International Trade committee  Clearly, we have a very vibrant trade union movement in Colombia, despite the fact that it's probably the most dangerous field one could possibly choose to work in. Simply by making the commitment to be a trade union leader, you're putting a death sentence on your head. We have s

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Colombia has the highest rate of union deaths of any country in the world. It's consistent, of course, with the fact that the majority of these workers who are killed are union leaders on the front line—obviously, engaging in negotiations, strikes, and issues of representing thei

International Trade committee  It would have been extremely important. I think for the future report it will be important for us to know the baseline that the government intends to use. We have worked with an organization within Colombia to do a report. They will be coming to this committee to testify, and y

International Trade committee  To be factual, the numbers have come down. But they vary from year to year. We can see numbers drop in one particular year and then go up the following the year. We're hoping, if this is any indication, that the number of colleagues getting killed is going to be less and less.

International Trade committee  Well, I'll speak on two fronts. One, in terms of the number of people who have been displaced in Colombia, I think that situation remains probably the worst, other than in Sudan. There are more displaced people in Colombia—which doesn't get the attention it requires. In that cont

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before you here today to discuss the annual report on human rights and free trade between Canada and the Republic of Columbia. We think this is an important issue that we are discussing here. We care

Finance committee  Well, I guess there's a fundamental question: is Canada Post able to keep its mandate in terms of services across the country and at a reasonable cost where Canadians can continue to have access to them? I don't know how much business they need to lose for us to recognize that. T

Finance committee  Canada Post has a much broader mandate. We used to have Air Canada having to fly in smaller communities. Once we deregulated, we saw the impact of Air Canada no longer having to provide service to those communities. Those communities are struggling with how they'll get services.

Finance committee  Yes. It's a combination of both.

Finance committee  We see the post office in a more universal context in its responsibility to deliver services. We don't see the post office simply as where it can compete and how effective it can be. The post office has a mandate to provide universal service to all Canadians from coast to coast r

Finance committee  I'm not disputing whether Canada Post can compete, but most of these guys that are here are not the international remailers. These are the print shops and the others who provide important services--but they're not the remailers.

Finance committee  We think that Canada Post has had an exclusive right to provide these services to date and I think it has worked quite well. We believe that the competition obviously will bring some challenges to the corporation that continues to provide universal services. We also believe tha

Finance committee  Yes, we believe that it will have a detrimental impact.

Finance committee  First, I think, we want to state that Canada Post does provide a significant amount of employment to many of our members who work in the postal service delivery and sorting business right now. To a large extent, we think that if you're able to preserve the right that Canada Post