Debates of Oct. 5th, 2009

Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, in the preamble to his question, the member indicated that we cannot separate economic arguments from human rights, and that is my point. That is what I did say in my speech. We cannot do that.

The point I am making is that I am not going to stand here in this House and downplay the existing problems in Colombia, but I believe that we have to take note of the considerable progress that has been made over the last six or eight years.

We have to take note of the many reports from the United Nations and other NGOs, but most importantly, and this is perhaps lost in this debate, we have to take note of the existing labour agreement between the country of Canada and the country of Colombia. It is all part of this package. This, I believe, is the strongest labour agreement ever signed by this country. It contains very tough measures to enforce the provisions and this will just lead to further progress.

Again my friend across makes some serious points, but I believe this agreement will assist Colombia and Colombians in getting beyond some of these existing problems.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my colleague from Charlottetown today who has provided some very thoughtful commentary on the situation in Colombia and the potential effect of a free trade agreement with Canada.

He spoke of the issues of civil war in Colombia. It is a country that for 40 years has wrestled with a civil war that began along ideological grounds but that has evolved more into just a drug war, in which there are former paramilitaries now, who are drug gangsters, effectively, and FARC, which is still active, not on the ideological side as much as on the drug side. It is a civil war that continues to be fueled by drug money.

When I was in Colombia a couple of months ago, some of the former paramilitary members with whom I met, who have been demobilized, told me that the reason they joined the paramilitaries in the first place was the lack of real economic opportunity in a legitimate economy or through legitimate trade. It is the same with FARC members. They joined FARC because the only job they could find was something to do with either the war or the drug trade.

Does the hon. member see the potential of the legitimate economy and legitimate economic trade with Colombia as providing opportunities for these people so that they do not have to go into either the drug trade or a civil war?

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is yes, I do, and I have described in my earlier remarks that this will provide an opportunity so that people will be given a choice, that they perhaps do not have to join FARC or one of the paramilitary operations, that they will have a legitimate opportunity to engage in the legal economy.

However, one other point I will make very briefly is that there are Colombians living in every riding in Canada and it is important to talk to them. They want their country to succeed.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the subamendment to Bill C-23, An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Colombia.

It is extremely irresponsible for the Conservatives to push a free trade agreement with Colombia, a country that has the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere and that is one of the most dangerous countries in the world for trade unionists.

The belief that trade will bring human rights improvements to Colombia is completely contradicted, not just by the facts but also by the text of the agreement. The full respect of fundamental human rights must be a precondition of any trade agreement.

There are four aspects of this free trade agreement that we completely oppose. Labour rights protection is something that is not happening in this agreement. Colombia is one of the most dangerous countries on earth for trade unionists who are regularly the victims of violence, intimidation and assassination by paramilitary groups linked to the Colombian government.

The Canada-Colombia free trade agreement does not include tough labour standards. Having labour provisions in a side agreement outside of the main text and without any vigorous enforcement mechanism will not encourage Colombia to improve its horrendous human rights situation for workers and will actually justify the use of violence.

The penalty for non-compliance is determined by a review panel that has the power to require the offending country to pay up to $15 million annually into a cooperation fund that can be summed up as “kill a trade unionist, pay a fine”. A key fact is that almost 2,700 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia since 1986. In 2008 the number of murders was up by 18% over the previous year, and this year 27 trade unionists had been murdered by September, not a number that inspires confidence.

The second aspect of the failure of the bill relates to environmental protection. The environmental issue is addressed in a side agreement with no enforcement mechanism to force Canada or Colombia to respect environmental rights. This process is seriously flawed. In the opinion of the New Democrats, this is just a smokescreen.

We have seen in the past how these side agreements are unenforceable. For example, there has not been a single successful suit brought under the NAFTA side agreement on labour. Another fact that should be noted is that nearly 200,000 hectares of natural forest are lost in Colombia every year due to agriculture, logging, mining, energy development and construction.

Copied from NAFTA's chapter 11 on investor's rights, the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement provides powerful rights to private companies to sue governments, which are enforceable through investor-state arbitration panels. In the opinion of the New Democrats, this is the third fault of the bill.

This is particularly worrying because there are many Canadian multinational oil and mining companies operating in Colombia. The arbitration system set up by chapter 11 gives foreign companies the ability to challenge legitimate Canadian environment, labour and social protections.

I can speak to how this impacts Canadian communities. Right now in my riding of Sudbury there is a labour dispute between Vale Inco, a Brazilian company, and the United Steelworkers Union, Local 6500.

