Mr. Speaker, I have spoken in opposition to the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement on numerous occasions in the House. I am delighted that, through the incredible leadership of my NDP colleague, the member for Burnaby—New Westminster, we so far have been able to stop this bill from becoming law. Now the government is shutting down debate through a draconian time allocation motion because it knows it cannot win its bill on its merits.
While I still can, let me explain again why we feel so strongly about this ill-conceived trade deal. In fact, in the roughly 10 minutes that I have to participate in today's debate, I will give 10 reasons why the Canada-Colombia trade deal should be scrapped.
First, Colombia is still the most dangerous country in the world for unionized workers. More labour leaders are killed in Colombia every year than in the rest of the world combined. Trade unionists are terrorized to put a chill on union organizing. This keeps unions weak and wages miserably low. It benefits businesses' bottom line and keeps Colombia attractive for foreign investment.
Who is being targeted? The prime targets are activists who are trying to organize or join a union and bargain collectively or who are engaged in industrial disputes or in fighting privatization. They are teachers, prison guards, agricultural, food and health care workers and others from almost every sector. Who is killing these union organizers? Most of the murders are committed by paramilitary death squads. Paramilitaries are illegal armies that fund their operations through Colombia's illegal drug trade and illegal contributions from some companies like Chiquita Brands International. The paras have been classified as a terrorist organization by the Canadian government, along with other armed groups, such as the FARC leftist guerrillas.
The second reason is that Colombian labour law is simply not up to ILO snuff. A union-busting culture dominates Colombian society. Colombia's labour laws stifle unions and workers' rights. Recently, in order to show it is doing something positive, the Colombian government passed two labour code reforms, one on the right to strike and one on “associative labour cooperatives”, but even with recent changes, they still do not come close to International Labour Organization minimum standards.
Colombian workers face huge legal and bureaucratic obstacles to register a union and to bargain collectively. Some say it is easier to form an armed group than a trade union in Colombia. These anti-union laws, plus the violence and terror directed at unionized workers, have helped keep Colombia's rate of unionization at less than 5%. With its huge informal sector and high unemployment rate, which is officially over 11%, it means that only one in every 100 workers can negotiate a collective agreement, the lowest of any country in the western hemisphere.
Third, there seems to be impunity for the killers in Colombia. Not enough is being done to bring them to justice. Very few of the crimes against unionized workers and other civilians have been investigated. Even fewer of those responsible have been convicted. This is called impunity. The victims are often accused of being guerrilla sympathizers. Their murders are then not questioned. Ninety-seven per cent of the murders of union activists remain unsolved.
That brings me to the fourth reason. Simply put, no justice, no peace. The government insists that it has demobilized the paramilitaries so that they are no longer a threat. Under a program called the justice and peace law, paramilitary combatants were supposed to hand in their arms and admit to their crimes in exchange for reduced sentences, but thousands of the demobilized have simply walked away from the program and formed new, deadly groups, like the Black Eagles, who terrorize the poor and anyone who dares to dissent from Uribe's security plan. The Black Eagles even sent a nasty threat to the Canadian embassy in Bogota. This is a far cry from Colombian's demands for a process that exposes the truth of paramilitary crimes, delivers justice and ensures reparations to the victims.
Reason number five is the shocking government ties to paramilitaries. Today, 62 mafia-like ex-paramilitary drug trafficking criminal networks control economic activities and political institutions in 23 of Colombia's 31 provinces.
Violence and insecurity prevail in the countryside. Colombia's independent supreme court, one of the country's few bright spots these days, has launched a series of groundbreaking investigations into paramilitary presence in the Colombian congress. More than 60 congress members from Uribe's coalition, 20% of the congress, are being investigated for crimes like collaboration with paramilitaries, getting rich from drug trafficking and collusion in election fraud. Thirty of them have been indicted.
That leads to reason number six. The army and the government are implicated in crimes against humanity. In a suspicious move in August 2008, Uribe extradited 14 jailed paramilitary bosses to the United States on drug trafficking charges, a much lesser crime than their crimes against humanity. These criminals are now conveniently out of the way of supreme court investigations into their links with Uribe's and his officials' involvement in atrocities. The International Criminal Court of the Hague is looking into these events.
In November 2008, the world was outraged to learn that 27 high-ranking army officers were accused of a horrifying crime known as false positives. This involves the soldiers kidnapping and executing innocent civilians, dressing them as FARC guerrillas and claiming they were killed in combat. This practice developed in response to President Uribe's demands for results in fighting the FARC insurgents and offers of bonuses based on a body count. These revelations are just the tip of the iceberg in a series of charges of army involvement with executions, extortion, ties to drug traffickers and other crimes against humanity.
It is no wonder then, and this is the seventh reason, that diverse Colombian peoples are vehemently opposed to this trade deal. Colombia's unions have said no to the NAFTA model because it will cause more unemployment, poverty and hunger. Signing a free trade deal with Uribe will signal that state terrorism and killing trade unionists is okay.
Colombia's paramilitary opposition, the Alternative Democratic Pole, or PDA, opposes free trade because it will annex the economy to multinational corporations. For example, it will provide new land grabs for Canadian mining companies that get powerful new rights but not responsibilities. The Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca carried out a popular referendum in 2005 in which 98% said no to free trade. In October 2008, tens of thousands of people protested the free trade model, linking it to the death of mother earth.
This brings me to reason number eight. More trade and investment will hurt, not help, human rights. Independent human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and others, warn that this deal could actually undermine the struggle for democracy in Colombia. Without international pressure, the Colombian government will have no incentive to make improvements in human rights.
The ninth reason for opposing this deal is that Canada's own parliamentary trade committee said that human rights must come first. In 2008, Parliament's Standing Committee on International Trade undertook an in-depth study called “Human Rights, the Environment and Free Trade with Colombia”. Committee members even went on an official mission to Bogota to hear first-hand what people thought. The international trade committee report said:
The Committee recommends that an independent, impartial, and comprehensive human rights impact assessment should be carried out by a competent body, which is subject to levels of independent scrutiny and validation; the recommendations of this assessment should be addressed before Canada considers signing, ratifying and implementing an agreement with Colombia.
Last, we come to reason number 10, specifically for my colleagues across the way, who first introduced this bill solely to support the international efforts of George Bush. Well, there is a new president south of the border and Barack Obama says yes to workers' rights. There is no way that this trade deal will pass south of the border anytime soon.
Let us do the right thing here in Canada, too. Let us put human rights before free trade and carry out an independent assessment of human rights violations in Colombia before ratifying and implementing this deal.