International Trade committee  Well, I think that's certainly the goal of the Honduran government and the entire donor community. Again, it wouldn't just be Canada. But I've mentioned before that the United States, the E.U., the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank programming are all very mindful of the fact that Honduras is facing all of the challenges now that so troubled Colombia 15 or 20 years ago.

International Trade committee  I have my fingers crossed. I hope so. I think it can be done. If we were talking about Colombia 15 or 20 years ago, it would have looked like a very desperate situation. It's much better now. Honduras has all the opportunity to achieve the same kinds of outcomes.

International Trade committee  Just on beef and pork, seeing that you mentioned beef, this was a very sensitive issue for the Hondurans. They have local beef and pork production. This was one of the more difficult areas of the agreement to finalize negotiations on. The outcome that was negotiated with respect to beef, and in particular, high-quality beef, which is typically what we would export to the region, is that upon implementation of the free trade agreement there will be a quota of 500 metric tonnes of duty-free Canadian high-quality beef allowed into the country.

International Trade committee  I'd just like to come back to the first part of your statement, or your questioning, about the size of the Honduran market and its relative importance. We recognize that Honduras is nowhere near Canada's most important trading partner, and our bilateral trade, as I mentioned in my opening statement, is $280 million, which compared to daily trade with the United States, or something, is indeed very small.

International Trade committee  Yes, and the trade agreement is not a tool to address that. That is not its purpose. The purpose of a trade agreement is to provide a level playing field. If I can answer the question on human rights, the embassy is well aware of the human rights abuses that are going on in Honduras.

International Trade committee  Let me say that when I was there, we had at the time—and I believe it's still ongoing—a CIDA project to help the local cacao farmers. There is already some local production. We worked closely with some consultants from Colombia, who were experts in this kind of agricultural production.

International Trade committee  The government of the day sets the foreign and trade policy priorities for—

International Trade committee  There's no flow chart within the department—

International Trade committee  This comes back to a point you raised earlier. DFAIT doesn't sign trade agreements. The Government of Canada, after Parliament approves them, moves to implement trade agreements—just to be clear about the role of the public service versus the government, which is actually making these kinds of decisions.

International Trade committee  I might just say that there is a qualitative difference between some countries on the planet that are engaging daily in state-sponsored repression of human rights, etc.—and you may have named some of them—and a country like Honduras. The human rights issues and the problems associated with violence that you have described, in my experience when I was there, were not state-sponsored, directed by the government with orders from the top to “arrest my political opponents”, etc.

International Trade committee  Chair, maybe for that question I'll turn to my colleague Mr. Normandin, who was recently in Honduras and who is managing these issues now.

International Trade committee  I think I mentioned earlier and we had a good discussion in the committee this morning about all the challenges that face Honduras—poverty, violence.... Narco-trafficking, I have to say, is an overwhelming concern in the region, and particularly in Honduras. All of these things really undermine prosperity, security, and good governance, which are the three key themes in Canada's Americas strategy—prosperity, security, good governance, along with democracy.

International Trade committee  I'm not sure I understand the question.

International Trade committee  We have more security and justice programming as well, I would say. All of these things are mutually supportive.

International Trade committee  We negotiate the 23-or-so chapters of the free trade agreement and the parallel agreements on labour and environment all effectively at the same time, in parallel. It's very much a whole-of-government exercise. There are more than half a dozen government departments involved, including ESDC and Environment Canada.