Debates of Sept. 29th, 2009

Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert on her excellent speech. I have a question for her.

We have just about reached the end of debate on Bill C-23. We have submitted a number of arguments to the effect that in Colombia human rights are not respected, companies do not meet environmental standards in mining and many people are displaced when the mining companies move in. While we have submitted a number of arguments, we have the feeling that the Conservatives and Liberals are insensitive to the points we have made.

How can we explain their feeling that signing a free trade agreement will result in economic development and the resolution of Colombia's social problems, crime and so on?

As my colleague put it so well in her remarks, the opposite is true.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we see on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade that there will be absolutely no way of helping these people with the free trade agreement as currently proposed.

As we have said, it is an agreement that protects investments, exploits the local population and exploits the Colombian environment, but it is not an agreement that can help the people in any way at all. Even if we wanted to, we would still have to be able to go there, and the Canadian government tells us to avoid non-essential travel there because it is too dangerous. That is what they say at the foreign affairs website. We are told not to go, that it is dangerous. There are guerrillas and armed drug traffickers. They may perpetrate attacks, extortion, kidnappings, car bombings, and damages to infrastructure in all regions. We cannot go to help the people if we cannot at least go and see the situation.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join this debate on the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement, Bill C-23.

I spent three months on the international trade committee on first becoming a member of Parliament and so I have a great interest in this particular agreement. I have also had the opportunity to travel to Colombia and meet with a number of representatives and individuals during the course of that trip.

I would like to first make the point that this has been a very complex decision because Colombia has such tremendous challenges that have been so capably outlined by a number of the members. However, I believe we really need to think about the question that we are trying to answer in this debate. Therefore, that is what I will be aiming my remarks at and what I believe is the key question here.

Before going to Colombia, the trade committee spent two months in hearings in Canada and heard from a great number of witnesses both for and against the idea of a free trade agreement with Colombia. Of course, we had very serious concerns among the committee members after hearing from the witnesses: the human rights issues, the lawlessness in regions, displaced persons, the drug trade, vigilante groups, unexplained deaths, a very troubled country.

We had concerns about environmental issues and that was one of the key things that I addressed as a member of the committee. It was the weak compliance mechanisms of the Colombian government, the absence of a strong enforcement mechanism for investigating complaints in the environmental side agreement.

Given those concerns, when I went to Colombia to hear firsthand from the Colombian people, I certainly was not clear that this was the right step for Canada to take.

I understand that the Liberal Party has rightfully always been for free trade agreements in principle and so am I, but this was a challenging situation. Colombia was not a huge trade partner for Canada and there were certainly serious concerns.

Having heard a number of the members talk about the very difficult situation there, I do want to point out that independent voices are verifying the great progress that has been made in Colombia. Here is a statement from the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights.

It states:

I first want to commend the Government for the significant improvement in the overall security situation in the country since 2002. Respect for the right to life and the exercise of fundamental freedoms for Colombian citizens have improved. I further want to commend the Government for designing policies and strategies for the protection of human rights defenders...I find it remarkable that the Government and the civil society, given the current polarization, have reached a number of agreements through the roundtables for guarantees of protection of human rights defenders.

I personally ran into a young person in Vancouver recently who had returned from a vacation travelling in Colombia, knew nothing about my involvement with the free trade agreement, and made the comment that it was a great trip and it felt so much safer both for people in the country and for visitors to be in Colombia. Therefore, the situation is improving.

However, that is not the key question. It is not whether the situation is improving. The key question is not whether this agreement will solve all of Colombia's problems. The question is not whether it is a perfect free trade agreement, whether Colombia is a problem-free country, and the question is not whether President Uribe is a paragon politician.

The question really should be: On balance, is this a benefit to Canadians and to the people of Colombia? Overwhelmingly, when I ask that question, is this a benefit to the people of Colombia, the answer was yes.