We see first-hand what happens when governments refuse to act. Workers are laid off; families struggle to make ends meet; there are cutbacks to worker's rights, especially in pensions or in years of bargaining, and natural resources are sold to the highest bidder. Giving this opportunity to private business in Colombia and elsewhere will even further erode Canada's and Colombia's ability to pass laws and regulations for public interest.

Let us not forget that Colombia's poverty is directly linked to agricultural development in a country where 22% of employment is agricultural. With an end to tariffs on Canadian cereals, pork and beef will flood the market with cheap products and lead to thousands of lost jobs. In a country that already has almost four million people internally displaced, 60% of this displacement has been from regions of mineral, agricultural or other economic importance where private companies and their government and paramilitary supporters have forced people from their homes.

It is irresponsible for us to turn a blind eye to the Colombian situation. We know human rights abuses are happening. We know trade unionists are losing their lives. If we approve this bill, our actions would essentially give the Colombian government a green light to continue its abuses. We cannot overlook our responsibilities. Human rights are just that. They are not trumped by trade interests.

With all of that being said, even the Colombian government has been accused by international human rights organizations of corruption, electoral fraud, links to paramilitary and right-wing death squads, and using its security forces to spy on the supreme court of Colombia, opposition politicians, government politicians and journalists. Many government members, including ministers and members of the president's family, have been forced to resign or have been arrested.

What we do need, though, is fair trade. Fair trade means fully respecting human rights as a pre-condition for all trade deals. The Canada-Colombia agreement is fundamentally flawed and does little more than pay lip service to the serious damage it could do to human rights in Colombia.

What we mean by fair trade is new trade rules and agreements that promote sustainable practices, domestic job creation and healthy working conditions, while allowing us to manage the supply of goods, promote democratic rights abroad and maintain democratic sovereignty at home.

How can we promote fair trade?

New trade agreements should encourage improvement in social, environmental and labour conditions, rather than just minimize the damage of unrestricted trade. Federal and provincial procurement policies should stimulate Canadian industries by allowing governments to favour suppliers here at home. Supply management boards and single-desk marketers, like the Canadian Wheat Board, for example, could help replace imports with domestic products and materials.

Why fair trade and not free trade?

Fair trade policies protect the environment by encouraging the use of domestically and locally produced goods, which means less freight, less fuel and less carbon, and by promoting environmentally conscious methods for producers who ship to Canada. By contrast, free trade policies, even those created with the environment in mind, do little to impede multinational corporations from polluting with abandon. The environmental side agreement of NAFTA, for example, has proven largely unenforceable, particularly when compared with other protections for industry and investors.

A system of fair trade can encourage the growth of Canadian jobs, both in quality and quantity. Fair competition rules and tougher labour standards would put Canadian industries on a level playing field with our trading partners and slow the international race to the bottom that has resulted in a loss of Canadian manufacturing jobs.

Free trade rules, on the other hand, have hurt Canadian job quality. Since 1989, most Canadian families have seen a decline in real incomes.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think many of us in the House have serious concerns about this particular bill, recognizing the benefits on one hand that could possibly come to our country, as well as other countries, but also the concern about ensuring we pay attention to any human rights violations. However, most important, as I continue to go back and forth on this issue, I would like to know if there is the opportunity for us, through an agreement like this, to demand better treatment of the country's citizens and to extract something on the positive side as a part of this agreement if we were to go forward with it.

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when I started my speech on this debate, I talked about the four initial flaws that we see in this. There is no way to protect the environment. The labour practices are horrendous in Colombia. We see problems with agriculture, the poverty and many other things. I believe the member's colleague said it earlier talking about the chicken and the egg and which one do we put first.

We in the New Democrats think we need to put human rights as the first issue that we must address before moving forward with a trade deal.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the whole debate, as well as this member's contributions, with great interest.

One of the things that troubles me is that there seems to be an incongruity between the position the government is taking domestically and what it is doing abroad. We know, for example, that in Colombia, as the member detailed so eloquently, violence, crime and corruption are rampant and yet here at home the government would want us to believe that it is all about getting tough on crime.

I wonder if the member could comment on why it is okay to take that position here and yet say, in the rest of the world, that it does not matter what we stand up for, they can do as they wish. Is there not some hypocrisy in the government's stand with respect to this free trade deal between Canada and the Republic of Colombia?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it does seem to be a little hypocritical when we look at how those two are playing out.

