International Trade Committee on April 8th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

No, you have 20 seconds, but make the most of it.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

One of the last statements you made was regarding how we can contribute to the reduction of poverty. How do you feel we can contribute to the reduction of poverty in a country like Honduras? I understand it's through CIDA. But through free trade, how is that going to happen?

[Cameron MacKay]

I think it's a matter of all of the things, frankly, that I mentioned in answering an earlier question to another member. It's the CIDA programming that helps to alleviate poverty, provide better health and education for Hondurans. It's the free trade agreement that will provide more economic opportunity—

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Do you have benchmarks?

[Cameron MacKay]

We have more security and justice programming as well, I would say. All of these things are mutually supportive.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Do you have benchmarks in the agreements?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

If you can answer that really quickly, I'll allow it. He's stretching it.

[Cameron MacKay]

I'm not sure I understand the question.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Do we have benchmarks that indicate, okay, we want—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

That's okay, you're done. This could go on forever but we won't allow it.

Mr. Cannan, the floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. MacKay, and to your team, we appreciate your being here today and providing some first-hand experience to enlighten our committee on this important free trade agreement with Honduras. I know we're joined here also by Her Excellency Sofia Cerrato, the Honduran ambassador to Canada and her team.

We've been working closely over the last few years with the Honduran office to try to ensure that this agreement is not only beneficial to our Canadian companies, but also that we have caring and compassionate Canadians looking at the aspect of being responsible Canadian businesses and bringing those socially responsible corporate practices to Honduras.

In your opening comments, Mr. MacKay, you said there is a provision for an article on corporate social responsibility that recognizes that both governments expect and encourage their respective companies operating abroad to observe internationally recognized standards of responsible business conduct.

We believe it's important to level the playing field to be competitive with the EU and the U.S.A. Could you enlighten the committee on what Canada is doing to ensure that Canadian companies operate in a responsible manner in Honduras?

[Cameron MacKay]

I'll begin by just giving a very practical example of the time that I was there as head of mission. We organized a full-day seminar in San Pedro Sula, which is the industrial capital of Honduras. It happens to be where Gildan is located.

We invited representatives of Canadian companies and other companies, representatives of Honduran civil society and government, to come for a full-day seminar and discuss what corporate social responsibility is, look at the international guidelines in that regard, and what is required in Honduras to have stronger programs for corporate social responsibility. This is just one practical example of outreach that was undertaken by the Canadian embassy with support from headquarters.

I know that a similar seminar was held by my predecessor just a year, or a year and a half, before that. I believe there have been others conducted since then. So corporate social responsibility is seen as one of the priority activities for the embassy in Honduras, and that work continues.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thanks.

I had the honour of being one of the committee members to travel to Peru last week. It's always an education when in Colombia and Panama, and now Peru, to see first-hand some of the incredible Canadian workers on the ground and the great work that our department officials are doing.

One of your former staff, Camille, who was working with you in Honduras and is now in Peru...so we had a chance to talk a little bit about some of the initiatives that have been under way for several years.

Could you maybe share a little bit about the anti-crime capacity building program and what this department—formerly the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and now the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development—is doing to help by working with the police forces and the attorney general's office in Honduras to try to provide security in the country for all Hondurans?

[Cameron MacKay]

Chair, maybe for that question I'll turn to my colleague Mr. Normandin, who was recently in Honduras and who is managing these issues now.

[Henri-Paul Normandin]

As we know, the justice system in Honduras is greatly challenged on several fronts, and a lot of the work that Canada does tries to strengthen the justice system.

A number of projects have taken place that train legal officials from judges to prosecutors to police to prison officials and so on, so as to increase their capacity to effectively fight crime and lack of security.

As this is being done, some of these initiatives, as we strengthen the capacity of local institutions, also can have a positive effect by way of greater protection of human rights, because human rights issues that arise in Honduras take place within a broader context of very weak institutions, including a very weak judicial system and a climate of impunity. As we build the capacity of the local institutions, we stand a better chance to not only fight crime but also to better protect human rights.

A lot of training has taken place with justice officials. We've also been providing some specialized equipment and providing training in investigative capacities for those in charge of the criminal justice system.

These are the types of activities, Mr. Chair, that have been conducted, on a fairly large scale.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you.

I have one last question. Basically there are two choices facing us as Canadians. We can isolate these folks in Honduras and let them be as they will and watch on the news as people, say, want to murder each other.

I have a constituent who just became engaged there at Christmastime. He loves the country, he wants to live there, and he wants to help out.

Can you elaborate a little bit more on the reason we chose Honduras at this time and what the benefits are from a Canadian government perspective, your perspective, of our engaging in this trade agreement rather than isolating them?

[Cameron MacKay]

I think I mentioned earlier and we had a good discussion in the committee this morning about all the challenges that face Honduras—poverty, violence.... Narco-trafficking, I have to say, is an overwhelming concern in the region, and particularly in Honduras. All of these things really undermine prosperity, security, and good governance, which are the three key themes in Canada's Americas strategy—prosperity, security, good governance, along with democracy.

We have a choice in terms of our foreign policy, our trade policy, etc. We can look at a country such as Honduras, facing all the challenges it has, and turn our backs and say, “You aren't doing enough, you need to do more, and after you do more, then we will engage with you.” Or we can do what the Canadian government's policy is, which is to engage with that country and say, “We recognize that you need help on all of these fronts, and so we will engage with you on all of these fronts.”

It's in that regard that Honduras is a country of focus for Canada's development cooperation programming. We are working closely with them in terms of security and justice programming, helping to build a legal system that will eventually be able to overcome the challenges my colleague mentioned of a culture of impunity, etc. We are engaging with them on prosperity, in part through some of the CIDA programming in helping directly some of the coffee and cacao farmers learn to engage with international markets. We are also negotiating and ideally soon implementing with them a free trade agreement that will liberalize the trade and investment environment, provide appropriate rules, and open the doors to more economic opportunity for both Canadians and Hondurans.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move on to, I believe, Mr. Davies and Madam Liu.

I think you're splitting your time.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Can you tell us whether DFAIT has any criteria that it uses to assess the democracy and human rights situation in a country before deciding whether Canada should extend preferential trade benefits?

In other words, is there any country in the world that DFAIT or this government would not sign a trade agreement with?

[Cameron MacKay]

This comes back to a point you raised earlier.

DFAIT doesn't sign trade agreements. The Government of Canada, after Parliament approves them, moves to implement trade agreements—just to be clear about the role of the public service versus the government, which is actually making these kinds of decisions. You're all part of it.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

So you just follow what the government tells you. You bargain with whoever the government tells you to bargain with. Is that how DFAIT works?

[Cameron MacKay]

The government of the day sets the foreign and trade policy priorities for—

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

So I'm asking whether the government has set any criteria for minimum standards of democracy or human rights standards before we will engage in free trade negotiations with a country. Again, is there any country that we wouldn't...?

Do you have criteria? Do those criteria exist in DFAIT?

Apparently not.

[Cameron MacKay]

There's no flow chart within the department—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rob Merrifield]

It may be an unfair question, because you are asking our bureaucracy what I think is a political question.

Go ahead.