Stop the Canada-Colombia trade talks – NOW!
November 29, 2007
On November 29th at mid-day hundreds of chanting trade unionists and other concerned Canadians marched in downtown Toronto to denounce the secretive free trade negotiations between Canada and Colombia. This rally was sponsored by the Ontario Federation of Labour and it called on the Prime Minister to suspend the Colombia trade talks NOW, to provide for a full debate NOW, and to put human rights first while adopting a new approach to trade that will make peoples lives better – NOW!
Marie Clarke Walker, Executive Vice President of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), spoke to the marchers in front of the U.S. Consulate on University Avenue. Ms. Walker told the crowd that Colombia is the country where more trade unionists are killed than in the rest of the world combined, and that during the term of Colombia’s current President, Alvaro Uribe Velez, 560 union officers and members have been brutally and systematically murdered. Virtually all these crimes remain unsolved.