In Colombia, we had three full days as a committee meeting with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the ILO, international labour representatives, Canadian companies of course and environmental groups. I met with displaced families in one of the neighbourhoods in Colombia. I met with the women who had their farms and homes taken from them and asked them the same question I asked every group I met with. We met with indigenous people, with the president of the country, members and ministers of the Colombian government, human rights groups and labour groups, a great variety, and the question that I asked each of the people I spoke with during my trip to Colombia was, “Will you be better off or worse off with increased trade with Canada through this free trade agreement?” Overwhelmingly, the response was that they believed they would be better off.

That is not to imply that conditions there are perfect. It is not to imply that there were not many pieces of advice as to how the situation could be improved and what the Canadian government and Canadian people could do to help with that. There were many requests for how a free trade agreement might be structured or may be worded, but at the end of each conversation when I would ask, “If you had the choice to have a free trade agreement with Canada or not have a free trade agreement, which is preferable?”. The answer was very consistent, with the exception of the public sector unions.

Everyone I spoke to agreed that a free trade agreement with Canada would be beneficial to their situation. It would help the enforcement by the government of human rights and environmental issues by providing more dollars to the economy. It would help put jobs in the legal economy and help to displace that vacuum that was drawing young people into the drug trade. The free trade agreement would help reduce displacement by having the presence of Canadian companies in remote areas that were currently lawless and were perhaps without police forces and without judiciary to even follow up on crime.

The free trade agreement would help fund prevention measures, training for the army, help for the displaced, the things that government was improving and spending money on, but needed a budget to do.

I was told that the free trade agreement would help with the standard of corporate social responsibility because that is a strong focus of Canadian firms in Colombia and they are providing leadership on that level. It would help build infrastructure, afford the roads and the access into the remote areas. It would help to reduce control by the narco-economy. A free trade agreement would actually help with environmental compliance by having this rules-based trade and the scrutiny that would follow.

One main argument that has been made is that even the United States will not go into Colombia. I have a quote from President Obama very recently in which he acknowledged that he has instructed his ambassador, the United States trade representative, “to begin working closely with President Uribe's team on how we can proceed on a free trade agreement”. I am quoting President Obama. He continues:

There are obvious difficulties involved in the process and there remains work to do, but I'm confident that ultimately we can strike a deal that is good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States. I commended President Uribe on the progress that has been made in human rights in Colombia--

The point there is that for the president of the United States the key thing is not, as I have mentioned previously, is Colombia perfect? Of course, it is not. And it is not, are there problems? Are there deep concerns? Are there tragedies happening in Colombia? That is not the question. The question is: Would free trade be good for the people of Colombia and good for the people of the United States? My question was similar: Would it be good for Colombia and good for the people of Canada? And overwhelmingly, the answer I got, right across the spectrum of witnesses, was yes, it will be good for us here in Colombia.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the Liberal member.

For a while now, we have known that, each time the word environment is mentioned, the Liberals want to hide under the carpet. They just vanish. The environment is over for them. However, the member had the courage to say that this measure could protect the environment in Colombia.

I would ask her to explain how this agreement—this pact—could protect the environment in Colombia, when we know the extent to which this sort of agreement is not made to protect the environment.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, one of the challenges with the environment right now is an absence of financial ability by the Colombian government to carry out compliance and enforcement, just as in Canada. According to our Auditor General, the Conservative government has not adequately invested in compliance and enforcement in some areas of its responsibility.

A free trade agreement brings an additional flow of funds to the government, allowing it to implement that compliance and enforcement. The scrutiny of the international community and the Canadian government combined with mechanisms for complaints to be filed would help with environmental protection.

[Anthony Rota, Liberal, Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of things that makes Canada the powerhouse that it is and gives it strength is the fact that we trade with other countries. The more countries we trade with, the better it is.

I am not saying that we make a blanket statement that the Colombian free trade agreement is 100% correct and that is all there is to it. Some people are saying they do not even want to look at it.

