Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-23, a bill that has taken on great importance here in Parliament this week. In many respects, it is a bill that announces to the Canadian people that the most unlikely of alliances may yet come into being. The Conservatives and the NDP are twisting themselves in knots trying to put the best spin on all their flipping and flopping.
Let us talk about the text itself. This bill has its beginnings in the summit meeting that occurred last November in Lima. At that time, the Prime Minister said “...free and open markets are the best way to ensure the global economy can quickly rebound”.
Regardless of what has happened between November and now, I and my colleagues would like to take the Prime Minister at his word and believe that he meant what he said back then. However, for those of us who have been following the government's approach to Asian markets over the last three long years, it could only be seen as an eleventh hour conversion. If the Prime Minister had always believed what he said in Lima, the last three years would have been very different. He would have been aware of other points of focus in international trade, other borders beyond Colombia and the Americas.
This was an issue earlier this month when my leader, the Leader of the Opposition, and I sat down with some of our key stakeholders in the Pacific Rim export markets. The fact is that the last time there was any significant trade negotiations with an Asian country was back in 2001.
In all this time, three governments have completed six free trade agreements with countries in the Americas. These deals were structured much like this one. However, with a little research, we soon discover that the Americas account for only 11% of the world's GDP growth, while Asia accounts for 42% at 2008 purchasing power parity rates. To make things worse, almost twice as many Canadians are from Asia as are from the Americas. Our focus is misplaced considering the strength of our cultural ties.
In economic times like these, we cannot help wondering how much better positioned Canada would be if we had actually engaged in Asian markets over the last three years, never mind the Americas.
Perhaps the Prime Minister was afraid that the more time he spent in Asia he would become less Canadian or maybe someone would run ads saying that he was just visiting his own country.
However, perhaps I should just keep the focus on the bright side. Here we are and the government is doing something at least to open up Canada's markets to the world. If doing something means Colombia, let us get down to it and do it right.
Colombia needs to engage with us. The past 40 years of its history tells of illegal drugs fuelling paramilitary groups in one of the most destructive conflicts in the hemisphere. The conflict caused massive displacements, murders and human rights violations. No member of this House is under any illusion about Colombia's past. Our task now is to shape its future.
Now we see that this the very issue of human rights abuses, the one that Conservatives used to explain their failure on the China file, is not the sticking point it once was. With this Colombia agreement now a part of a confidence vote, it is no longer an issue with our New Democratic friends either. This is quite a flip-flop for them, needless to say.
Just this May, they were saying, “The NDP is standing on the side of millions of Canadians who oppose murder, torture and human rights abuses. We oppose the blood that is on this agreement”.
I guess those millions will hear a different story from them in the coming months or coming days.
They also claim that this deal makes a mockery of human rights. For members of the NDP, I guess it is a better mockery of human rights than the mockery they make of Parliament, lying in bed with the Conservatives at the first opportunity. So much for empty rhetoric. Let us look at the facts.
As a member of the international trade committee, I visited Colombia last year with my colleagues to talk to the people of Colombia. We heard from experts, businesses, NGOs, trade unions and officials. Our committee found that there has been progress in Colombia since President Uribe was elected in 2002: violence and murders are down 50%, kidnappings are down 90%; union member killings are down 70%; displacements are down 75%; tens of thousands are being reincorporated into civil society from demobilized paramilitary groups; 92% of children are in primary school; and 30,000 hectares have been reforested. However, against this progress, paramilitary groups continue to violate human rights, environmental programs lack adequate resources and corruption remains a major problem.
We must ask ourselves how we can build on our progress and engage Colombia on human rights. The Liberal Party has always believed that economic engagement helps build Canadian influence on human rights. People on the ground in Colombia agree.
The United Nations told us in Bogota that Canada can use the agreement to promote dialogue and improve accountability on human rights. Human rights activists in Colombia told the committee that trade agreements are an effective means to pressure Colombia to live up to its international human rights obligations.
To sum up, the Conservative government is squandering the tremendous potential of the Asian market and spending all its time and resources in the Americas.
It is clear that Saskatchewan is the only province in Canada that had a surplus budget last year. The success story is that it is the only province that deals with other countries besides the Americas and that is where its goods and commodities are going. We should all be learning from that province.
With this deal, Canada must support Colombia's efforts to tackle the drug trade, security and corruption. Let us make sure of it.