Mr. Speaker, I am very honoured to rise in this House once again to speak to this issue.
We could have a philosophical debate. Our friends in the Liberal Party and Conservative Party use the mantra of free trade, fundamentally they say that as long as capital flows the world will be a better place, and as long as capital flows and there is no obligation of capital to have any regional, local, national obligations, that is okay. It is an ideological view. It is part of the whole theory of the magic wand, that if all the capital and wealth goes to very few people they will sprinkle pixie dust and all will suddenly become better.
As my colleague from Willowdale said, it is not about regulating anything, it is about encouraging them. This is the world view they have. It is a philosophical view. To me this invisible hand that the Conservatives believe in is the invisible hand that is in taxpayers' pockets taking money from the working people and giving it to people who have so much.
It is very much like G. K. Chesterton, if we look at this blind belief in capital without obligation. G. K. Chesterton said it is all about the horrible mysticism of money. If we look through this veil of mysticism to get to the facts, this issue on Colombia free trade becomes very disturbing.
I come from one of the largest mining regions in the world. Mining is international in scope. Many of my constituents have travelled the world on mining exploration crews and drilling crews. I know so many investors who work internationally because mining is international in nature.
One of the things we have come to realize is that it is not the issue of capital itself that should be the prime focus of the economy but how capital helps build a resource and helps build a regional economy. To do that certain rules must be in place.
Nobody ever encouraged the mine owners in my region to lower the silicosis deaths. Those immigrant men died by the thousands. Their wives were told that they should not even ask for compensation because they were an embarrassment to Canada for having had the nerve to come here and work in the mines, while their husbands died in their 30s and 40s. The only thing that changed the mining rules in Canada was people saying there had to be some rules and regulations. So that is what we are discussing.
What I have heard today from colleagues in the Liberal Party and Conservative Party is that we need to encourage the Colombians, that Canada cannot change Colombia, only Colombians can change Colombia, and that if we all somehow just allow capital to do its thing then the Colombians will all get better because they will have access to our McCain's french fries and we will have access to their massive copper deposits.
We have to put this in the context of reality. This is the crux of the problem today. We are dealing with a murderous regime. We have raised issues of people who have been murdered in the last week in Colombia, while the government has been flaunting this agreement. We have been told by the Conservative member and by the member for Willowdale, as well, backed up in the Liberal Party, “Hey, nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes.” Well, I yelled at my kids last week, but that is not the same as someone being dragged out of their workplace and shot for organizing a union just one week ago.
I think it is incumbent upon us in this House to ask what steps will we take to ensure that when capital is allowed to flow between Colombia and Canada and vice versa that certain obligations will have to be met.
My colleagues in the Liberal Party called the human rights record in Colombia “a challenge”. We are talking about thousands and thousands of people who have been murdered. These are not drunken murders on a Saturday night or drive-by killings. Some of my colleagues in the Conservative Party have said, “Hey, we have murders in Canada”. Certainly, we had murders after the Garden of Eden, Cain killed Abel. That is a different fact than the systemic and systematic targeting of people who are trying to organize their workplaces and who are being taken out and shot, murdered in front of their families. This year alone 27 people were murdered, all of them tied into the fact that they were working in unsafe working conditions and were trying to speak up.
My colleague from Leeds—Grenville, who I have a great amount of respect for, said one murder is too much. I certainly agree. It would be a lot easier for me and my colleagues to support an agreement with Colombia if we heard, after the first murder this year which happened on January 1, our government stand and say that one murder is too much. Our government should ask what steps will Colombia take to stop those murders. But we have not heard that from the Conservative government. We have heard there are great opportunities for our producers, and as long as we keep selling to them, somehow they will stop murdering.
My colleague from Willowdale said Canada cannot change Colombia, only Colombia can change Colombia. That is an absolutely disgraceful, pitiful response. The only thing that changed apartheid in South Africa was an international response that fought back. The Afrikaners did not change apartheid, it was the international community who said, contrary to the position of the Liberal Party today, that we should not regulate these things, that we should encourage them. Nobody is perfect was the line I heard from the Liberal Party.
Last year murders went up 18% in Colombia. Things were not getting better under the Conservative Party's negotiations. They continue to deteriorate because there is a murderous regime targeting people who are trying to improve their conditions. That is what this is about.
Many people in my riding will be more than happy to move, work in Colombia, Peru and many other countries because of their mining expertise, but I also know the extreme unwillingness of people to go into regions where they do not have the basic rule of law. That is what we are talking about. I would like to put this in context.
My colleague in the Conservative Party said we had to have a hemisphere free of terrorism. If we look at the history of terrorism in North America and the Americas, it is almost entirely based on the state terror that existed in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala where there were murderous regimes and death squads. I hear my colleagues in the House say that there are certainly challenges and many places where people are not nice to each other. They said the same thing when they took the Maryknoll nuns from the United States and had them raped and murdered. They said the same thing when they killed all the Jesuit priests in El Salvador. They said there are problems on all sides but we knew then that it was false. The problems were the result of the regime and the problems today are from a regime that is targeting, the same as in El Salvador, human rights activists.
I would like to pose the question that I posed earlier to the Conservative Party. Tique Adolfo was murdered on January 1 this year for trying to organize a union. That is the one that was too many for this year. What steps did the Conservative government take at any time to raise that as an issue? It should have raised this issue and said that to have a legitimate free trade agreement Colombia would have to do better. But no, on January 7, 16, 28, February 12, 15, and three times on March 24, all union members were killed by paramilitaries. The killings have gone on and on.
The Canadian government is telling us today that we are setting an example for the world by accepting the fact that these murders go on, but we are going to get access to Colombia's copper, oil and we are going to sell it farm machinery. There are four million displaced people in Colombia. There have been 3,000 people murdered. We are not talking about a country that has been at war, we are talking about a regime that has been at war with its people.
What steps will Parliament take to say that if there is going to be a trade agreement with Colombia, there are going to be strong principles, not side agreements, not platitudes about one being too many? When are the Conservatives going to speak out and publicly say to the Colombian government that we want to see action because we have not heard that in the House? We look to the United States where Congress is pushing back on the Colombia free trade agreements there as well because the Americans recognize there is no benefit of giving legitimacy to a regime like this until there are concrete steps being made to protect people whose only crime is speaking up for safe workplaces with proper wages.
