One of the stranger parliamentary spectacles during the past two years has been the prolonged, repetitive and often emotional debate over government legislation to implement a Canada-Colombia free trade deal.At the centre of the strangeness was the New Democratic Party and its trade critic, Vancouver area MP Peter Julian. He has led the filibuster, talking as long as he could to delay, denouncing the Conservatives for signing a trade deal with “butchers” and denouncing the Liberals as phony human rights defenders.As an MP, there is much to commend Julian, 48 and a three-term MP. He is articulate, passionate, hard working and committed to his causes, his constituency and his party. He comes by his anti-free trade credentials honestly as a former national executive director of the Council of Canadians.Yet there is something perplexing about his vehement, visceral opposition to the Colombia free trade deal.Yes, the Colombian government is known for its brutal treatment of trade unionist and dissidents as it fights a long battle against a violent insurgency.But the amount of political and parliamentary energy spent to fight this deal seems disproportionate to its importance. And the campaign seems hypocritical.To begin with, Canada already has a $1.3 billion two-way trade relationship with Colombia that includes hundreds of millions of dollars worth of agricultural sales each year.The NDP has not called for that trade to end, just that it not be expanded. And the logic is …?Then there is the question of the Canadian Wheat Board, a prominent supporter of Colombia free trade, and its relationship with other countries that presumably are not on the NDP favoured-nation list.Keep in mind that the CWB is one of the cornerstones of NDP agricultural ideology, a can-do-no-wrong icon under constant attack from the dastardly Conservatives.So who has the CWB sold Canadian wheat to over the past decade? Scores of countries, of course, among them such undemocratic and presumably anti-democratic states as Congo, Ethiopia, Libya, Zimbabwe, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Sri Lanka.During those 10 years, CWB bulk wheat sales to Colombia averaged 300,000 tonnes per year.If the NDP held the agriculture and CWB portfolio in say, a Liberal-NDP coalition government (over Ralph Goodale’s corpse), would the board be told to stop selling grain to these countries?During his fierce battle against the Colombia FTA legislation, Julian heard from many farm sector witnesses, most from western Canada, who urged Parliament to approve it and thus improve market access for their crops.For the NDP MP, the arguments of human rights campaigners, indigenous Colombian witnesses and trade unionists trumped the farmer commercial arguments.Julian’s last intervention in the debate was to denounce Conservative agriculture policy and its opposition to the CWB monopoly.His efforts have apparently not inspired a prairie move to support the NDP in any of the many agricultural seats it once held.
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