However, we have New Democrats in the House of Commons to ensure we stand up to the government and ensure we bring forward the issues that are affecting people, not only in Canada but right around the world. When people are being affected by poverty, when people do not have the right to bargain fairly and when individuals are affected by poverty, New Democrats will be the ones who stand up and ensure we have something done, fairly and equitably for all.

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

Mr. Speaker, I had to stand up after the last comment from my hon. colleague.

As a member of the international trade committee, I had the honour of spending some time in Colombia. I met with the president when he came here and spoke to our committee. I would be the first to admit that it is far from perfect and that there are a lot of challenges in that country with the labour agreement and the environment agreement under this free trade agreement.

Would the hon. member not concur that from the discussions that we have had with witnesses who came forth that they support the free trade agreement? They are looking at a rising tide lifts all boats. Would it not be better from the human rights perspective to engage in dialogue with the Colombian people rather than isolating them and giving them no opportunities for the betterment of their society as well?

[Glenn Thibeault, NDP, Sudbury, ON]

Mr. Speaker, once again, it just comes down to what we want to put as our priority. Do we want to put economics first, ensuring there is a trade deal in place so we can get products out, or do we want to ensure human rights?

That is what we have been saying and that is why we are opposing this. We believe that human rights are the fundamentals on which everything should be based. After that issue is addressed then. of course. the economy could come forward, especially when dealing with Colombia.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, if I sound a bit repetitious of my hon. colleague, I probably will be. First, I want to say at the outset that the NDP is not against trade, in fact, Canada is a trading nation, and we know that. We need to seek out new trading partners around the world in order to export and import goods and services. However, what we in the New Democratic Party are so concerned about is that the rights and privileges that we enjoy as a society are part of those benefits in terms of any fair trade or free trade deal that we have.

There is a difference. We in the NDP have advocated for many years for fair trade, not necessarily free trade, but fair trade where coffee growers in South America, for example, get a fair return on their investment, as well as textile workers, et cetera. We want to ensure that those people from formerly third world countries are not exploited to the benefit of a few companies or a few individuals here in Canada.

Most important, what is imperative from our perspective is that when we open up trade deals with countries, such as Colombia, that the environment and human and labour rights be first discussed long before anything about economics.

I heard my hon. colleague from Kings—Hants talk about when he was in Colombia and how he met individuals who joined the military or the other group because there were no other economic opportunities and thus they may have slipped into the drug trade and so on. If free trade, in the eyes of the government, were to prevent that from happening, what is going on in Mexico right now where we have a NAFTA deal with that country and there are thousands upon thousands of people involved in the drug trade. In fact, many people are being murdered in Mexico on a weekly basis because of this. The reality is that trade did not stop that.

When NAFTA and free trade were signed 20 years ago, it was the NDP that said that human and labour rights and environmental rights must be included in those deals, but it did not happen. They were put in as side deals. Where are the documents and the conversations that talk about those side deals? Where are those human rights and environmental rights for all Mexicans right now? One would need to search long and hard to be able to get them and to see what concrete action Canada, or any other nation for that matter, has taken.

This is our fear. We believe that if the Canadian government signs a free trade deal with Colombia, the next thing it will talk about is other deals with countries similar to that. Human rights and environmental rights in Colombia will not be monitored by the Canadian government nor any other foreign agency. It will just continue on as business as normal, which is our greatest fear.

We have a kindred spirit with the workers of Colombia and their unions, associations and religious institutions. We believe they have a right to live in peace, freedom and democracy. Yes, trade will expand those aspects but they cannot be used as a side deal. They cannot be used as something we will talk about later. They must be paramount in the initial discussions.

If Colombia is serious about forming a fair trade deal with Canada and Canada is serious about forming a fair trade deal with Colombia, then those issues can be discussed. They could be imprinted on the front pages of that trade deal and there could be serious cross-monitoring and observation to ensure that the human rights abuses, the labour abuses and the environmental degradation going on in that country come to a stop.

On a sidebar, we in this country, through something called schedule 2 of the mining regulations, allow mining companies to take a perfectly healthy lake like Sandy Pond in Newfoundland and destroy it and use it as a tailing pond. Instead of having an independent tailing system free and clear of any aquatic systems, we allow this perfectly healthy lake to be destroyed just for the benefit of the mining companies. If we do that in Canada, what makes us think that any mining company in Colombia would do any better? In fact, it would probably do worse. This is the type of hypocrisy we have in Canada.

