Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the amendment on behalf of the New Democratic Party and our leader.
The amendment presented by the Bloc today would simply stop the process around the bill. There is no doubt the House should not endorse in any way what has gone on in Colombia.
Over the next few minutes, I will talk about some of the myths that have been put forward by the Conservatives and their Liberal supporters around the situation in Colombia, citing some of what is actually going on and about which Canadians need to know. A lot of Canadians are already aware of this, which is why thousands of letters, emails and phone calls have gone to the Liberal leader's office since he announced he would support the Conservatives, propping them up, on the bill.
Bill C-23, the Canada-Colombia free trade act, has been characterized by some people as the Hell's Angels trade act. That is not too far from the truth when we look at the links between the administration and the president with murderous paramilitary thugs and drug traffickers, going back many years, which is a matter of public record. I will come back to that in a moment.
The minister rose in the House and said that he wanted a fact-based discussion. Over 20 minutes, he did not present a single fact to back up his argument. In fact, he made the ludicrous argument that somehow labour leaders supported this agreement. That is absolutely absurd. There is not a legitimate trade union in Colombia or a single trade union in Canada that supports this deal. All reputable human rights organizations have clearly said that this is a very bad idea.
It is hard to have a debate when only one side presents the facts. The NDP will present the facts as will members of the Bloc. The other side provides personal attacks and personal invective from the minister and the Liberal opposition to the people oppose to this agreement, but they have not brought forward a single fact or argument.
Let us start dealing with the facts.
We heard the minister say that somehow things were getting better in Colombia. He clearly has not been addressing the facts or looking at the evidence.
As my colleague from Sherbrooke just mentioned, the number of killings of human rights advocates, trade unionists, people simply working for a better quality of life for themselves and their co-workers, has climbed over the last three years. That is an undeniable fact.
There has been an increase in forced displacements. Forced displacement is when armed paramilitary thugs force poor peasant farmers off the land to take refuge in barrios and shanty towns elsewhere in Colombia. That property is then taken over by those murderous paramilitary thugs and they can sell off the land.
A special report was presented recently by the Center for Popular Research, Education and Policy on the number of extrajudicial killings. The report says that in 2008 there were 580 victims of extrajudicial executions. Members of the army are allegedly responsible for 165 of those executions, which essentially means cold-blooded murders, and 372 were the responsibility of paramilitary groups. This study shows that the number of extrajudicial executions has doubled over the last three years.
We have seen an increase in the number of murders of human rights advocates and trade unionists. We have seen an increase in forced displacement, violent displacement, the robbery of land from poor peasants. I imagine the Conservative government is not too concerned about that as long as they are poor.
We see a doubling of extrajudicial executions. We also have substantial increases in the number of disappearances. That has been profiled by many journalists. Those disappearances are really murders, but they never find the bodies. There has been a steady and undeniable increase in the number of murders, disappearances, executions, cold-blooded murder, and forced displacement. That is undeniable.
The idea that somehow things are getting better in Colombia can only be put forward by people who do not have a hand on the facts or who simply do not pay attention. If they are not paying attention, then they very clearly do not have an understanding of the situation on the ground in Colombia.
We then have to look at what human rights groups are saying. I can cite report after report. I only have 20 minutes today, but I know my colleagues in the NDP caucus, as we do our homework, will be bring forward citations and quotes from the many human rights organization that have condemned this. Unfortunately the minister, who I like personally, simply did not bring forward a single useful fact or argument to back up his case today,
I will cite the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, in its recent report entitled, “Making a Bad Situation Worse: An Analysis of the Text of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement”, said:
Colombian civil society and human rights organizations have been clear: they do not want this agreement....The terms of the trade agreement also raise serious human rights concerns for vulnerable populations in the context of Colombia’s conflict economy. The FTA will hit small-scale farmers with low-price competition, and may further expose indigenous people, Afro-Colombians and rural dwellers to land grabs by Canadian mining companies equipped with powerful new investor rights, but no binding responsibilities. Introducing such provisions into this troubled context will chill democratic dissent and tilt the scales further against already disadvantaged and victimized groups.
