Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak in the House today to Bill C-23.
I want to congratulate the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, our trade critic, who has the solidarity of 100% of our caucus in trying to defeat this legislation.
It strikes me that we are often accused in the House by the government of trying to delay legislation but 99 times out of 100 we are not. We just want to debate legislation because it needs to be debated. However, if we do it for more than a day we are accused of holding it up and trying to delay something, particularly if it is a crime bill.
However, I must say that on Bill C-23, the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, we are trying to hold it up. I am proud of the job that all members of the NDP have done. There is a huge movement of people, not just in the labour movement but in civil society who see this as a terrible bill.
I attended a press conference in May 2008 with our trade critic and Hassan Yussuff, who is the secretary-treasurer of the CLC, when we were first contemplating this agreement. At that time, the NDP and the CLC announced their intention to launch a public campaign about how bad this agreement was. It is to the credit of that campaign and all of the work that has been done across the country that this agreement still has not gone through the House.
Yes, we are being diligent in trying to ensure there is full public exposure about the negatives of the bill and the damage it would cause not only to Canadian workers but also to Colombian workers.
As New Democrats, we do not see these huge trade agreements with hundreds if not thousands of pages of technical issues as technical documents that pass between bureaucrats at the highest level of politics. We see them as agreements that impact the daily lives of workers around the world. That is why we have invested so much time and energy with civil society and with our partners in the labour movement in trying to understand the impact of these so-called free trade agreements.
Given all of the research that we have done and given the record of abuses in Colombia, we are absolutely and thoroughly convinced that the Canada-Colombia agreement we are debating here today should not go through.
We know that about 2,600 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia since 1986, 27 murdered in 2009 alone. We know that the Colombian government has been accused by international human rights organizations of corruption, electoral fraud, complicity in extrajudicial killings by the army, links to the paramilitary and to right-wing death squads, just to name a few. Why on earth would we have an agreement with a country that puts the lives of regular working people or people belonging to a trade union at risk?
We have heard many times from government members and Liberal members that this trade agreement would cover all of these risks and that somehow things have changed. However, all of the research done on this agreement shows that there is no evidence whatsoever that any of the incredibly violent and dangerous situations that exist in that country will change as a result of this agreement or that the lives and safety of workers in Colombia will improve as a result of this agreement.
As New Democrats, I feel proud that we stand very strongly on the principle that when these agreements come forward they should be based on fair trade, on sustainability, on principles of social justice and on principles and practices of supporting and upholding the rights of labour. None of the agreements we have seen to date have done that, including this one.
One of the things we find most offensive about this particular agreement is the idea that there will be a fine if a trade unionist is killed. The so-called kill a trade unionist pay a fine provision that is contained in the agreement is unconscionable. We cannot allow that to go through.
I would point out that it is not just New Democrats in Canada, the labour movement and civil society trying to stop this agreement. This has become a global expression. We know that the U.K. recently ended military aid to Colombia because of the systematic crimes committed against the Colombian people. We know the U.S. Congress put a hold on the U.S.-Colombia FTA last year and that President Obama has said that he will not pursue the agreement because of human rights abuses.
A leader in the trade union movement in the United States, James Hoffa, who is the president of the International Teamsters Union, wrote articles and said things like, “The state-sponsored violence against union members in Colombia is part of a broader assault on workers”. Then he used the example of women who pick the flowers being given out at Union Station and how their rights are being abused. That is just one example.
As New Democrats, we are firmly opposed to this agreement and, thus, to this bill. We fought it in committee. We did our best to ensure that there were hearings to be held around this agreement.
We believe a broad section of Canadian society understands that the kind of agreement the Conservative government is entering into, as did the previous Liberal governments, will not serve the interests of workers in Colombia but will, in fact, if anything, entrench and systemize the system of violation and give legitimacy to the abuses and violations that have taken place.