We did not oppose the Canada-Colombia free trade deal. We never said that this trade deal should be axed. What we said was that this trade deal raises very significant, troubling human rights challenges, and this is what needs to happen to ensure that this trade deal goes forward in a way that will both avoid contributing to a worsening of human rights violations, and beyond that, hopefully, promote and encourage human rights change and improvement in Colombia.
We were disappointed that the recommendations we and this committee had made as to some key steps to make sure that would happen—the independent expert human rights impact assessment before the trade deal came into effect, and then regular ongoing independent human rights assessments thereafter—weren't accepted. In particular I refer to the opportunity to carry out the assessment before the trade deal came into effect, because that would have given, first, the opportunity to gather some baseline data; but second, it would also have given an opportunity to identify some of the key and obvious areas of concern and, quite possibly, some areas where law reform or other kinds of institutional action were needed in Colombia to address areas of concern before the trade relationship came into effect. That didn't happen, and that was disappointing.