Maybe the hon. member can explain the process. At the stage we are at right now, it is not like we are saying yes and that is it or no and that is it. If we say no, it is dead. If we say yes, it goes to committee. The committee will have to be very thorough before coming back to the House. Perhaps the member can explain what the process is within committee to ensure that Canada is getting the best deal possible.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the debate has been providing some guidance as to what areas the committee can look at in order to make some recommendations, if it has any, for modifying this agreement.

Really, the key question is this. In a country that is having such a difficult time and humanitarian tragedy as Colombia, is this going to be helpful? It is very important to listen to the voices of people in Colombia.

With respect to the previous member's question around environment, witnesses who came to committee to talk about the environment and their concerns in Colombia also answered that yes, a free trade agreement would be a benefit to Colombia. Even as environmentalists, that was their view. Can we strengthen our environmental side agreement? Absolutely.

As for the member's question about committee, I would like to see a stronger compliance mechanism in terms of a complaint process that has teeth in our side agreement and I encourage the committee to put that idea forward.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech.

I was also part of the international trade mission to Colombia and we did not necessarily hear the same things. She says that, in general, people were in favour of this agreement. My recollection is that all the groups we met with—the national indigenous organization of Colombia, all the social clubs, the social association, the popular women's organization, the national agrarian coordinator, the Christian movement for peace with justice and dignity—actually expressed their displeasure with the signing of this agreement.

I would like the member to explain why she perceives the people she met in Colombia to be in favour of the agreement.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Perhaps we were in different meetings, Mr. Speaker, but as I said, there were groups that had advice for us and ideas about how to improve a free trade agreement. When the question was posed, “Are you better off with this trade agreement or without it”, the answer invariably was that it is better to have more trade and have rules-based trade through a free trade agreement. That was my experience.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Konrad Adenauer, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman—visionary figures all—took it upon themselves, with their nation states, to build something beautiful in postwar Europe on the ruins of a continent that had been through the worst war in human history.

First they created a common market for coal and steel, which subsequently became a general common market covering more and more countries. They demonstrated, by this very fact, that there is nothing wrong with the concept of a free trade agreement, provided—and this is the key condition that is missing here—that there is prior agreement on a common vision of the rights that must be respected. This is what makes the Liberals’ discourse so hollow, so empty, so void of any moral sense. There is nothing very surprising about that though. All we need to do is go on-line on the Internet to hear their leader say, in his best professorial tones, that perhaps we shall need “targeted assassinations”. That is the leader of the Liberal Party saying things like that. The leader of the Liberal Party not only supported the war in Iraq but supplied George W. Bush and Dick Cheney with the terminology they used to justify the use of torture. They were not to say “torture” any more but “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

He provided the 1984 terminology, the Liberal Newspeak that could justify almost anything. That is what we are dealing with here. What a disgrace that a party which used to support a just vision with a charter of rights has been reduced to making bogus arguments in favour of a free trade agreement with a country that has the worst human rights record in the western world: Colombia.

Canada should again reject the proposed agreement with Colombia because the prior requirement for any agreement is that all the problems have been ironed out. The Liberal attitude, though, is if you build it, it will get better. But that is Field of Dreams, not the real world.

I have a list here of 28 union members who were killed simply because they were part of a union trying to exercise social rights in Colombia. A 29th person has just been added. It is a tragedy. We saw the Liberal member who just spoke. It was as if she had not lived the last 30 years. That was the argument the Progressive Conservatives used at the time when the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed. We will increase trade among our countries. We will create wealth. So what has been created?

Now, ever since the signing of NAFTA, the Canadian middle class has watched its income drop continuously. That is the sad truth. When I was Quebec's environment minister, I banned the pesticide 2,4-D, which is manufactured by Dow Chemical, an American company, and based my decision on the work of one of my predecessors, Mr. Boisclair. We are going through it again, the same as the first attempt to undermine Canada's sovereignty before the courts.

Does anyone remember what happened with Ethyl Corporation? Does that ring a bell? That company produced a fuel additive that Canada found harmful to human health.