We talk about environmental and human rights from the government perspective but the reality, in many cases, is that we do not even practise it in our own home. If we have these types of domestic laws in Canada, what would the Colombian government allow in any kind of a trade deal?

It sort of has the cart before the horse in this particular regard. We have said very clearly that human and environmental rights are first and economics, profits and companies are second. We believe that is the way to go. If we did that and set that as a shining example for Colombia, imagine what we could do in those particular aspects right now in the entire southern cone.

While I am up here, I have to give special kudos to a company called Just Us! Coffee in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. This company has done a tremendous job in fair trade tea, coffee and chocolate. It has gone completely past the government and organized these deals themselves to ensure that the producers and growers of these beans and chocolate get fair remuneration for their products. If one group of individuals can do this, imagine what we should be doing as a government. We should be ensuring that those on the bottom of the economic scale get the hand up we have been asking for.

I have heard the expression that a rising tide lifts all boats. It is absolutely correct, but a rising tide can also sink boats if it comes up too fast. The government and the official opposition like to talk about human rights in a parliamentary sense, but we never really get down to the brass tacks and actually see them negotiate these things first, long before the economic opportunities exist.

We want to reconfirm that the New Democratic Party is not against trade deals with countries around the world. We would like to ensure that the workers of Colombia, especially the union leaders, have the opportunity to engage in discourse with their government without fear of being murdered.

Many years ago we celebrated and commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution. Thousands of Hungarians came over to Canada and commemorated the anniversary of being here for 40 years. I will never forget the sign they were displaying in the National Arts Centre. If I am not mistaken, some of Elvis Stojko's relatives said that it was nice to move to a country where politicians could retire and they are not executed.

That is what Canada is all about. We should be exporting these ideals around the world and especially in the country of Colombia. If we did that, I am sure the government would have our support. Until that happens, we have to raise our objections to these types of trade deals. In the long run, history has shown that it is workers and the environment that will suffer and very few companies will profit from this type of undertaking.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned the notion of safety for retiring politicians. I support that wholeheartedly, although I have no intention of retiring for the time being. However, one never has a lot of choice in these matters.

That raises a point. President Uribe's father was murdered by FARC some time ago. The violence in Colombia, during the civil war between ideological factions, with the paramilitaries on the right and FARC on the left, wreaked tremendous damage on the people of Colombia. The government has made progress. We have a trade relationship with Colombia right now, but we do not have a robust, rules-based system to enforce better labour or environmental practices now.

Given that we already have a trade relationship with Colombia, how does having the most robust rules on labour and the environment of any trade agreement Canada has ever signed make things worse for the people of Colombia? The member mentioned Just Us! Coffee, a great company in my riding that the Martin government made an investment in supporting. I agree that it has made a difference, but it is one company.

We want to see rules that govern the activities of all Canadian companies there to strengthen the rights and environmental protection of the people of Colombia. The people we met with there believe that legitimate economic opportunity that weans them off of the drug trade that is destroying the environment, destroying lives and creating violence can actually help.

How does having more rules make the situation worse? I have an additional question. Can the member name one free trade agreement that the NDP has ever supported? He said that the NDP—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order, please. The hon. member for Sackville--Eastern Shore.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, if the member is serious about a rules-based system then why not rules for union leaders? Why not rules for the environment? Why not rules for the poor?

There is no question that when a country ups its economy, a lot of downcast people may take part in that and become a bit more better off. We hope fair trade deals allow that to happen.

When Canada looks at a country like Colombia for deals, examples have shown that it is always the people in labour, the people in unions, the poorest people, the people who are trying to protect their environment who are always pushed to the side to make way for the economy.

There is nothing wrong with a growing economy, but to quote the hon. member, “robust environmental and human rights legislation” must be in trade deals before we talk about any aspects of the economy.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my friend talked about the record of trade deals. There was a question from a Liberal suggesting that the trade deals that his party and the Conservatives have negotiated have somehow been of benefit to the environment. I am thinking about some of the pesticide laws that the U.S. enforced upon Canada, increasing our acceptable limit of pesticide use on fruits and vegetables that we produce in this country, never mind the ones that we accept from the U.S.

I am wondering if my friend could comment on that or any other aspects of trade deals that have since affected Canada's own sovereignty and ability to construct laws to protect the health and environment of our country, never mind the countries that we trade with.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Speaker, a classic example is chapter 11. When we first came to the House in 1997, the Ethyl Corporation was suing the Government of Canada because Canada wanted to remove MMT, a known carcinogen, from gasoline. Not only did we have to pay heavy legal fees but we had to keep MMT in our gasoline. We were one of the few countries in the world that had to have that. Plus, we paid Ethyl Corporation $20 million. The government said it could not do anything because of the trade deal.