We have talked a bit about the forced displacement, and this is exactly to what this report from very reputable Canadian organizations is referring.
It goes on to state:
The side agreements on Labour and the Environment do not address these threats; to the contrary the latter creates perverse incentives for weak regulation. The agreement makes a bad situation worse.
So much for the pretension from the Liberals that somehow this makes the situation better. So much for the pretension from the Conservatives that somehow they actually care about human rights.
Very clearly this report contradicts both of them. Unfortunately I cannot cite all of it, although I wish I could. However, I will read parts of it into the record because Canadians need to know what those who understand the situation in Colombia on the ground have said. It states:
Importantly, the Colombian government is mired in a growing political scandal for its close links to paramilitary death squads that have terrorized the countryside and even threatened Canada’s embassy in Bogotá. Increasing numbers of President Uribe’s close political allies, including the chief of security, personal advisors, and members of Congress have been tied to paramilitary activities. The Colombian government is, thus, looking for international backing.
The Conservatives, because they are ideologically great friends of right-wingers, wherever they may be on the planet, are tying in Canada's so-called trade objectives into trying to endorse the Uribe government.
What are they endorsing? Earlier when the minister was in the House, I started to talk a bit about some of the reports that have come out, the evidence and testimony, which are available to the minister and any Conservative member of Parliament. They talk about what has gone on and what have been the past links and the current links with President Uribe.
I read into the record at that time part of an article from the Washington Post, and the minister then said that I should have read further. He pretended somehow that President Uribe was concerned about the revelations that secret police in Colombia had spied on supreme court judges, opposition politicians, activists and journalists. The latest revelations on top of that are the influence peddling scandal involving the president's two sons, Tomás and Jerónimo, and a widening probe of the links between Uribe's allies in congress and right-wing paramilitary death squads, these murderous thugs who the Conservatives seem to want to be hand in hand with.
If we read further on in this Washington Post article, we actually get the response of the president, and it is not at all what the minister pretended, again either because he has not read the article, does not know his facts or has not done his homework. I am not sure why.
However, for whatever reason, he neglected to see that what actually happened is that the president has called these investigations politically motivated. In other words, far from this idea that President Uribe has stepped forward and wants to make things clean with the influence peddling scandals involving his sons, the links with his top aides and paramilitary organizations, no, it is quite the contrary. President Uribe has actually denounced the few prosecutors who are still trying, making a real effort, to maintain the rule of law in Colombia.
This is what opposition leader Rafael Pardo said about the Uribe regime:
This is a regime that uses intelligence to co-opt political rights. How can you have political guarantees when the intelligence service is following politicians during their campaigns?
That is the responsive Uribe regime.
However, it goes back much further than just last week, when these latest scandals erupted. We have had testimony and evidence presented about President Uribe's involvement with paramilitaries well before that, going back to articles that came out in February:
In testimony presented last February before the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia, the ex paramilitary member Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández claimed that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his brother, Santiago, participated in the planning of a massacre which took place in the northern part of the region of Antioquia, according to a copy of the testimony obtained by El Nuevo Herald.
Part of this confession was used by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to condemn Colombia for the slaughter which occurred in the village of El Aro in 1997.
These are allegations, evidence, testimony that have come forward just in the last few months that the Conservatives could have looked at in regard to what the standing committee has already said, which is we cannot move further on this. We have to have a comprehensive human rights assessment of what is going on in Colombia. This is public domain. It is not rocket science. We just do our homework.
Perhaps most telling of all, and this goes back a few years, is evidence that has been presented to date. Because President Uribe has not gone to trial yet, there has not been, through that process, a determination of his exact involvement.