Using NAFTA, they sued the Canadian government and were awarded tens of millions of dollars in compensation for having dared say that we did not want their products added to our gas only to be spewed into the atmosphere. That is the reality of a free trade agreement that was not thought through.

Would anyone in this House agree to sign a free trade agreement with a country that allows slavery? The answer is obvious: of course not.

Would anyone rise in this House and have the audacity to say, “Let's sign the agreement. It will make us rich. Perhaps they will no longer need slavery in that country”? Of course not.

Would we sign a free trade agreement with a country that forces children to work in factories? Would we advocate that? Of course not. We would say that those problems need to be solved first.

How is it that the Conservative government, supported by the Liberals on this, is trying to fool us by convincing us that we have good reason to sign this agreement, that like magic, contrary to what everyone else around the world has experienced, signing this agreement with Colombia will miraculously change things for the better in Colombia, and no more union activists will be murdered, as is the case now.

That is nonsense and is not supported by any real-world experience. The only ones who will benefit from this agreement are the multinational corporations that are trampling the rights of workers, social organizations and trade unions in Colombia.

When I was president of the law students’ association at McGill University in 1976—I was finishing my law school studies—I was assigned to represent one side in a debate against Ralph Nader, the famous American lawyer who was fighting for social rights at that time. His position, and I did not agree with it at the time, was that the multinationals had become too powerful and were superseding nation-states. Given what I have seen as Minister of the Environment, seeing how the North American Free Trade Agreement has been applied and has given corporations the right to impose the use of a substance that is considered and believed to be toxic to the environment and human health, there are grounds for concern.

People who call themselves Liberals joining with the Conservatives and trying to impose this agreement in Colombia, in spite of the evidence of what is going on there, in the country with the worst track record for social rights and human rights—it is beyond comprehension.

I congratulate the Bloc Québécois on its principled position in joining with the NDP against Bill C-23, to implement the agreement they want to sign with Colombia.

The way to go about this, if we want to follow the potential model and produce good results, is to demand change first. We do not need to look back as far as post-war Europe, we need only look at the model we have in the North American Free Trade Agreement. It will undoubtedly be recalled that the Americans, fearing that their factories would relocate to what were called the maquiladoras, along the Mexican border, demanded a parallel agreement on the environment. It should be pointed out that this agreement on the environment ultimately has to be incorporated into the main chapter and have greater capacity for enforcement. However, for the first time in the history of these agreements, a social and environmental aspect that affected people’s health was considered, and we said we would not sign until that was resolved.

How is it that the Americans can demand this, when it comes to the environment, when it suits them, and we in Canada are not even capable of standing up and telling the government of Colombia that we do want more and better trade with them, provided they resolve these problems first?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, Canada Day; the hon. member for Malpeque, Health; the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East, Foreign Affairs.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague and say that he has hit the nail right on the head. We get what he is saying because we share the same opinions.

The member mentioned other countries' experiences. Does he remember what happened with bilateral agreements between European countries and Africa, specifically? Did those bilateral free trade agreements improve things in African countries, or did they merely enrich Europe? There have been many examples justifying our concern about two countries with different levels of prosperity signing a free trade agreement.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Brome—Missisquoi suggested a very relevant comparison because if the two parties signing such an agreement are not equally matched, we will never be able to ensure that its provisions are carried out in the public interest. Once again, the only parties that will benefit are multinational corporations that consider borders to be something of a nuisance. They will figure out how to take advantage of the situation every chance they get.

Consider the diamond wars going on in Africa and conflicts over other natural resources where foreign interests are pillaging nations despite obligations to follow various international trade regulations. Clearly, we are fooling ourselves if we think that by signing this agreement, somehow, magically, we will create laws where there is no way to enforce them.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my NDP colleague for his remarks on this matter. The government and the Liberals say that signing an agreement with Colombia will improve the rights of that country's citizens. I would like my colleague's opinion about one thing. Over the past 10 years, 60% of union leaders killed throughout the world were Colombians. Does my colleague really believe that signing an agreement with Colombia will improve conditions for the citizens of that country?

