Mr. Speaker, I am just delighted and very distressed at the same time to speak today to the bill to implement the free trade agreement between Canada and Colombia.
It is quite something to see the government decide, unlike its neighbour to the south—which it often emulates—to negotiate and sign an agreement with a country that fails to respect a number of fundamental rights. Workers' and human rights, in particular, come to mind. Colombia also does not honour certain environmental regulations and standards that, elsewhere in the world, are a given.
I can already hear the government opposite claiming that the members on this side of the House oppose all international trade agreements. That is totally false.That is what the government is claiming, but it is not true. We do not oppose international trade agreements, but we think they should come with regulations and standards. In addition, agreements ensuring human rights must be an integral part of the agreement. This is not about adding side agreements such as those the government is claiming it negotiated in the wake of previous agreements or of the Canada-Colombia agreement. We must have agreements that will truly change behaviour and practices nationally and internationally.
We cannot support this agreement because it is not a trade agreement. It aims first off to protect investors. There are provisions allowing certain investors to take to court any foreign government that would take measures resulting in a reduction in investment or profits. It is clear that this allows certain multinationals to take national governments to court because they chose to implement the best environment and labour practices.
This agreement will have the counterproductive effect of weakening the social safety net and environmental protection measures. All international agreements should raise standards and promote fair and responsible trade.
One of Colombia's greatest assets are its natural heritage and its extraordinary ecosystems. Colombia is the second richest country in the world in its biological, animal and plant diversity—10% of the world's animal and plant species are found there. Given this natural heritage and biodiversity, we must protect these resources essential to the survival of the people in order to build long lasting societies.
So, what does the government do? It decides to sign an agreement that will weaken environmental protection. In Colombia, there are considerable mining resources—gold, emeralds, carbon and nickel—which, unfortunately are still being mined using methods considered rudimentary in the rest of the world.
This means there are many rivers and lakes in Colombia that are now polluted. We see populations displaced within Colombia, particularly among the indigenous people, precisely because these water resources are threatened by mineral exploration and extraction methods that are archaic and worthy of the stone age. It undermines local communities, particularly indigenous populations.
In addition, these mineral resources that are being extracted with these old-fashioned methods use a vulnerable labour force. I am not the one saying this. In 2005, the International Labour Organization estimated that on the Latin American continent, Colombia was one of the countries that unfortunately had the largest proportion of children working in mineral resource exploitation and extraction. This means that 400,000 children in Colombia work extracting its mineral resources. That is completely unacceptable.
We are not talking about workers’ rights, we are talking about social rights, human rights. If we believe that our children should not be cheap labour to be used for making profits, we cannot accept this.
During this time we have a government opposite that is negotiating international agreements and telling us this agreement is a trade agreement, when fundamentally it is an agreement that protects investors. Protects them at whose expense? At the expense of the 400,000 young people working in the mines and extracting the resources? At the expense of union organizers and workers who do not even have a legal framework for collective bargaining? At the expense of the ecosystems that are threatened?
We must never allow international trade agreements designed to protect investors at the expense of natural resources and human rights to flout human rights and children’s rights. We cannot agree to that. Canada decided to sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child at the United Nations, and it specifically provides that we must fight against child labour and defend these young people and children being used as cheap labour in the mines. Canada must fight that.
But it gets worse. This government, which often follows the lead of the United States, should now follow its lead before implementing the Canada-Colombia agreement. In 2006, the Americans called a halt to it. They put their foot on the brake when it came time to implement the agreement with Colombia they had signed in 2006. They said they would go no further and would not ratify the agreement if minimum labour standards and protection for union activity were not guaranteed.
I will conclude with this. What we expect from the government is that it honour its international human rights commitments and that it not try to sell us an agreement that includes side agreements on the pretext that human rights and environmental protection are guaranteed.