Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-20, the Canada-Honduras free trade agreement. As a number of my colleagues have pointed out, New Democrats are opposed to this agreement, for a number of very good reasons.
Others have mentioned it, but I want to reiterate the three pillars that we think are fundamentally important for Canadians when negotiating free trade agreements and the assessment of those agreements. First, is the proposed partner one who respects democracy, human rights, adequate environmental and labour standards, and Canadian values? If there are challenges in this regard, is the partner on a positive trajectory toward these goals? Second, is the proposed partner's economy of significant or strategic value to Canada? Third, are the terms of the proposed agreement satisfactory? On this last point, the Canada-Honduras agreement is another example of an agreement that was negotiated behind closed doors, so Canadians did not have access to the full details of the agreement during that process.
I am going to focus most of my speech on human rights. I have been in the House for almost 10 years and have had the opportunity to debate other free trade agreements, including, notably, the Colombia free trade agreement, where there were many human rights violations.
One of my colleagues noted that one of the ways Canada could position itself is to make sure there are binding terms within a free trade agreement that talk about human rights and the consequences if human rights violations continue.
We have attempted, a number of times in the House, to have a bill passed with regard to corporate social responsibility. The bill would hold Canadian companies to standards that we hold here in Canada, instead of finding extractive companies in particular doing business in other countries, where they violate all kinds of environmental, social, and human rights standards. That bill has never managed to get through the House.
I want to note one particular person who provided testimony before committee because I am going to focus on the human rights aspect. Ms. Sheila Katz, a representative from the Americas Policy Group at the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, said at the Standing Committee on International Trade, on April 22, 2013:
The Americas Policy Group has recommended that Canada refrain from concluding free trade agreements with countries that have poor democratic governance and human rights records. [...] ...Canada's eager recognition of a president who came to power in a military coup in Honduras in 2009. This is another example of Canada prioritizing the trade pillar of its Americas strategy above the rest. Since the coup, hundreds of regime opponents have been intimidated, arbitrarily arrested, disappeared, tortured, and killed. The Americas Policy Group is concerned that Canada has validated this regime by adopting a business-as-usual approach and signing a free trade agreement with Honduras in spite of its human rights record.
I am going to refer to a number of different articles with regard to the Honduran human rights record.
In an article by IWGIA, in The Indigenous World 2010, there was a bit of background, and then it talked about some specifics with regard to human rights abuses in Honduras. It is important to note the number of indigenous people in Honduras and the land mass that we are talking about:
Given the lack of an official census, it is estimated that the nine indigenous and Afro-descendant people living in Honduras number 1.27 million inhabitants.... The territory claimed by the indigenous peoples accounts for approximately 2 million hectares out of a total national land mass of 11.2 million. Only 10% have a guaranteed property title. Each of the peoples retains a degree of individuality, in line with their habits and customs, and this is reflected in their day-to-day practices in terms of, for example, their community councils. Honduras ratified ILO Convention 169 in September 1994. In 2007, it voted in favour of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Apart from Convention 169, there is no case law to protect the rights of indigenous peoples.
I think that is a very important point. The Honduran government is voting in favour of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and yet in the negotiations on this free trade agreement, I wonder whether indigenous peoples in Honduras gave, as noted in Article 19 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “their free, prior and informed consent”.
I am going to cite a number of cases where there are ongoing human rights abuses with regard to land.
In Honduras, the indigenous peoples do not appear to have the same legal rights in terms of taking it to courts and being protected that way. In Canada, we know that the FIPA has been taken to court by a first nation from British Columbia and that is an example where even in Canada first nations say that Article 19 free, prior and informed consent, is not being respected by the Canadian government when negotiating trade agreements. In the same article it goes on to say:
The indigenous peoples form one of the poorest sectors of society and their marginalisation means that they play no part in the formal economy. Their main source of income lies in maize, beans, coffee, fishing and in the sale of handicrafts.
It went on to say, “When they provide labour to other productive sectors, they are paid around USD 5 for a 10-hour day”. That is pretty stark.
In an article called “Human Rights Violations in Honduras: Land Seizures, Peasants' Repression and the Struggle for Democracy on the Ground” by Jeanette Bonifaz, a research associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, she details a number of very serious concerns with regard to human rights. She says:
In Honduras, arguably the most unequal country in Latin America, peasants are the victims of a glaring disparate land ownership structure. In 2009, when then-President Manuel Zelaya attempted to pass legislation that promised comprehensive land reform, he was ousted from power by a coup....
It is the land reform that seems to be at the heart at much of the oppression of the indigenous people.
She went on to say that:
Since the coup, peasants have suffered from increased repression, with death squads threatening and assassinating hundreds of campesinos while palm oil and hydroelectric companies accumulate land by dispossession.... Tragically, there seems to be no end in sight for the repression of land and human rights in the Central American country.
I do not have time in my brief 10 minutes to go through the numerous examples of persecution over land and agrarian reform that have taken place in Honduras and do not appear to be measurably better in this day and age. She goes through a period from the 1960s all the way up until present day. I want to cite something that happened in 2010.
When Porfirio Lobo Sosa, a landowner, became the president of Honduras in 2010, the peasants began to protest and peacefully occupy lands, which only brought more state-sponsored repression against them. As a report from the Canadian Council for International Cooperation points out, “…the coup has provided the context for rolling back important gains in the peaceful and legal resolution of conflicts between peasant groups and powerful landed business interests over access to land titles.”
In her concluding remarks, she said:
Without comprehensive land reform that protects the rights of Indigenous peoples and abides by the ILO Convention 169, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, as well as other crucial national and international agreements and laws, forced displacements and violence will continue to occur in Honduras. In addition, the judicial system needs to be revised, and proper investigations in the case of human rights violations need to take place. As the Inter-American Court of Human Rights asserts, “the State has the obligation to use all the legal means at its disposal to combat impunity, since it fosters chronic recidivism of human rights violations and total defenselessness of victims and their relatives.”
She does cite a specific example of a hydro-electric dam that fuels violence. There has been a long-standing community protest. In fact, I come back to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People on free, prior, and informed consent. The community spoke overwhelmingly against this hydro-electric dam. Instead what happened is the government awarded 47 hydro-electric dam concessions to companies without prior consultation. Once the community spoke up and started to protest, we saw the repression start.
Why is it that our Canadian government, which supposedly supports human rights, would engage in a free trade agreement where the human rights violations are so egregious? I have to ask why.
