Foreign Affairs committee  I'd like to give you an answer to that. We don't support the Colombia free trade deal, and I'll tell you why. If I were in Colombia right now testifying before some committee, I wouldn't make it out the front door without being assassinated. And that's the truth.

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes. Again, I see the positive aspect of it. Whenever you pass a law that says we're going to put a lens on something before we give support, and you have to comply with the lens, that's a pretty good thing. I don't think it's really unattainable here. I think this is pretty ea

Foreign Affairs committee  I wish I could get them to apply the laws that protect workers in Canada. Then we wouldn't have some of the stories like Westray, Elliot Lake, and other horror stories.

Foreign Affairs committee  If they are enforced.

Foreign Affairs committee  No. We know you can't. For example, you can't compare wages in Peru to those in Canada. It would really skew the economy of Peru. You'd have miners making more than doctors, for example, so we don't advocate that. But we do say at least minimum health and safety standards and env

Foreign Affairs committee  No, I don't think we'd be looking for Canadian legislation.

Foreign Affairs committee  I guess if a complaint was brought and you could establish to the minister that workers were being harmed, made ill because of their work, or dying because of their work, you could at least bring forward a complaint to see if you could advance that to see if there was a standard

Foreign Affairs committee  No. I think what we talk about is before the federal government supports the Canadian mining companies monetarily, we'd look at corporate social responsibility, regulations with respect to health and safety or environment when it affects communities that are in close proximity to

Foreign Affairs committee  Of course I am not prepared to put them in jeopardy, but I don't believe Mr. Beatty either. I think he was simply wrong in stating it would put workers in jeopardy. I wouldn't sit here and put workers in Canada or anywhere else in jeopardy. The whole reason for my being here is t

Foreign Affairs committee  We have a labour dispute on right now at Vale Inco in Sudbury and Voisey's Bay. It's a Brazilian mining company and they don't seem to adopt any Brazilian standards when they operate in Canada. In fact, they're trying to drive us down. If they have a standard for Brazil, we don't

Foreign Affairs committee  I think clearly Canadian mining companies lead the world--I said that earlier--and they lead it in the technology and methodology for extracting resources. The reason they go to developing countries is because developing countries don't have the capital to develop the resource, a

Foreign Affairs committee  I think Bill C-300 would. It would be my opinion, but it's pretty light. It doesn't go far enough. I do think that Canadian mining companies, first off, export wonderful technology. We know how to mine. We really do. We've got it together. And our expertise and developing minin

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and panel. Good morning. Thank you for the invitation to speak today about this very important private member's bill. My name is Stephen Hunt. I'm the elected leader of the United Steelworkers, District 3, which is all of western Canada, from the Manitoba