Harper's Free Trade Mantra: Hush, Rush, and Sign

This January, after little more than 6 months of negotiations, the Canadian Government announced the completion of negotiations of the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Six months later, on June 7, 2008, Canada announced that negotiations for a controversial Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia were finalized.

The negotiations with Colombia were controversial from the get go: the country has the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and the government of Alvaro Uribe is riddled by ongoing scandals that have revealed proven links between Uribe’s allies in Congress and paramilitary death squads.

In a corruption scandal that would most certainly bring down a Canadian Prime Minister, Uribe himself is the subject of a recent Sentence by the Colombian Supreme Court. The justices condemned him for buying the key vote of Congresswoman Yidis Medina in exchange for political favours, a crime necessary for the constitutional changes that opened the door to Uribe’s re-election in 2006.

On June 26th, Medina was sentenced to 3 ½ years of house arrest for accepting bribes from the president. The president promptly responded that the justices were doing the bidding of terrorists and (illegally) called for a referendum for the repeat of the 2006 elections.

Compared to the deal with Colombia, which has begun to generate concern among Colombians and Canadians, Canada’s agreement with Peru slid in under the radar. It was ratified on May 29th, making it the country’s fourth with a Latin American country: first came the Canada-US FTA in 1988, which integrated Mexico with the implementation of NAFTA 1994, then an agreement with Chile signed in 1997, and another with Costa Rica ratified in 2002.