My good friend from Brandon—Souris is getting excited about something I have said.
In terms of the young people, I am very impressed with a lot of the young people's approach to sustainability. I do see them on an individual basis embracing vegetarianism, embracing healthy lifestyles, embracing fair trade products, for example, fair trade coffee. They are prepared to pay a little more for the product as long as the product is being obtained through proper channels and not being produced by slave labour at really low prices. That is where we should be going in terms of free trade agreements.
The Conservatives love to argue with us and say that we would never support a free trade agreement. The fact of the matter is that we would. If attention is being paid to sustainability, the environment and labour rights, if an agreement is promulgated that includes all of those items, then not only the NDP but progressive parties will in fact support free trade agreements. It is only the Conservatives who are being hijacked by transnational big business, who sign on slavishly to big business, who continue to push these sorts of free trade agreements that we have in force right now. We see the negative effects of those agreements as we progress.
I want to deal with some of the companies that are involved in Colombia. For example, 43 companies have been accused of having ties with paramilitary groups in Colombia, with forced displacement of communities and assassination of trade unionists. Among those companies, according to the Colombian trade union movement, were Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Chiquita Brands. However, I found one of great interest, which was BP. What have we recently heard about BP? British Petroleum is involved in the gulf drilling oil wells, very unsuccessfully at this point, and trying to clean up a major spill, which is enormous in size and damage it will cause to the world environment.
Bloc speakers have mentioned in a lot of their speeches that the real reason for this free trade agreement is to protect investment. We are going to be protecting the investments of companies such as British Petroleum that not only has caused an oil spill and huge environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico, but has also accused among the 43 companies of having ties with paramilitary groups in Colombia. That is hardly an example of corporate responsibility, but those are the kinds of companies we are dealing with in this environment.
There are many reasons why Canada should ditch this free trade agreement. For example, more labour leaders were killed in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined. There have been 470 labour leaders killed since 2002 and 2,865 in the last 25 years.
In terms of Colombian labour laws, members have said that they are very good and strong. The fact is they stifle the rights of workers. The rate of unionization in Colombia is less than 5%, which is the lowest of any country in the western hemisphere. Few of the crimes against workers and other civilians have ever been investigated by the government. In fact, thousands of demobilized paramilitaries have formed new groups.
This is a really important point. The member for Kings—Hants points out that there are on no more paramilitary groups because they have all been demobilized. I do not know what planet he has been on or where he lives. He assumes that just because he is being told by Colombians that they have demobilized the paramilitary groups, all of a sudden these groups have disappeared. Why would he want to believe something like that?
The fact is the paramilitaries did not disappear. They have now formed new, even more deadly groups than they were before. Sixty-two criminal networks control economic activities and political institutions in many jurisdictions. In fact, 27 high-ranking army officers were accused in 2008 of kidnapping and executing civilians and dressing them up as FARC guerrillas. That was the false positive program about which many members have spoken.
Colombian unions have said no to the NAFTA model because it will create more poverty and unemployment. Signing a deal with Colombia will simply legitimize state terrorism and undermine the struggle for democracy in the country.
In 2008 the Standing Committee on International Trade pushed for an impartial human rights assessment before any agreement was signed. This was crucial because this was when the former Liberal critic for international trade was onside with the Bloc and the NDP in opposing the deal. Had we proceeded with that and had the Liberals not changed leaders and critics, we would be having an impartial human rights assessment carried out. That is what we really wanted. That is what we should have had. That is what Canadians deserve in this. However, the Liberal leader single-handedly changed the critic and the critic changed the position to mirror exactly what the Conservative government wanted him to do. I know he was a former Conservative in the past and—