Trade issue stirs up protestors, politician

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

Kings County Register

The consternation wasn’t about Canada’s role in Columbia - controversial as that is. The issue Dec. 4: who was listening?

The Council of Canadians organized a panel at Acadia University to present background on the Canada-Columbia Free Trade Agreement - then protests erupted.

Kings-Hants MP Scott Brison was invited to participate, but Parliamentary functions in Ottawa meant he could not arrive until well into the event.

Atlantic regional coordinator Angela Giles, acting as the panel’s moderator, invited Brison to speak on his arrival for five to 10 minutes at the beginning of the question and answer period. She also indicated he would be welcome to answer questions from the floor along with the panelists.

Feeling excluded, Brison sent two representatives. They passed out an invitation to a special session with the MP Dec. 4. They also handed out copies of a Brison speech in Parliament in favour of the Columbia agreement.

The council and members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada had already planned a rally at Brison’s office at noon Dec. 4. Over 100 protestors joined them, some coming from as far away as Ottawa and Northern Nova Scotia with banners and giant puppets.

Brison met briefly with the rally on the steps near his office. Michaele Kustudic, with the local branch of the council, said the MP initially tried to seize a microphone and speak, then he disappeared.

The protestors want the Liberal party to reconsider its support of the Columbia free trade agreement. Brison’s comments about a minimalized role for paramilitairies in human rights abuses in Columbia was also an issue they want addressed.

The crowd of about 100 marched along Main St. to the Beveridge Arts Centre for Brison’s event. Inside, they were shushed by security staff. Acadia’s head of security, Kevin Cleary, said fire regulations would not allow all the marchers to enter the classroom Brison had booked.

After two hours of heated words with those inside, Kustudic said of Brison’s stance: “adamant resistance to listening to/ hearing what others - especially your constituents, I have to say is not an admirable or desirable characteristic for someone who is elected to represent his constituents' interests to the federal government.”

Later, Brison countered by calling the protestors rude and rigidly ideological. He said dialogue would have been easier if people had stopped shouting. “I try to choose the middle path. I’m not a far right or far left wing ideologue. After 13 years in Parliament, I think I have proved I do listen, but I believe all of North America is better off with NAFTA.”

Brison said holding panels that only present one side of an issue is not democratic; however, Kustudic pointed out her group had specifically planned the event to “present the other side of the issue, the side that has received virtually no publicity or airing in the press or elsewhere “The people we were attempting to speak for - indigenous farmers, rural companeros and others who are being pushed off their land and forced to migrate to the slums of cities because rapacious mining companies (many of them, shamefully, Canadian) want to get at the coal and other valuable minerals under their land, and murdered or 'disappeared' if they resist - feel far differently about a trade deal with Canada.” ‘So many reasons’ against Columbian deal

At the panel itself, federal NDP Trade Critic Peter Julian outlined information from U.S. intelligence that linked the Columbian president to the most significant Colombian narco-traffickers.

Sociology professor James Brittain detailed human rights abuses in Columbia that have forced four million people into slums in the country’s cities.

Free trade critic Janet Eaton called the outpouring of opposition to this agreement - and Canada’s climate change stance - defining for this country. “There are so many reason to oppose this legislation,” she said, including human rights issues and a flawed model for trade.

Julian said his party rejects the Canada-Colombia free trade deal until an independent human rights impact assessment is carried out and all concerns are addressed.

Four of the largest Canadian trade unions are united in their opposition to the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the National Union of Public and General Employees all spoke out in September criticizing Bill C-23, the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act.

Denis Lemelin, who represents 56,000 postal workers through CUPW said, “the Colombian presidency has authorized its own intelligence service to spy on and intimidate human rights defenders, journalists, lawyers and even magistrates from the Supreme Court who have been investigating political scandals. “Canada should not be ratifying a free trade agreement with a government that is working so hard to block democratic debate.”

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