Canada and Honduras agree on free trade deal

SAN PEDRO SULA, HONDURAS—Stephen Harper brushed off concerns over human rights abuses in Honduras as he announced Friday the two countries have reached a pact on free trade.

As he did during a state visit to Colombia this week, the Prime Minister accused opponents of the deal of harbouring protectionist impulses rather than genuine concerns about human rights.

“People who favour protectionism are not, as I’ve said before, driven by concerns about poverty or human rights. They are driven by desire to protect local interests,” Harper said.

“Protectionists are selfish and short-sighted in their perspectives. And those who oppose free trade between Canada and Honduras, if you look at the record, have opposed free trade between Canada and every other country we’ve signed a trade agreement with, including the United States.”

Harper’s stop in San Pedro Sula was the first state visit to Honduras by a foreign leader since the country was allowed back into the Organization of American States in June, following a 2009 coup that ousted the country’s leftist president.

Canada was one of the first countries to throw its support behind Porfirio Lobo Sosa, a wealthy rancher elected president of the tiny Central American country in November 2009, months after former leader Manuel Zelaya was deposed.

At the time, both the Union of South American Nations and Mercosur — an economic bloc consisting of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay — declared they would not recognize the results of the 2009 election in Honduras or the legitimacy of the Lobo presidency on the grounds that doing so would legitimize the coup.

Canada also initially condemned the coup.

“Canada condemns the coup d’etat that took place over the weekend in Honduras, and calls on all parties to show restraint and to seek a peaceful resolution to the present political crisis,” said a June 2009 statement by Peter Kent, who at the time was minister of state of foreign affairs for the Americas.

The OAS readmitted Honduras two months ago, with the backing of Canada and the United States, after the new president allowed Zelaya to return from exile to the country he once ruled.

Since the coup, Canada has stepped up trade talks with Honduras, one in a bloc of four Central American countries that Canada has been conducting free-trade negotiations with for a decade.

Honduras is the first of the so-called Central American Four — which also includes El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua — to strike a free-trade pact with Canada. The agreement includes side deals on labour standards and practices and environmental protection.

Two-way trade between Canada and Honduras was $192 million in 2010.

Canada has drawn criticism for courting Honduras, one of the poorest and most violent countries in the region. The World Bank says more than 4.5 million people in a country of fewer than eight million — or roughly 60 per cent of the population — live at the poverty line.

Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The United Nations Development Program reported 4,473 murders in Honduras in 2008. That’s the equivalent of 12 a day.

The group Human Rights Watch claims that at least eight journalists and 10 members of a political group that opposed the 2009 coup called the National Popular Resistance Front have been killed since Lobo took office.

The president has created a truth commission to study the events surrounding the coup and its aftermath.

Canadian mining companies have also been blamed for health problems among Honduran indigenous communities.

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Source: Toronto Star