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For Immediate Release
Contact:

Stuart Trew, Trade Campaigner, Council of Canadians:
(647) 222-9782; strew@canadians.org.

Liberals Sell-Out on Human Rights With Amendment to Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement

OTTAWA

A Liberal proposal that would fast-track the passage of a free trade
agreement with Colombia would put Canada at odds with international
allies and betrays a parliamentary commitment to perform an independent
human rights impact assessment first, says the Council of Canadians.

"The Belgian government today rejected a new investment treaty with
Colombia because of ongoing and often unchecked human rights violations,
and spying on NGOs by the Colombian intelligence agency. Incredibly,
the Liberals are ready to ignore all this by letting the Colombian
government monitor its own human rights violations," says Stuart Trew,
trade campaigner with the Council of Canadians.

In the House of Commons yesterday, Liberal trade critic Scott Brison
proposed an amendment to the Canada-Colombia FTA to include
post-ratification annual rights assessments performed by each
government. Brison reportedly developed this idea in a private meeting
with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe during the World Economic Forum in
Davos this January. The proposal was supported by Liberal Bob Rae and
accepted by Trade Minister Peter Van Loan.

The Liberal proposal flip-flops on a previous commitment in June 2008 of
the all-party Commons Committee on International Trade, that the free
trade agreement should not be ratified until an independent human rights
impact assessment can be carried out first.

Recent UN and Amnesty International reports show escalating violence
against Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, including murder and
forcible displacement from communal lands. The National Labour School
(ENS) of Colombia has also accounted for the murders of 45 trade
unionists in 2009. These accounts, and unacceptably high impunity rates,
have been enough to stall and even stop similar free trade agreements
in allied countries, including Belgium and the United States.

During recent legislative elections in Colombia, in which President
Uribe's allies were the big winners, polling stations in one-third of
the country's municipalities were at risk of violence, corruption or
fraud, according to the ombudsman's office and election observers, who
reported vote-buying and pressure on voters. This situation was
predicted by an international pre-election observation mission to
Colombia, which issued a report earlier this month.

"Canada entering into a free trade agreement with Colombia now not only
sends the wrong message to Canadians and the Colombian regime, it also
may make Canada and Canadian companies complicit or passive supporters
of continued violence in Colombia," says Carleen Pickard, director of
organizing with the Council of Canadians and one of several Canadian
members of the pre-election monitoring group. The pre-election report is
available at www.canadians.org/trade.

Founded in 1985, the Council of Canadians is Canada's leading social action organization, mobilizing a network of 60 chapters across the country.

Office: (613) 233-4487, ext. 249