Mr. Speaker, I intend to use my full three minutes.
I want to talk a bit more about the crisis situation in Colombia as we debate this bill.
I find it rather concerning that the Liberal member for Kings—Hants, during this debate, said that the NDP was hallucinating about the situation in Colombia. That is really a bit over the top, because when one looks at the real facts of what is going on, the reality in Colombia for workers, it is terribly serious. People are receiving death threats. Workers are being murdered.
I want to read into the record some information from the International Centre for Trade Union Rights, the Colombia bulletin, from January to September 2009. In that report they assess, as a result of their information and investigations, that there has been a total of 27 trade unionists assassinated in Colombia between January and September of this year alone. This is not a hallucination. This is a very dire situation that is facing workers in this country.
I just wanted to read out a couple of the citations in this report.
On May 5, the president of the Santander public sector workers' union received death threats that were sent to the union office by letter.
On May 28, a letter was sent to the offices of Atlántico containing death threats against a whole number of union leaders, including those from the health workers' union, the teachers' union, the court staff and judicial workers' union, the university workers' union and the pensioners' union. The list also included a death threat against a human rights lawyer. This letter was signed by paramilitary groups.
One of the grave concerns that we have about this bill is that it will do nothing to improve the atrocious violations of human rights and labour rights in Colombia. This is something we are very concerned about and the reason we are opposing this bill and trying to stop this bill from going through Parliament.
We think there is very broad support right across the country to do this, and I want to congratulate the activists in the CLC, in local labour councils across the country, as well as those in civil society. People have really taken this issue on, and they are really making the connections between what happens to us as Canadians and what happens to our brothers and sisters, whether they are in Colombia or elsewhere.
We talk about living in a global village. These trade agreements are written in the far distance with no involvement from ordinary people. In some ways it is like signing one's life away and that is how we see this trade agreement.
I do want to say that because of the work by civil society and the labour movement, and particularly by our own trade critic, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, we aim to stop this bill. So far it is going pretty well and we are going to keep at it.