Mr. Speaker, as I was saying before question period started, this bill cannot be taken lightly and serious questions need to be answered.
One cannot discuss this bill without talking about, for instance, the human rights issue in Colombia. We all know that in the last number of years three million persons have been internally displaced. This figure is astronomical; it is only second to that of Sudan. We see Sudan on the television much more regularly, but we do not see Colombia as often. We see the drug lords, the paramilitary and all that, but we do not really understand when we do not see the three million people who have been displaced.
Who are these people? These are poor people, farmers, people who are being abused. In the first half of 2008 alone, 270,000 people were displaced. This is the highest rate in the past 23 years. This is not a positive trend. It is something that should concern us a great deal.
Again, as in all conflicts around the world, women in particular are vulnerable to the displacement. Women and children always bear the brunt of any conflict or any instability. This is nothing new, and it is no different in Colombia. We see this again. It shows up in our figures.
This is occurring in areas that are rich in crops, rich in minerals and rich in oil and gas. What does that mean? This is land that has a lot to offer. It means that Canadian companies that may be exploring for gas, for minerals would actually be in this area. The economic development taking place would be in those areas where people have been forced off their lands and sometimes killed.
The people are being displaced by the millions. It is not by a few, but by the millions, not that any would be acceptable. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been watching and monitoring this for some time.
The economic development in these areas would be at the expense of millions of people who would be forced off their lands. Many have already been forced off their lands. This goes very much to a justice issue and to a human rights issue.
Innocent civilians, mostly rural people, are the ones who are paying the price in a different way. As some of us may know, there was a push on the part of the government to identify and kill the paramilitaries and the drug lords. What happened is what we call false positives. Innocent civilians have been killed and are being killed by Colombian military, then they are dressed up as rebels and being used as proof that rebels were killed in combat.
President Uribe from Colombia had initially backed the military saying that none of this was true, but he later announced 27 soldiers and 3 generals were being dismissed as the result of 11 specific killings. This is a horrible situation. In addition to the displacement, innocent people are being killed and dressed up in pretense of the bodies being paramilitary.
It seems that the military is under tremendous pressure to demonstrate that it is actually succeeding and getting rid of the paramilitaries, the drug lords and so on, but killing innocent people and putting them forward as such is not the answer. Again, that is a horrendous human rights abrogation that needs to be 100% stopped, not just in part. There are over 1,000 victims, dating back 2003. Many of these young people from poor areas were actually paraded in such a manner. I think this is totally unacceptable. We need to take these things into consideration when we look at this trade bill.
For years, President Uribe publicly denied that the problem even existed. However, as we have seen, he fired members of his own military when he was forced to deal with the fact that it is happening, and it continues to happen to this day, according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Corruption is another critical area. Politicians and military being linked to paramilitaries and drug lords is a common discussion. Again, both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International continue to talk about this and continue to mention the crises in this area.
Because of this, it is essential that the government does a human rights impact assessment before any free trade agreement is implemented or passed in the House. A human rights impact assessment is absolutely critical to ascertain what is happening, to what extent innocent people are being killed, abducted and removed every day for the sake of economic progress.
These recommendations are not new and they are not new to the government. In fact, all the government members supported it. The recommendations from the report of the Standing Committee on International Trade entitled “Human Rights, the Environment and Free Trade with Colombia” stated that improvements needed with regard to displacement, labour laws and accountability for crime have to happen before a bill goes through and that government must show a more constructive attitude to human rights groups in the country, again, before any bill goes through.
This again was supported by all members on all sides of the House. None of these recommendations were considered before an agreement was signed in November 2008, before the report was even tabled in the House. I find that very disturbing. The reason the standing committee did all that work was to address these issues. They need to be addressed in this instance; otherwise, we will be an accomplice, in a sense, to what is going on.
Let us look for a moment at labour. Colombia has led the world in the killing of trade unionists. Some 2,600 people have died since 1986. Just imagine, 2,600 unionists, union leaders, trade leaders have died since 1986. If that were to happen anywhere else in the world, we would be appalled. This is what is happening in Colombia. Mostly this has been attributed to paramilitary groups who have deliberately targeted unionists who have been getting in the way, by giving people rights, employment rights. The paramilitary does not want any of that.
More than 400 of them were killed under Uribe's government. So the killings go on. While it has come down somewhat, it is still going on, and 60% of all trade union related deaths in the world occurred in Colombia last year. That is a huge number.
