International Trade committee  I'm not in disagreement with you at all. We're not in disagreement that there should be rules in place. We're active elsewhere promoting rules around investment, human rights protection, environmental protection, and corporate and social responsibility attached to investment and trade—absolutely.

International Trade committee  I think Étienne has answered that, in a sense, as part of the presentation. As you say, there is the problem of how far those rules go and whether protecting the environment and labour will also protect the broader human rights that are at issue here. But—

International Trade committee  It is in the report. It was the Colombian army who produced his body, and they, in that public statement, took responsibility for his death. Now, that was not investigated, and that's why we can't say with any certainty what actually happened. All we have are those statements to go on.

International Trade committee  On the part of...? I'm not inside other people's heads. It's difficult to--

International Trade committee  What one can say is that there is a resource there that can be exploited, whether it's gold or uranium, and there is an interest in going forward and not in delaying the implementation of investment protection measures that would be available through a free trade agreement. That much I can say.

International Trade committee  I don't know if we're in a position to make that specific recommendation. The methodology that we in part based this study on was that of Rights and Democracy, a parastatal organization set up with the mandate to do this kind of work. They have models for research, methodology, and the development of new studies.

International Trade committee  I think that is why the conclusion of our smaller study is supporting the need for a full-scale human rights impact assessment before moving ahead with the agreement: it's to have enough of an investigation of the different aspects, the different types of investment that could be foreseen, the different mechanisms of investment, and the range of human rights impacts before Canadian lawmakers decide to enter into an agreement that could have such implications.

International Trade committee  No, sir. We're--

International Trade committee  We're in favour of--

International Trade committee  Well, no, I'd like to answer, if I may, Mr. Chair.

International Trade committee  Okay.

International Trade committee  I think you'll find in the study itself that we're not making a direct link. What we're trying to do is identify the risk of being implicated in very serious violations. We did try to find the mechanisms that would have allowed companies or the Canadian government implementing a free trade agreement to ensure that this was not the case.

International Trade committee  Again, the distinction I'm trying to make is that if we had that kind of information, if we had discovered that in the course of this study, it would have blown up already. We have other cases of legal action and international complaints and so on--with the OECD national contact point and so on--that have been brought forward and where those specific details are available.

International Trade committee  You're talking about two different things in the sense that the economic value of the drug trade and the economic value of the extractive industries are of themselves not the same as an index of employment or the distribution of that economic activity--and I think the drug trade is probably as highly centralized as the extractive industries in terms of the risks and the benefits.

International Trade committee  No, sir. I was referring to the centralization of the benefits and the decentralization of the risks, and making no attempt to relate them in any other way. Our study was not intended to look at the entire Colombian economy or the entire Colombian conflict. It was intended to look at the specific case of Canadian investment in the extractive industries, and in particular in mining, and to look at the human rights risks that could have been implicit in this activity.