Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here.
I'm just finishing looking at your testimony. This is one of the things we're concerned about. Obviously we want to open the markets here, but we're always concerned about the rights of individuals when we're doing business with a non-democratic government.
I have a report from 2011 here. I'm going to read from it and get a response. It is International Women's Week, and I think it's important that when Canada looks to markets, if we have overlooked other markets that use child labour or that have environmental, health, or human rights violations and we have provided them access to trade, that doesn't make it right for us to do it for others in the future. I think it's important to make that statement. This is just some evidence we have here:
In April it was reported that around 200 migrant workers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India, 75% of whom are women, were found to have been trafficked to the International British Garments factory--owned by the security company G4S--stripped of their passports and held under conditions of indentured servitude. Allegations of sexual harassment and rape of a young Sri Lankan woman were found credible, and workers reported that at least two of their colleagues were overworked to death.
I would like to know just in general how we can guarantee specifically through this agreement that human rights issues like this are actually going to be addressed and that we're going to have enforcement provisions necessary to ensure that Canadians aren't getting access to another market that's going to use exploitation of women as part of its system. Should we be benchmarking and demanding benchmarks from Jordan about this exploitation to ensure that it's going to be eradicated at a particular date in time?