As a result of pressure, some changes have happened in Colombia. Some of the pressure has come from the United States. Violence has been the major roadblock for the U.S. government signing the FTA with Colombia, so Colombia has made some efforts to deal with the problems of impunity and in the justice system. That has brought down some of the problem, but it has not resolved it.
In response, again to the U.S. Congress, Colombia was prompted to work with international labour organizations to improve the situation of trade unionists being killed or abducted. All this activity has resulted in the appointment of specialized staff for a prosecutor's office to effectively prosecute those responsible for assassination of union members.
That is a good move, obviously, and some things are beginning to change. However, when we look at the statistics, in 97% of the cases there have been no convictions. The convictions were consistently low under Uribe, but they jumped to 43% in 2007, and 53% as of October, resulting from pressure from the U.S. Again, the lack of convictions was high in the early parts of Uribe's administration and they have jumped up. With the insistence and with pressure from the United States and others, we can see that is having some impact.
The labour side agreement that is part of the bill is not as strong as the NAFTA labour agreement and the government is subject to a fine to a maximum of $15 million but this does not help labour in any way. Labour does not have a say. Labour is not part of the dispute mechanism and therefore it does not improve the situation in any way. Again, not only does the labour agreement need to be stronger than NAFTA but not weaker. That needs to have a proper assessment. It needs to be looked at and it needs to be assessed.
The tribunal that has been set up for disputes I do not think will be very effective. As I said, it does not have legal representation on the tribunal. We cannot have a situation where money is fined but the government makes the decisions and labour is not part of it. Labour is an intrinsic part of this. What has been happening to the labour movement in Colombia is absolutely atrocious. It is an issue of human rights. In order to protect the labour movement, it needs to be part and parcel of the decision and the side deal needs to be strengthened. Otherwise, it will be meaningless.
President Uribe indicated more recently that he wants to amend the constitution to run for a third time, which is another troublesome part of this whole area. He now has a popular rating approval of 70% to 80%, so this is not out of the realm of possibility that he will actually do this. However, this would have serious implications for democracy if this were to move forward. Yes, he has support of 70% to 80% because to some degree violence has come down, but it does not address the large number of issues that I just mentioned before in regard to the large number of people who have been displaced, the labour movement and corruption.
It is very troublesome when a government comes to the end of its term and then decides to amend the constitution to give itself more time. That is not the mark of a strong democracy nor will it help to stabilize the situation in Colombia.
In several instances Uribe has denied problems existed but then has only acted under pressure from the U.S. when it found that in fact there was a problem and he had to hold the assassins of the trade unionists accountable.
I can give other examples. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have pointed out that an arrangement was made with the United States to extradite drug lords to the U.S. to be tried only for drug trafficking and not for the human rights atrocities and for the killings and murders that they committed in Colombia. Some of them have been convicted for up to 20 years in jail but are not facing war criminal charges.
Again, the international community should be concerned about this. By extraditing them to the U.S. to be tried under drug laws is serious, but it is almost nothing compared to what they should be getting. They should be tried in the proper courts for crimes against humanity. This is something that needs to be looked at and discussed. Serious human rights implications must be addressed and are not being addressed. This is why an independent human rights impact assessment is needed before any document is signed. It is needed badly. As I said at the outset, the Conservative government is moving toward tied aid. This is an area that really bothers me to no end tremendously.
If a South American country wants aid, then it had better sign a free trade agreement, it seems. This what the government seems essentially to be saying. If there is a free trade agreement, then there will be aid. Aid should not be tied to a free trade agreement and should not be tied to Canada's economic success. It should be untied aid. Otherwise, we are being total hypocrites and we might as well shut down the Canadian International Development Agency completely. This is totally unacceptable.
That is why the government is abandoning Africa. Again, it goes back to that. We do not hear any economic bilateral agreement in any of the discussion with Africa.
We must ask a number of questions. Tied aid is unacceptable. Tying our economic success to free trade is not acceptable. We should be working for the benefit of the country. That is what international aid is about.
The government should slow the bill down and do a human rights impact assessment immediately because that has a social impact as well. A stronger labour side agreement needs to happen. What we have now is not good enough.
A CIDA assessment needs to be done. The House is owed a report from the minister responsible for CIDA telling us what kind of development assessment CIDA has done and what it has to say about how this trade agreement would impact the poor people of Colombia. Is it going to hurt them or is it going to benefit them? If the balance of the trade agreement is negative for the poor people of Colombia, then the government and Parliament has no business approving this document.
