Take Action

August 2009

While action on the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement has successfully delayed a vote until the fall of 2009, the pressure needs to continue.

Background

Your action on the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA) is working! Thanks to your letters, phone calls, e-mails, and personal meetings with MPs, voting on implementation legislation for the CCFTA (Bill-23) has been delayed until the fall of 2009.

But the struggle to put human rights ahead of commercial interests is not over. Please write to your Member of Parliament to ask that MPs reject Bill C-23 (implementing legislation for the agreement) unless an independent and comprehensive human rights impact assessment is carried out.

The Free Trade Agreement will do nothing to alleviate the ongoing systematic human rights crisis in Colombia. Partners in Colombia fear that the deal will even exacerbate what the United Nations calls the hemisphere's worst human rights situation.

In February 2009, KAIROS and several other groups hosted a delegation of Colombian civil society leaders to come to Canada and give testimony about the human rights situation and potential impacts of this agreement. At great risk to their own safety, Colombian partners travelled to Canada to speak to Canadians and members of the government, including International Trade Minister Stockwell Day and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Kent. The Colombians brought evidence of the increase in extrajudicial killings, death threats against social leaders, and killings of trade unionists. In May and June, Lilia Solano of the Justice and Life Project (a United Church global partner) visited Members of Parliament as part of the United for Peace delegation. 

The Canada-Colombia deal contains more benefits for large, often environmentally destructive companies than it does for Colombia's struggling democracy. It risks putting millions of small-scale farmers out of work as Canadian imports of wheat and other products enter the country, and it will further remove democratic control over development decisions from local communities, opening up more of the country to unchecked extractive industries and the accompanying environmental degradation.

Now is not the time for a free trade deal with Colombia. Rather, it is time for Prime Minister Harper to demonstrate his government's commitment to human rights. Until the crisis in Colombia is resolved, free trade and foreign investment will only make a bad situation worse.

Take Action

• Write to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and your Member of Parliament* today! Ask that the government
  • address widespread assassinations, human rights violations, and structural inequalities
  • carry out a full human rights impact assessment before going any further toward free trade with Colombia
  • adopt a new approach to trade that improves the conditions of those affected by violence and conflict and living in poverty, including Indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians, women, and internally displaced persons
• Continue to pray for the people of Colombia. Mennonite Central Committee* (MCC) provides an online packet of worship resources and advocacy material, including prayers, a bulletin insert, and a sample letter to lawmakers.
• Learn more about the United Church's global partners in Colombia, about KAIROS* work in Colombia, and about the ecumenical movement* for peace in Colombia.

Please send your letters to

• Prime Minister Stephen Harper
  Prime Minister's Office
  80 Wellington Street
  Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
  Fax: 613-941-6900
  E-mail: Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Send a copy to

• Rachel Warden, Latin America Program Coordinator
  KAIROS Canada
  E-mail: Rachel Warden
• Barbara Lloyd
  Program Coordinator, Public Witness
  Justice, Global and Ecumenical Relations Unit
  The United Church of Canada
  E-mail: Barbara Lloyd

For more information, contact

• Jim Hodgson
  Justice, Global and Ecumenical Relations Unit
  The United Church of Canada
  Fax: 416-253-1630
  Tel: 1-800-268-3781 ext. 4013
  E-mail: Jim Hodgson

Learn More

United Church Moderator the Right Rev. David Giuliano wrote about human rights in Colombia in May in the Toronto Star's* online edition.

Ongoing updates* on the status of Bill C-23, plus the text of the legislation and major speeches in Parliament, are available on the government's website.

The Canadian Council for International Cooperation's Trade and Poverty* page has links to two useful resources:

• "Key Benchmarks for a Human Rights Assessment" outlines what is needed to conduct the assessment called for by the Standing Committee on International Trade of Canada's House of Commons in June 2008.
• "Making a Bad Situation Worse: An Analysis of the Text of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement" is a briefing report prepared by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation, Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers, Canadian Labour Congress and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and quoted quite extensively during the Parliamentary debate.