International Trade committee  As I've been saying, I think I'm probably the least qualified person to answer a specific question, because I don't claim to have any knowledge of Colombia and Canada. The point I am strongly making to the committee is about assessing the rules. One doesn't bring in any rules w

International Trade committee  “Willy-nilly” probably was the wrong choice of words. I think I was making the point more generally that one shouldn't think that rules by themselves are a good thing. It's the nature of the rules that you bring in and the way that changes the way the game is played that is impor

International Trade committee  There are probably three different ways in which you might tackle those problems. The first might be with oversight of the actual impact assessment process. There's a decision that has to be made about the committee, or whatever structure would be appropriate in the Canadian cont

International Trade committee  I think the question I would focus on would be the narrow one. The human rights impact assessment process is trying to assess what the actual impacts of the agreement will be. The important thing is that you don't take an ideological position, and the impact assessment process sh

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for your question. Again, what we need to be careful about is what we're talking about with the human rights impact assessment, the process of analyzing the human rights implications of the agreement itself. So yes, you may have all kinds of disagreements ab

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for your question. First of all, I don't purport to be an expert on the human rights situation in Colombia.You have experts before your committee who can talk to you on that. So I'll concentrate on the human rights impact assessment process. You are right, w

International Trade committee  As I've said before, independent reporting is at the heart of the assessment process. Without all that independent reporting process, you would have to have serious worries, particularly in the kind of scenario where there seems to be a lot of contestation about the actual kinds

International Trade committee  Yes. If I've understood your question correctly, then clearly the optimum scenario from a human rights situation is that you have what we would call an ex ante assessment. An ex ante assessment would take place before the agreement came into place, because then you're in a positi

International Trade committee  Again, absolutely yes. The assessment process is and should be a rigorous and scientific one, undertaken by experts in the field. That means experts in economics, experts in human rights, experts in social science methodologies for undertaking the form of participatory assessment

International Trade committee  I missed some of that; I think there was a problem with the sound. But if you're asking about my speciality, it's on trade and human rights issues, and to a lesser extent on environmental issues.

International Trade committee  Thank you very much for the question. Clearly, in an endeavour such as this, I'd like to be of any kind of assistance in providing technical knowledge and support to make sure that the process is as rigorous as possible. I've said I think the idea of a human rights impact assessm

International Trade committee  No. As I said, I think this will be the first time this will take place, which is partly why I'm keen to get the model up and running in the best way possible and to use the good practice, which we can see in other fields of human rights impact assessment, to make sure the termin

International Trade committee  Good afternoon, and good evening from England, as it is now. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak to you. I am an academic. I work in the University of Warwick, and I specialize in issues of trade law and human rights law. I engage in a particular area of research