Madam Speaker, I am glad the member raised the whole discussion of labour rights in Peru because I did not get a chance to address that in my speech. This will give me the opportunity to note that the Garcia government has also continued its legislative decrees in a number of areas related to labour rights, which have been very controversial.
Peru has a very small organized labour community. Public servants are one area where the existing labour rights have been jeopardized since the signing of the agreement between the United States and Peru. Despite the arrangements it made to support labour rights in its agreement, things like punitive evaluations of current employees have been introduced into the labour standards for the unionized public service in Peru. This has been done outside of the collective bargaining process. It has eliminated not only the ability of Peruvian public servants to collective bargain, but it has also eliminated respect for the collective bargaining process.
Most Peruvians participate in what is called the informal labour market and this is a very significant issue for the majority of Peruvians. Even though there have been increases decreed by the Government of Peru, these have been unenforceable because there are no significant labour laws to do that kind of work.
It shows the kind of context where we try use some kind of lip service, and that is all we can consider it, because these agreements do not seem to have any enforceable measures to improve the adherence to the existing labour law in countries or see any improvements to those labour laws that protect the rights of workers in these countries.
The United States was unable to do that through its agreement. I do not have much faith that Canada's agreement will be able to do that for the labour standards that we are seeking to uphold and improve between Canada and Peru.