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Nickel Belt for his question. It is completely unrealistic to believe that the mere act of signing such an agreement will have any impact whatsoever. In fact, the reality is just the opposite.

Rather than using its moral authority to tell a country that if it wants an agreement it must have a good human rights record, Canada is condoning, accepting and sanctioning the state of affairs in Colombia. Rather than using these agreements to bring about positive change, we are about to ensure that the government of that country can turn to its people and tell them that a country like Canada, with such a fine human rights record, has just signed an agreement with it, which is tantamount to an endorsement that all is well in Colombia. However, we have just given a number of examples that prove that this is not at all the case.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to say that we in Quebec have experienced a situation with foreign investment mining similar to but less dramatic than the one in Colombia.

Some 50 or 60 years ago, such investment yielded 1¢ a tonne. It was almost a free market. Those investments gave the government 1¢ for every tonne of iron ore. One cent! What is more, the miners' salaries were rock bottom.

Did the investments made at the time to extract our ore really contribute anything positive and allow Quebec to leave behind a bleak situation? Not at all. Those investments did not help. Well, that is what will happen in Colombia if investors are allowed to give minimal royalties to the government, which is not very strong, and pay minimum salaries because there are no laws to protect workers, or there are very few.

Unions are not strong enough to organize in Colombia and push for favourable conditions for the workers. They will end up in the same situation. It will amount to nothing more than exploitation.

This agreement with Colombia will protect investments such that they cannot be nationalized or taken over. Furthermore, if the investor feels wronged at any time, it can sue the Colombian government.

This agreement is being described as a balanced free trade agreement and there is talk of a common market. That is absolutely not the case. They are not interested in selling more automobiles. People in Colombia do not have money to spend on buying more automobiles. If our wheat is not sold in Colombia, it could be sold anywhere else in the world, what with the rising cost of food and the shortage of food around. It is not in the interest of Canada to conduct trade under this free trade agreement. The interest of Canada is to protect major Canadian investors wanting to extract raw materials in Colombia.

This is truly the height of the neo-liberalism of the past 30-odd years. It is not an agreement on trading goods, where producing goods will make money for a country. It has more to do with investment, making money on investments and exploiting a country to bring mined ore back to the fold.

So do not tell us that the agreement will be a balanced one in the interests of both parties. That is not the case. It will be of greater interest to Canadians and Canadian investors. I would not say that it is meant to protect only that kind of economy, since the economy is based on the production and the exchange of goods. At present, this agreement is not based on the exchange of goods, but rather on opportunities to go to Colombia to extract valuable raw materials.

That is why, as some of my colleagues have said, we oppose Bill C-23, which, we hope, will change drastically in committee, but we doubt it. In our opinion, trade is the foundation. We are also in favour of investment, but on the condition that investments are made with proper protections in place.

Chapter 11 of NAFTA does not protect people's interests. It was the beginning of a negative trend. The following has been said about chapter 11:

...foreign investors can apply directly to international courts, bypassing the filter of the public good that governments use;

That is one aspect of chapter 11. Here is another:

The concept of expropriation is so broad that any law that would reduce an investor's profits could represent an expropriation and lead to a lawsuit.

There is a third point that is also important and must be borne in mind:

...the amount of the lawsuit is not limited to the value of the investment but includes all potential future profits.

That is completely ridiculous.

[An hon. member]

The law of the jungle.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Exactly. Let us take the example of an environmental protection law. This is important to me because I have really spent my whole life arguing that the environment is something precious and important. So, for example, if a foreign investor feels it is being harmed by some Colombian environmental protection legislation—perhaps regarding water runoff from extractive material that could pollute the well water of farmers, or could contaminate the groundwater—because the legislation will decrease the investor's profits, the Colombian government is open to major lawsuits, because there are no limits.

It is not true that this agreement with Colombia, Bill C-23, would protect the environment. On the contrary, it would give investors the opportunity to sue the Colombian government if it ever decided to pass environmental protection legislation.