We just need to look at Hudson, Quebec and other cities in this country that want to ban the use of pesticides within their jurisdictions. They are being taken to court by these multinational companies because of these trade deals. That happened as a result of our deal with the United States, so imagine what could happen if we deal with other countries.

This is what we are repeatedly talking about. We implore the government to ensure that environmental and labour standards are put first and then the economy and business rights after that.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. I want to compliment my colleague, the critic, who has done a very good job of dealing with a very difficult situation and trying to balance our deep concerns for the human rights situation taking place in Colombia with our need to understand and support our free trade initiatives that remove the barrier to trade that we know is going to liberate people, particularly the poorest in the world, from the poverty trap.

We recognize that while aid is a useful primer, foreign direct investment enables countries to have active, vigorous private sectors, where jobs and wealth can be created and moneys can be utilized by responsible governments for the social needs of a citizenry. It is something we support and, hence, that we pursue and support with some provisions.

As has been mentioned before, our goal is to ensure there is improved access. We want to balance it and ensure that elements within this bill are going to be supportive of the social concerns that many Canadians have due to what they have seen in Colombia.

I draw to the attention of the House to two parts. The critic has done a very good job of trying to highlight the parts that we want to ensure were going to be included. The side agreements involve labour co-operation and the environment.

I know that our colleagues and friends in the NDP have spoken about this, but it is very important for us and Canadians to understand that there are two side agreements and they involve the following. The first is the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, the absolute importance to abolish child labour, the elimination of forced or compulsory labour, and the elimination of discrimination.

We are also supportive of a $15 million annual budget to ensure this agreement is going to be honoured and not violated. There are, however, some concerns.

There is one point I always try to bring forward. I had the privilege of travelling to Colombia some years ago. We know that the ELN, the FARC and the paramilitary are really driven financially by the moneys they are able to accrue from drugs, primarily cocaine and, to a lesser extent, heroin. There are, in effect, all groups of narco-terrorists. They may have started at one time, particularly the FARC, as having some political constituency and pursuing a certain political ideology, but for a long time that has not been the case.

Mr. “Sureshot” Marulanda died a couple of years ago. We saw the devolution of that individual from becoming a political revolutionary into a pure blooded narco-terrorist. It has been instructive to see how these larger groups are now operating.

In fact, what is happening now in the large context, which the government needs to be aware of and has not brought forward, is the input and responsibility of Venezuela, which is now harbouring the FARC and has for a long time been supporting it and other paramilitary groups to the detriment of the people of Colombia and the region. Frankly, we do not do a good enough job of holding to account the individuals in groups, like the government in Venezuela, to account for their destabilizing activities, in this case in South America.

President Chavez is engaged in activities that some in his country see as being supportive. In the larger context of stability within South America, he is a destabilizing factor. I do not know how anybody can countenance the fact that Mr. Chavez is selling the most vile of all weapons, landmines, to the FARC, that are being used now, despite the fact that Colombia is a signatory to the landmines treaty, the Ottawa process that was started by the Liberal Party.

Despite the fact that Colombia is part of invasive, destructive elements such as what Mr. Chavez is doing, it is killing people. Half the casualties are soldiers; half, however, are civilians.

I was in a different party at the time we were pursuing and pushing hard for the landmines treaty. Part of it was the fact that the majority of casualties were actually civilians. In fact, landmines are the poison that prevents a country from being able to be financially stable.

Imagine if there were one landmine in downtown Ottawa. What would that do for the commerce in Ottawa? It would shut it down cold. Therefore, imagine a country that has thousands of these landmines. The people live in fear because at any moment they could be blown up. It kills the economy. It kills the social infrastructure of a country. The foreign affairs minister and the Conservative government need to do a much better job in that area to deal with the external influences of what takes place to destabilize Colombia.

The other point is there would not be a FARC if there were not a demand for illegal drugs. The government unfortunately takes a position on substance abuse and harm reduction as something to be discarded or discounted. We can see the troubles we have had in the ideological oppression and position that the government has taken against scientifically proven harm reduction strategies, such as Vancouver's Insite or the North American opiate medication initiative, headed by Dr. Julio Montaner at St. Paul's Hospital.

