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May
22, 2014 (Toronto, ON)
The Canadian
government’s third
human rights report
on its controversial
free trade agreement
with Colombia, tabled
May 16, reads like a
marketing brochure for
neoliberal economics.
Once again, the annual
human rights impact
assessment (HRIA) on the
Canada-Colombia Free
Trade Agreement (CCOFTA)
does little to meet its
obligation to analyses
the effects of Canadian
investment on human
rights in Colombia.
Instead, the report
extols the virtues of
pro-market,
tariff-reducing free
trade policies, with a
window dressing of
corporate social
responsibility.
The CCOFTA came into
force in 2011 with the
goal of providing new
market opportunities to
Canadian corporations.
(One such opportunity
arose after the Canadian
government eased its ban on
exporting
assault-style weapons
to Colombia, one of the
world’s most violent
countries.) The
agreement’s human rights
component was an
afterthought, included
only after intense
opposition from labour
and social justice
groups in Canada and
Colombia. The solution,
developed by then
Liberal trade critic
Scott Brison over a
steak dinner with his
Colombian counterpart,
was to throw in a human
rights assessment
without any due
diligence or prior
baseline study as
recommended by world
experts.
Nonexistent
consultation
Lack of genuine civil
society consultation has
plagued the HRIA process
since its inception, and
this year was no
exception. A call on a
government website for
public submissions,
posted without prior
notice for a mere six
days, was the
extent of civil society
“consultation” in Canada
for the 2013 report. Not
surprisingly, only two
submissions were
received.
Both public submissions
raised concerns over
ongoing assassinations
of labour activists,
confrontations over
resource extraction (oil
and mining), and
agricultural
controversies. They also
highlighted opposition
to the CCOFTA and other
trade agreements by “labour
unions, Afro-Colombian
groups, campesino
farmers and
traditional artisanal
miners.“ But
instead of seriously
addressing those
concerns, the Canadian
government’s response
was to dismiss them as
unlinked to the CCOFTA.
Extraction
industry violates
rights
The Canadian mining
industry has engendered
tremendous opposition
among Colombian
communities and
environmental activists,
who accuse Canadian
corporations of
violating human and
labour rights, causing
environmental
degradation and
displacing
Afro-Colombian and
Indigenous communities.
The CCOFTA has given
Canadian corporations
greater access to
Colombia’s natural
resources: more than
half of extractive
companies in Colombia,
operating in oil, gas
and mining sectors, are
understood to be
Canadian-based.
In July 2013, death
threats were sent to Héctor
Sánchez a
community leader and
member of the Unión
Sindical Obrera (USO) in
Puerto Gaitán, where
Canadian multinational
Pacific Rubiales Energy
operates oilfields in
conjunction with the
Colombian state
enterprise Ecopetrol SA.
USO alleges that Pacific
Rubiales is breaching
basic workers’ rights,
including the right to
strike, to free
expression, and to
associate with unions.
Violence and threats
against union members
became so rampant that
USO was forced to close
its Puerto Gaitán office
until recently.
Last year strikers took
to the streets to oppose
Resolution
341 of the Agencia
Nacional de Minería,
implemented in 2013. The
resolution grants
special status to mining
contracts deemed of
“national interest” and
allows the government to
override environmental
regulations. This could
adversely affect parks
and lands that had been
protected from mining
intrusions.
This watering down of
Colombian environmental
protections to expedite
mining projects, and
violations of labour
rights associated with
Canadian extractive
industry, were not
mentioned in the Harper
government’s HRIA
report.
Attacks on
labour continue
The CCOFTA’s human
rights assessment and
its labour side
agreement have done
little to protect
Colombian workers’
rights and resolve the
continuing violence
against organized
labour. The Escuela
Nacional Sindical,
Colombia's trade union
school, recently
reported that anti-union
violence rose again in
2013, with 26 union
members killed, 13
homicide attempts, and
149 threats against
trade unionists.
Trade unionists across
Colombia are under
constant threat of
violence or even
assassination. Fernando
Flórez Viveros,
president of the Expreso
Palmira trade union, was
murdered in September
2013. Luis Miguel
Morantes,
president of the
Confederación de
Trabajadores de
Colombia, of one of the
country’s largest trade
unions, narrowly escaped
assassination in
February 2013 – after
leaving a meeting with
government
representatives
regarding the dismissal
of over 400 public
workers in Cali.
From its “consultation”
with Colombian civil
society, the HRIA report
mentions that Colombian
labour organizations
expressed concerns that
the CCOFTA was
contributing to the
problems of “informal
work, outsourcing, low
salaries and the
difficulty to
unionize.” Again
it’s alarming to see the
report does nothing to
address the concerns of
affected parties but
rather dismisses them,
effectively shutting
down the voices of civil
society from the
process.
Colombian civil
society ignored
Social opposition
continues to grow in
Colombia against
trade-related issues
like mining resolution
341 or agricultural law
9.70, which requires
farmers to use only
certified seeds made by
multinational
corporations like
Monsanto. Colombia saw more
protests in 2013
than in the previous 39
years.
“The FTA with
Canada, as with others
we have subscribed to,
practically closes
legally and
internationally any
possibility of
changing the
development model that
has been imposed by
violence and that
deepens inequality in
Colombia.”
— Hector Moncayo,
Colombian economist
with
Instituto
Latinoamericano para
una sociedad y un
derecho alternativos
(ILSA)
Canada’s HRIA report for
2013 does verbal
gymnastics to focus
narrowly and avoid
finding any links
between the CCOFTA and
human rights violations.
However, non-government
organizations in
Colombia reported over a
thousand cases of human
rights violations that
year, including “extra-judicial
killings, torture,
displacement of local
populations, arbitrary
imprisonment and
social cleansing.”
These problems have
plagued Colombia for
decades and cannot be
solely attributed to one
deal, but it is safe to
say that the CCOFTA is
exacerbating them. The
main finding of the HRIA
report for 2013 is that
concerns raised by civil
society are largely
irrelevant. It does
little to address the
CCOFTA’s serious human,
labour or environmental
impacts on Colombians,
and serves mainly to
justify the corporate
free trade agenda of the
Harper government.
If the Canadian
government wants to
bring any legitimacy to
the annual HRIA report,
it must demonstrate a
true willingness to
engage civil society in
both Canada and
Colombia. And Colombia’s
watering down of
environmental
protections and
violations of labour
rights associated with
Canadian extractive
industry must not be
ignored – they must be
an essential component
of any future HRIA
reporting.
For more
information:
Raul Burbano Program
Director, Common
Frontiers: (416) 522
8615 or bur...@rogers.com
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