However, this is from U.S. intelligence. The Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States in Colombia produced a list of the most important Colombian narco-traffickers. This was in 1991. This list was forced out through access to information just a few years ago, but that information would be available to any Conservative who had actually decided to look into whether or not this makes any sense at all, namely proceeding with a trade agreement with Colombia.
The report lists Alvaro Uribe as 82 on the list of the top 100 Colombian narco-traffickers. I should say that this report, which was declassified, was verified by other agencies. So it is the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States but also verified with other agency information. It refers to Alvaro Uribe as a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels. It states that Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the U.S. It goes on to say that Uribe had worked for the Medellin cartel and was a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar.
Now, many people who have followed the appalling careers of drug traffickers know the name Pablo Escobar. I am sure many of the Conservative MPs would know this, as well, had they done their homework, and had they done their research.
It continues on to state that, and this is President Uribe, he had participated in Escobar's political campaign to win the position of assistant parliamentarian to Jorge Ortega. Uribe had been one of the politicians from the senate who had attacked all forms of the extradition treaty.
When this information came out, it could have been available to any Conservative. The Colombian government tried to do a full court press. It has a very slick public relations machine, but when checking facts we can look beyond the public relations machine. But it is very interesting that the public relations machine has never addressed the issue of President Uribe's very clear links with Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel. However, it is out there. This is evidence in testimony.
We should not be signing a trade agreement with Colombia. We should be bringing President Uribe to trial. That evidence should be weighed by a competent judge. These are the kinds of things we should be doing. Conservatives say they are against murderers and drug traffickers, but as long as they are in another country, Conservatives are willing to line up for photo ops with them, cut ribbons with them, and sign a trade agreement with them. It is absolutely appalling that with this body of evidence we would see the Conservatives trying to push through this agreement. This is absolutely appalling.
Where does it leave us? We have an amendment now coming forward. The Liberals, to be consistent to their position under their former leader, should be voting for the amendment to kill this agreement because there is no doubt that this is not in the interest of Canada. It is not even in the interest of Colombia for the reasons I cited earlier. The report of the Canadian Council for International Cooperation is very clear what the impact would be on rural Colombians.
The NDP has been calling for increased development aid because quite frankly, CIDA's work in Colombia, which I have seen firsthand, has actually helped to address some of those needs that have come forward. Development aid obviously is something that we need to continue to do. It is beyond the control of the Uribe regime, but it is important work that does address the dire needs of many of the refugees who are in shanty towns and bidonvilles across Colombia.
The idea that somehow this is tied to Canadian prosperity again shows to what extent the Conservatives simply have not done their homework. Most of the bilateral agreements we have signed have actually led to a reduction in exports. Following the signatures of these trade agreements, exports fall. Now why would that happen? It is because unlike every other country in the world, around our export-driven economy, we do not invest to provide any sort of product promotional support. The NDP has been calling for this for some time. The amounts that we provide in supports to our exports compared to that of other major countries is ridiculously small. As a result of that there is simply no economic argument that could be made.
The human rights argument, the labour rights argument, and the argument of those in rural areas of Colombia who will bear the brunt if Canada provides a rubber stamp for a regime that is scandal-ridden and a regime where there is very clear evidence and testimony of links between the paramilitaries and of the Uribe administration is something obviously that this Parliament has to look at and has to then evaluate.
Finally, I would like to read a brief quotation from Stephen Dudley's book about paramilitary violence. This is what is said about one of the many massacres. I cited some of the evidence of the connection between the regime and the paramilitaries. Just one paragraph from this book will show Canadians what is actually going on in Colombia:
After they killed my father and my brothers, they kept going. In another house, they killed a couple that was watching TV. One guy who went outside to ask about his son was also killed. A little boy who was carrying some food to his dad got it as well. A couple of girls that were in the street were also murdered. Everyone they saw they killed.
The NDP is saying no to this trade agreement because we believe the regime has blood on its hands and Canada deserves better.