Those things work. Why in heaven's name does the government not get its own House in order and work with the provinces to help reduce the demand of drugs, which are fuelling the internal problems taking place in countries such as Colombia and the Middle East? They are in fact fuelling, in part, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which are killing our soldiers in Afghanistan.

The need and the desire to have effective, scientifically-proven harm reduction strategies is critically important in the larger context. It is also very relevant to the situation we are talking about today. The harm reduction strategies that my colleagues in the Liberal Party have championed and allowed to occur today must continue. The government must work with those who are experts in the area of harm reduction to ensure that Canadians from coast to coast will have access to those initiatives that work.

The bill also has another very important part and it deals with the issue of the environment. We know that in South America, one of the two great lungs of our planet are in Amazonia. We know Amazonia is being destroyed. We also know that addressing deforestation is one of the simplest and easiest ways of addressing and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for developing countries.

Dr. Eric Chivian and Dr. Ari Bernstein of the Harvard School of Public Health and Dr. Michael Fay, a National Geographic scientist in residence in Washington, have put forth some very compelling solutions as to how we can look at areas that are critically important for the collective health, not only those countries but the world, and use those areas so they will be seen as assets.

Right now we look at forests as an asset when the trees are cut down, but in reality forests are public utilities. They take carbon dioxide from the environment and put oxygen back. That has a value. If we put value on carbon, we can put value on these wild spaces and a country can receive moneys for preserving those carbon sinks. It very important that there are ways of doing this.

I encourage the government to also construct an independent group to oversee this bill. The Liberal Party is very concerned with how the bill will be implemented. This is why we are supportive of the existing oversight mechanism. However, I also suggest there is a very important role and opportunity to bring in civil society in Colombia and Canada, to bring forth a group of independent experts, arm's-length from the government, who can oversee the implementation of the bill to ensure the labour, human, environmental and social benefits of it will be accrued to the people of Colombia.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure members of the House would agree that the member has given a very circumspect and balanced commentary on the bill. The member has addressed some of the concerns that have been raised through other members with respect to oversight, accountability, particularly in the area of human rights and the environment. A previous speaker, the critic for the opposition, talked about a robust rules-based regime that would drive this free trade agreement.

It has been said that side agreements really detract from the opportunity to make these oversight mechanisms work. Does the member think, given the oversight mechanisms that are subject not only to bilateral agreements but to multilateral institutions, there would be an argument that these side bar agreements would in fact reinforce the kind of accountability that all members of the House on all sides would like to see built in to this free trade agreement?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's excellent question really hits the nub of the matter.

Side agreements are important to support the central agreement. They are the ying-yang of the agreements. They provide a check and balance to ensure, in this case, a free trade agreement will not be utilized in a way that will not ultimately benefit the people.

The weakness I see, historically, is oversight mechanisms have been wanting. Part of the reason is that we might have an oversight mechanism without a proper enforcement mechanism. What has to be built into this is an enforcement mechanism.

It also gets to the heart of the need to rewrite and strengthen our Special Economic Measures Act, the SEMA, which a lot of the private sector companies in Canada want. They want to have discreet and defined parameters upon which they wan work. In that way, they will be able to work in a way that is commercially effective but also socially responsible.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I implore my colleague, who has spent a fair amount of time looking at trade agreements, to check with his consistent adoration of these side agreements being as purposeful as the agreement itself. If the meaning and support for rules around labour regulations and environmental regulations were so critical to the Government of Canada and the government of Colombia, then they would have been in the body and context of the official agreement, the one that is truly enforceable by both countries' courts and parliaments. Putting it to the side is in fact putting it to the side.

We have seen this with NAFTA in the side agreements around labour, environment and other important issues about which I have spoken very strongly. They were always put into these side agreements that had far less effect than the main body of these trade policies. This has been borne out in the fact of how the agreements come into force in the years that follow.

If he is so insistent, has he made the petition in the government to include these very important issues into the main text, the main body of the agreement, the one that gets all the attention, money and focus in the courts and in the parliaments?

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it does not preclude the fact of being able to have side agreements that are effective. We make the side agreements as effective as we want based on the negotiations in which we engage.

We need to look at this perhaps in a different way. Let us say that we did not have this agreement at all. Then we would not have any agreement on labour or on the environment. There would be no vector or roots at all to deal with these very important issues that not only affect Colombia, but also affect our country in the larger context.

Therefore, the question I think the member needs to ask himself is this. Is it better to have no agreement than an agreement that gets our foot in the door to deal with these larger issues that are critically important? I would submit that it is important for us to have strong side agreements to deal with these issues about we are mutually concerned.