The Bloc Québécois is opposed to the bill to implement this free trade agreement with Colombia because it contains clauses modelled on chapter 11 of NAFTA, as I explained earlier. We want the government to return to the old format for these agreements, which did not give the multinationals a free hand at the expense of the public interest. Canada has already signed worthwhile bilateral agreements with other countries, but not this one. Members must understand that this one is dangerous because it is based on chapter 11 of NAFTA.

We are not anti-investment. We are open to the idea, but it should have been—should be—put forward under chapter 16. Chapter 16 is about being open to investment while leaving room for governments to adopt environmental regulations or laws to protect workers and the health of people who live in areas to be mined. None of that is in the Bill C-23 agreement.

It would be good for Canadian business to be able to invest with no constraints, no obligation to take care of workers and the environment, and that is what this bill proposes. However, the Bloc Québécois believes that Colombians are really against this agreement. Representatives went to Colombia, met with workers and unions there and found out that they are afraid of it. I can understand why. I did not go to Colombia, but I have been living in Quebec for a long time. If a law like this had been passed in Quebec 50 years ago when there was a lot of mining activity and the only ones benefiting were investors, I would have been against it. I would have been afraid of it because it would have been impossible to pass laws to protect workers.

We are being told that there is trade with countries like Brazil, but we cannot compare Brazil to Colombia. Both countries are in South America, but poverty in Brazil—which I have been to—cannot be compared to poverty in Colombia—which I have also visited. They are two completely different countries. We are being told that exports will go up, but I am very skeptical. Over the past few years, imports from Colombia have gone up by 36% per year, while our exports to Colombia have barely risen by a few percentage points.

So we are against a bill that will not protect the environment, workers or the health of Colombians.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity this afternoon to put a few thoughts on the record about this important piece of public business before us, the proposed free trade agreement with Colombia.

Members may remember that a couple of weeks ago I was here asking questions and debating with members who spoke at that time. I focused my comments on the very terrible human rights record of this country with which we now propose to enter into an arrangement regarding our economic future. I talked about the hundreds of people who have been summarily killed: trade unionists, social activists and innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of that terrible reality.

We heard from the daughter of a trade unionist who spoke with some of us in our offices about her father who was killed by the government forces of Colombia as he tried to do what we take for granted in Canada as ordinary. We go about trying to keep a balance between labour and management in our workplaces, to organize people, and to demand fair wages and benefit packages and health and safety conditions in workplaces.

However, I do not want to focus my comments today on that, although it is of pre-eminent importance and something we need to continually keep in front of us as we debate this public policy.

I want to talk about why this is the wrong thing for us to be doing at this particular point in our history, particularly when we consider the economy at the moment and what got us here. The chasing after free trade agreements and arrangements with mostly multinational corporations that literally dictated to countries what they could and should not do with their resources and their workplaces in an unfettered, unregulated way, driven by greed, got us to a place where we lost control and the financial system collapsed.

For a time, and I suggest it continued for quite some time, we really did not fully appreciate nor understand how we got there, the dynamic that was in place and what we needed to do to get us out of it.

I suggest that we have had a wonderful track record and history in this country, particularly in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and some of the 1990s, of managing our domestic economy in a way that recognized the communal ownership of natural resources we had some stake in, and that we needed to make the economy work for everybody, that we needed to be acting in this country in the best interests of all people, that we left nobody behind.

I remember when my parents, in the late 1950s, sold everything they had in the wonderful country of Ireland, which at the time was struggling economically, and they bet the resources they generated on a dream for their family. They came to Canada, and we arrived in the wonderful little pristine town of Wawa, in northern Ontario. There were about 5,000 people in the town at that time, and 1,200 of those people were working in the mines. They were working in the sinter plant, mining ore and turning it into a product they then shipped to Sault Ste. Marie, where 12,000 people in a community of around 80,000 turned that sinter into steel.

