Canadian human rights report on Colombia a 'sick joke'

The Canadian government’s human rights report tabled in Parliament Tuesday regarding implementation of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement might as well have been a comic strip of three monkeys: "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil."

Its substance is summed up in the first three pages of the 18-page report (that's counting the title page and two annexes that occupy 12 pages). In essence: there will be no human rights report this year because only nine months have passed since the agreement was implemented.

Never mind that the Canadian government agreed to produce a human rights report by May 15 of this year two years ago. Nor that it was precisely this element of the agreement that allowed the free trade pact to pass through parliament, given that Colombia was (and still is) the most dangerous place on earth to be a trade unionist, with the most internally displaced peoples worldwide (between 3.9 and 5.5 million on last count and the great majority from mineral and hydrocarbon rich areasin which the numerous Canadian oil and mining companies operating in Colombia may have investments), with 32 Indigenous peoples at risk of extinction, or that at the time that the free trade agreement was being negotiated the Colombian government was mired in a scandal over close ties with paramilitary leaders, and a "false positives" scandal in which members of the Colombian army were killing citizens and then dressing them up as guerrillas or paramilitaries killed in combat.

The Price of Business as Usual

In Canada's free-trade agreement with Colombia, business and profit trump human rights.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper loves the way the government of Colombia operates. Defending the Colombia-Canada free-trade agreement that was passed in 2009 with the support of the Liberals, he ludicrously claims that concerns about human rights in that country are merely protectionism in disguise.

Harper’s dark vision of governance needs to be more widely acknowledged by Canadians.

If murdering trade unionists and human-rights activists, and driving the poor off their land by the millions to make way for “development,” is your thing, then by all means keep supporting Harper. Or, if you’re a Liberal, throw your full support behind interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae and the morally reprehensible Liberal MP Scott Brison, who seem to have no difficulty with this sort of thing either.

Harper lashes out at critics of Canada-Colombia free-trade deal

BOGOTA — Critics of free trade with Colombia who talk about human rights are really more concerned about protectionism, Stephen Harper claims.

That was the prime minister’s blunt message Wednesday as he stood beside his Colombian counterpart on the eve of a historic free-trade deal coming into effect.

“We can’t block the progress of a country like this for protectionist reasons, and you trying to use human rights as a front for doing that,” Harper said in Colombia’s presidential palace after being asked about critics who cite human-rights concerns in dealing with the country.

The NDP opposed the Conservative government’s signing of a free-trade agreement with Colombia in 2008 and tried to block the deal. But the deal passed and it takes effect Monday.