Freedom of Speech

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in connection with the question of privilege raised by my colleague, the member for Mississauga South, last Friday morning. I would like to confirm that I witnessed the Minister of Natural Resources make a rude gesture to the hon. member last Thursday during question period, when he rose on an issue, and clearly that gesture was directed at the member.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-23, An Act to implement the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the Republic of Colombia, the Agreement on the Environment between Canada and the Republic of Colombia and the Agreement on Labour Cooperation between Canada and the Republic of Colombia, be read the second time and referred to a committee, of the amendment and of the amendment to the amendment.

Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I commit to you and the House to make no such gestures whatsoever, regardless of how passionate I become around this debate, the so-called Colombia free trade agreement. Right now we are dealing with a subamendment that was moved by my colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

I spent, as did many Canadians, a number of years working in Latin America as a volunteer and as a student. I was trying to, at first intentions, help out a subcontinent friend but I learned that the help was coming back to us. So many Canadians and Americans have benefited from their experiences in Latin America and have learned that the context there is critical for our engagement as a country. Having some understanding of the local lay of the land, some of the politics and history of the place is absolutely essential, whether we do business at a formal level or we do trade agreements as proposed.

The context of Colombia, which I spent some time living and working in as well, is so utterly different than the context that we work in, legally through the actual system of how voting happens or does not happen, the use of paramilitary forces, the drug trade, which the demand from North America and Europe throws, literally and figuratively, a grenade into the societies that produce these drugs. There is so much demand in our countries. Rather than properly deal with the issue at home, in the U.S. and Europe, where the primary markets are for these drugs, we joined the Americans in the war on the drugs and went there to impose upon them our ideas about how to stop the drug trade, which was napalming a bunch of fields and going after folks at every level rather than going at the demand side of the equation.

Knowing the context is so critical to the way Colombians see Canadians and North Americans, in general, and their European trading partners, when we get to the table that describes how we will trade with one another, the Colombian context has bearing.

We also have to understand the opinions and attitudes of the Colombians toward trade deals in general. How has it worked out for other trading nations, both within Mercosur and the trading blocs within South America, and the experiences of NAFTA in North America or the European Trading Union? When a developed country and a developing country get together, hopefully in a symbiotic trade relationship, the people particularly in the developing nation, nations like Colombia, Peru, Mexico, have a very keen interest because the impacts are much greater there than they are here.

We have not recognized this in our debate to this point. The decisions that we make, the and yeses and the noes that we implicitly put into a trade deal with a country like Colombia, have far greater impact there than they will for Canadians.

That is not to say there will not be an impact here. That has also been felt, obviously through agreements like NAFTA. We have watched the hollowing out of our manufacturing base in our country. We continue to lose value-added jobs and replace them with service sector jobs. The great economists within the Liberal and Conservative Parties, if there are any, say that this is a fantastic trade policy, this continual sliding slope of just not making stuff any more, allowing it to be made somewhere else. We buy it and send them raw resources instead.

The records of trade policies and instigating some of the change that the Liberal and Conservative members have talked about has been poor. To not recognize that pattern is critical. It then says that the negotiators on behalf of Canada did not recognize that context, did not recognize that history as well. They have brought forward an agreement that will continue the disastrous record of the so-called free trade policies that we have seen so far.

Also in this context, again utterly ignored by the government, is a Latin American arms is race going on, basically hinged between Colombia and Venezuela, with Peru and Ecuador getting involved. Now Brazil has come in as well as Chile and Argentina and they are buying more weapons per capita than anywhere else in the world. This is after two decades of not having done so. To enter into that context and not recognize those realities for a place like Colombia, where weapons and violence against union activists, labour activists, NGOs, environmental groups and indigenous groups has been on the rise for the past 15 years, seems to me folly.

It seems to me to be that we are putting on blinkers and saying that all we are doing is a trade deal. On the other hand, we are saying that this trade deal will lead to so much benevolence for the people and that the good people will be so much more secure, better off and so much richer after it happens.

It is also a question of asking what we actually want in our trade deals. The New Democrats have asked time and time again in this House for environment and labour accords, basic social justice that our party fights for in a Canadian context also to be implicit and put into the central agreements in the trade context. Yet time and time again we see them as after the fact footnotes to trade agreements. The central parts talk about other things, but at the end of the day when the government feels a little bit of heat and pressure from some NGOs, a little side agreement is thrown in to deal with serious issues such as the environment and labour.