They then sent that steel off to communities across this country, to every end of the country, to Vancouver, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and southern Ontario, to make boats, airplanes, cars and trains. Literally hundreds of thousands of other Canadians were kept working in good jobs, making good money, belonging to unions where they got good benefit packages, and in their retirement years they were able to live on the pensions that were negotiated.

That was not all that we did as a country at that time, and since then, to have us become the envy of many economic jurisdictions around the world.

The market did not create Canada, which is why today I say that we should not be allowing our future to continue to be driven by this trolling in the world for further trade agreements with countries and jurisdictions in which human rights are in question.

The market did not create Canada. Our history is one of interventions by national and provincial governments to ensure that the market did not dictate or limit our choices: Sir John A.'s transcontinental railroad, the Wheat Board, public health care, wartime buy Canada policies, unemployment insurance, the CPP, Hydro-Québec, the Canada-U.S. auto pact and efforts to foster a domestic aerospace industry, to name just a few examples.

Such interventions reduced the Canadian economy's dependence on exports of largely unprocessed resources and agricultural products by growing a significant manufacturing sector, providing good, well paid, often unionized jobs that guaranteed a comfortable family living, plus a tax base to pay for high quality public services across this country. That is what my family came to experience over the years after making their home in this country in the late 1950s.

Policies to boost the value-added component of the Canadian economy cut the unprocessed or barely processed proportion of Canada's exports from more than 90% in the late 1950s to under 45% in the late 1990s. An undervalued dollar at the time and the country's public health care system helped to add to Canada's appeal for investors in job rich manufacturing.

By the mid 1990s, Canada had a sophisticated mix of high value export industries, including automotive products, aerospace, telecommunications equipment, machinery, high tech applications and computer software.

Alas, the lessons of history are too soon ignored. The diversified economy that placed Canada among the most envied of nations has come undone. Of the 600,000 manufacturing jobs lost in this country since 2002, half of them disappeared since mid-2008. Our manufacturing trade balance is once again in deficit: $32 billion in 2007 and growing. The proportion of unprocessed or slightly processed resource exports is growing again, reaching almost 60% in 2007 from its low point of under 45% in 1999. The rise in commodity prices, especially that of oil, has boosted the value of our resources exports but done little for employment, with new jobs in the oil and gas industry offsetting only one-fifteenth of lost manufacturing jobs.

All one needs to do is look at that track record to see this almost obsessive compulsive attention and attraction to free trade agreements here, there and everywhere. Not considering the human rights records of any of the countries that we enter into agreements with is taking us down a road that will not produce, protect or grow the kind of country that we have the potential to be and, in fact, we were heading toward before free trade agreements and free trade arrived in this land.

Today, I suggest to everyone in the House and to the people out there watching that this is not the right time nor the right thing to be doing. This will not get us out of the difficult financial situation that we are in right now, nor will it help the people of Colombia.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to speak to this bill earlier and I addressed some of the concerns about human rights issues that constituents and others have raised with me.

Maybe the member has received some other information since that time, but the committee considered this deal and made a recommendation that an independent human rights assessment be done and that it was essential in terms of assessing the context in which a free trade deal could be addressed. Subsequently, I have found out that Amnesty International has refused to participate in an independent human rights assessment. This is troubling and maybe equally confusing since this is clearly an area that requires some attention.

I wonder whether the member has any idea where we are in terms of an independent human rights assessment to address the concerns expressed by many Canadians. If organizations like Amnesty International are not prepared to deal with it, what options do we have to satisfy that criteria?

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this independent review has still not been taken up by the government, which has the ability to actually launch such a review and make that happen.

I would suggest that the fact that Amnesty International does not want to participate should tell us a lot about the potential of such a review and what that says in terms of our going ahead with this free trade agreement with Colombia.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

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.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

When the House returns to this matter, the member for Vancouver East will have three minutes remaining.

The House resumed from September 28 consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to increase benefits, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Employment Insurance Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading stage of Bill C-50.

Call in the members.