Mr. Speaker, it is June 2010. Exactly two years ago, in June 2008, the Standing Committee on International Trade published a report entitled “Human Rights, the Environment and Free Trade with Colombia”.
All parliamentarians probably received a letter today from Canada's National Director of the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union. This represents a fair number of Canadians who are against the free trade agreement with Colombia. I will quote Canada's National Director of that union, Ken Neumann:
The United Steelworkers continues to support the 2008 recommendation of the Standing Committee on International Trade for an independent, impartial, third party assessment of human rights in Colombia before this legislation is signed, sealed and delivered to the Colombian regime.
This position reflects one of the main recommendations in the 2008 report, which stated that we would go along with a free trade agreement, provided that Colombia could show continued and stable improvement in the human rights situation.
Now we have a proposal from the Liberals, who are putting the cart before the horse. They claim to agree with the Conservatives that a human rights assessment should be done after the free trade agreement is signed with Colombia.
I remind my colleagues of some comments made in the dissenting opinion of the Liberal Party in June 2008:
A trade agreement with Colombia should be contingent on an independent human rights assessment which clearly demonstrates the progress of the Colombian Government on these important issues...It has long been the position of the Liberal Party that trade and human rights should not be done in isolation.
As it turns out, the Liberal Party is doing exactly the opposite of what it said. This change happened when the current Liberal Party leader took over and the agenda changed. We must not forget that even the United States has refused to sign a free trade agreement with Colombia and that it is still waiting for significant improvement in the human rights situation there.
It is clear that the government does not respect the will of parliamentarians as expressed in the report. Had we already begun the analysis and assessment process with independent human rights groups, we would already be in a position to describe with absolute certainty what has really been going on in Colombia for the past two years.
Have things improved? Are all of the necessary systems in place to foster continuous improvement? Given an opportunity to study a report produced by an independent group appointed to carry out the assessment, the majority of the House would already be prepared to support the agreement. However, I must repeat the following, just as I do every time I speak to the Colombia free trade agreement bill.
During the time that I was a member of the Standing Committee on International Trade, I never once saw a report that offered a credible assessment of the impact on Canada and Quebec's economy or that of the partner country, which in this case is Colombia.
We are all well aware and should not have to be reminded of what happened in Colombia. In terms of human rights, it was the world's worst offender. It may no longer be the worst, but it is probably close. The people are against this agreement because of the human rights situation in that country.
The committee listed a number of recommendations in its report to the Government of Canada. Clearly, the Conservative government did not respect the will of parliamentarians. The Canadian government flat out rejected some of the recommendations and made decisions based on ideology without taking into account the will of those who represent the people of Quebec and Canada.
I want to point out that the Bloc Québécois wrote a dissenting opinion. We confirmed our strong opposition to the signing and ratification of such a free trade agreement. We believe that the committee's report was misguided and biased and did not reflect the committee's opinion.
We disagree with this bill for several reasons. First, it is bad trade policy. The free trade agreement with Colombia has almost nothing to do with trade. It is mainly about investment. The investment agreement with Colombia looks strangely like the free trade agreement with the United States and Mexico. The government is trying to promote and protect investment.
The Bloc Québécois is in favour of protecting domestic and foreign investments, but we know Canada is involved in developing Colombia's greatest resource: minerals. As an aside, the government says Canada needs to do business abroad and that since we began studying this report on the free trade agreement, trade with Colombia has changed for the better.
It is clear to us that trade between Canada and Colombia is limited. The agreement will therefore have limited benefits. This agreement is not about trade, as I said earlier. It is about investments in the Canadian mining sector.
When it comes to free trade agreements and especially the agreement with Colombia, the Conservative government has a deplorable attitude, like the one we saw too often in the early days of this vast world development. Companies went abroad and set up shop in the name of globalization. Multinationals tried to take advantage of poor working conditions, pitiful human rights recognition and weak environmental regulations. They wanted to make the most of the often negative discrepancies that leave countries' populations and economies unprotected.
Armed groups forced the displacement of huge segments of the population. More than three million people were displaced. Rebel forces stole people's land and took ownership of it. If the Colombian government wanted to put things right and restore land to the people who were displaced, the Canadian companies that bought that land would prevent the government from improving the human rights situation.