International Trade committee  Sure, and I'll try to keep it extremely brief. In February of this year, I went to Amman to discuss with Ministry of Interior officials the Jordanian practice of arbitrarily withdrawing Jordanian nationality from citizens of Palestinian origin. In 1988 King Hussein of Jordan s

International Trade committee  I'd like my colleague to take this question. I think it's a very good question. The question is not whether Jordan, as a state, wants to do so. There are many different factions in Jordan with different interests. The parliament in Jordan usually doesn't have a lot to say. It cer

International Trade committee  What I would say to your question is that the U.S.-Jordan free trade agreement can be perhaps instructive as to how it worked in terms of those labour provisions under that treaty. My main point here would be that it was not the agreement per se that led to an improvement but it

International Trade committee  Should I reply quickly?

International Trade committee  I would offer a roughly similar conclusion. That is, if you do not go ahead with this agreement, I don't think Canada can expect to have any significant influence over labour conditions in Jordan. However, going forward with the agreement also by no means gives a guarantee that l

International Trade committee  Thank you. There's some confusion about the exact status of non-Jordanian workers in Jordan and their right to join a union. For certain, they do not have the right to participate and to vote on strikes. There we agree. Over the years that I have been in touch with Jordanian wo

International Trade committee  I'm happy to try to answer that. First, I'm not an expert on the region. As a whole, I know that the qualified industrial zones are particular to Jordan in the way they are set up. However, labour rights abuses are certainly familiar to us from a number of countries in the region

International Trade committee  Certainly. Thank you. Jordan is a country that suffers from significant unemployment. There is a wide gap between official figures and estimates. Furthermore, it has an extremely low participation of women in the work force. It's just about the same rate as Saudi Arabia, for exa

International Trade committee  Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, honourable members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen, for allowing me to address you today on the issue of the free trade agreement proposed between Canada and Jordan and on the issue of human rights therein. I have worked on h

International Trade committee  Good evening. Thank you.