To suggest that trade is a path toward a more benevolent, fair and equitable world is to ignore the many decades that these trading patterns have existed, all the way back to the sugar and spice trades in the Caribbean, and the African slave trade. All of these were great trading patterns that went on. They were trading for trading sake, and the benefits were declared in parliaments around the world, saying that it was good for business and therefore it must be good for the general population. We know the sugar and spice trades did not work out that way. We know the textile and mercantile trades did not work out that way.

We have seen the elites of two societies get together and hammer out a deal but they do not return to the general populace for any type of confirmation or understanding. The current government has done this and the previous government did it as well. There is no information campaign by the government around this trade proposal, nor is there any in the lead-up to a South Korea trade proposal which it is suggesting. Members of the Canadian public have learned about this trade deal through other means, through non-profit organizations and through MPs like our friend from Burnaby—New Westminster. They have engaged the public town hall by town hall, in church basements. They have talked to Canadians in a much more respectful way about what is being done on their behalf. That is what this place is meant to stand for.

The government spent $35 million on its outreach about its economic turnaround program. It spent $35 million to say how wonderful it is. It spent not a dollar to talk to Canadians about the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, not a dollar to talk to Canadians about the impact on their communities and their homes. It suggests to me that rather than being proud about it, the government hopes this slips through under cover of night.

Negotiating a trade deal for its own sake is folly. We know this. To go into a negotiation to simply be able to say that there is a negotiation one or that another deal has been made does not make any practical sense. One has to go in with a certain intention, a certain principle and purpose that one hopes to get in the end.

We hear all the lamentations and cries from the two parties. The Conservatives and the Liberals say that this will improve trade. One point that was raised earlier was that the fierce and violent drug trade in Colombia would somehow be alleviated by the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement. I would point to Mexico. Mexico signed on to an extensive trade deal with this country and the United States. Mexico's narco-traffic trade has gone through the roof. The violence amounts to a state of civil war in many states in Mexico. It has a trade agreement in place, which has rules defining how trade is meant to cross the boundaries. Yet colleagues from the Liberal Party this morning said that if we enter into a trade deal with Colombia, it should help alleviate the pressure on those citizens who are dying at the hands of narco-traffickers. That is truly living in another dimension.

We know that the connection between the narco-traffic trade and free trade represents two other worlds. If we want to talk about how to curb the violence and the trade in elicit drugs in Colombia, we could have that conversation, but let us not pretend that the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement could do anything about it.

On the environmental side, I have spent a great deal of time working with Latin American environment groups and their perspective of countries like Canada is not exactly exemplary. Many of the companies that work in countries in Latin America and South America do not have a great record. Every parliamentarian should check the Omai gold spill.

There is a good bill by a Liberal member to enforce Canadian environmental laws on Canadian companies when they operate overseas. That is a trade policy we would support. That is a trade policy that actually talks about having some sort of equivalency when we are dealing with other countries. However, to suggest that a blanket trade agreement will somehow cause Canadian companies and their Latin American counterparts to do better by the environment is an absolute falsehood and must be pushed to the side.

In fact, it is a side agreement. It is not nearly as enforceable as the main body of the agreement that Canada has negotiated. It shows the relative lack of importance the government and its supporters in the Liberal Party have placed on the environment and the treatment of labour activists in the Colombian context. This so-called trade deal is not a deal for the Colombian people any more than it is a deal for the Canadian people. We should instruct our negotiators to make these issues front and centre. If we believe in them so much, they should be the first two chapters of the trade agreement, not two throwaway subamendments at the very end of it.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned the geopolitical challenges faced in Latin America and Central America today, particularly the issue around the Venezuelan President Chavez. President Chavez' regime is threatening to cut off all trade with Colombia.

We have spoken with labour unions, businesspeople and workers in Colombia who are very concerned about the effect of Mr. Chavez' potentially cutting off all trade relations with Colombia, virtually shutting down industries in large parts of Colombia, particularly those contiguous with Venezuela.

Furthermore, the Chavez regime is supplying landmines to FARC in Colombia. We heard an intervention by one of my colleagues earlier today about the pernicious effect of landmines in Colombia, landmines being put in the ground by FARC, being supplied by Venezuela.

We also know of the relationship between Iran and its leadership and Venezuela now, and the fact that there are three direct flights between Caracas and Tehran every day.

Is it not important to the people of Colombia that we provide them with legitimate trade to help protect them against the thuggery being imposed on them by the Chavez regime in Venezuela?