activists--shows that issues such as this need to be dealt with.
So the issue of promoting sustainable development goes beyond that to sustainable human development, which allows the appropriate definition of human development as being quality of life. It allows the people of Colombia to live in a state where their human rights will be fundamentally respected. Having the Colombian government report on itself is not any vehicle to have the actual issue--