SRID Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, January 30, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹

1540

The Chair (Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.))

Mr. Stephen Randall (Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Calgary)

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

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1545

¹

1550

¹

1555

º

1600

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

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1605

The Chair

Mr. Elley

The Chair

Mr. Reed Elley

Mr. Stephen Randall

Mr. Reed Elley

Mr. Stephen Randall

º

1610

The Chair

Mr. Antoine Dubé (Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, BQ)

Mr. Stephen Randall

Mr. Antoine Dubé

Mr. Stephen Randall

º

1615

Mr. Antoine Dubé

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Lib.)

Mr. Stephen Randall

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1620

Mr. Irwin Cotler

Mr. Stephen Randall

Mr. Irwin Cotler

Mr. Stephen Randall

º

1625

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine, Lib.)

Mr. Stephen Randall

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

º

1630

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

º

1635

The Chair

Mr. Antoine Dubé

Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland--Colchester, PC/DR)

Mr. Stephen Randall

Mr. Bill Casey

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Bill Casey

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Elley

Mr. Stephen Randall

º

1640

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

Mr. Stephen Randall

The Chair

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CANADA

Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade

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NUMBER 018

l

1st SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

Wednesday, January 30, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¹  (1540)  

[English]

    The Chair (Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.)): This is the 18th meeting of the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Development of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

    In our first hour today we have with us Stephen Randall. Dr. Randall is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Calgary. I'm very sorry, Dr. Randall, that we couldn't see you the first time you came.

    Mr. Stephen Randall (Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Calgary): I always like Ottawa.

    The Chair: Good.

    Our second hour will be in camera with departmental officials.

    Dr. Randall is here to speak with us about Colombia. We do thank you again for taking the time to come here today. Some of us will be travelling to Colombia in about 10 days, so we're looking forward to hearing your insights, preparing us for the trip and for the report all of us will be working on.

    I'd like to mention to all the members that Dean Randall has a long and distinguished history of working on Colombia, and also in Colombia, I think. Isn't that so?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: Yes.

    The Chair: Yes, in Colombia and in the Americas more generally. He has been honoured for his work in Colombia by the Colombian government.

    So please go ahead, Dr. Randall.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

    Let me pick up on your last point, because I think credibility is so often an important component. I first began living in Colombia in 1967, and I lived there, in fact, for a couple of years, teaching at the National University and at a bi-national centre, researching and doing some writing, and I have continued to spend a great deal of time there over the years.

    I think it's important to understand that I really have spent time in virtually every part of the country. I've worked with virtually every class or segment of the society. Academics and ordinary Canadian citizens can do a lot of things in Colombia that Americans cannot. Canadians can go places that are much easier for us than for Americans. I was sitting with a person from the State Department yesterday at a luncheon, and he was talking about the extent to which Americans in the embassy feel they are really living in a kind of compound environment, which really restricts their experience and, I think, restricts the kind of information they ultimately receive. I think you'll be in a much better position, when you go, to get a very good cross-section of opinion from Colombian society, from the NGOs, from government officials, from the military. I gather you're meeting with defence officials. It's extremely useful and important to get that very broad perspective.

    There are a few things I want to touch on. Colombia is clearly a very troubled society, and it is in a very serious recession, which is, according to most economists, as serious as, perhaps more serious than, the Great Depression in respect of levels of unemployment. When you combine that with the narcotics situation, the internal strife associated with both narcotics and the guerrilla movements, and the high level of internal migration of displaced peoples, there is no question at all that the country has been going through a crisis for a number of years. I don't see, though I hate to be pessimistic, any short-term solution, and I don't see any short-term improvement in the situation. I'll come back to the election that's coming in the spring--at least our spring--in a few minutes.

    There are a couple of things one really should stress. The first is that on the surface at least, in terms of formal structures and processes, Colombia is one of the longest-standing democracies in Latin America. It's important to understand that. Colombians are extremely proud of their democratic heritage. It's not that there have not been conflicts and strife, not only in the period after the assassination in the late 1940s of leading left liberal candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitan by an individual who was not working for anyone else, in spite of the theories of communist conspiracies and so on. But it has been a democratic society, even though we know there's more to democracy than simply access to the ballot box at regular elections. There's a high degree of income disparity, of wealth disparity in the country, and the unemployment and underemployment situation has exacerbated that.

    The second point I want to stress is that this is a conflict, regardless of what one thinks of the need for a greater degree of socio-economic development, alleviation of income disparity, improvement of issues like land reform and land redistribution, etc., that is fueled not so much by grassroots socio-economic need as by narcotics. Without the narcotics industry, there would be conflict, but it would be at no level comparable to what currently prevails--I'm departing from the written text, because I'm assuming that everyone in here is able to read that. I will come back to the written text in just a moment. It is, I think, critically important to understand that it is not a conflict that could continue without narcotics, and consequently, as much as I have serious reservations about Plan Colombia and about a military role for the United States in the Colombian context, unless one can separate the paramilitary groups and the guerrilla groups from the narcotics industry, there will be no solution to the conflict in Colombia.

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    One of the things I've added to the written text that was not in on November 29, when you originally received this presentation, is some comments about the linkages between FARC and some other international terrorist organizations; they include Hezbollah, the IRA, and a number of others, including al-Qaeda groups. Hezbollah provides much of the logistic support for the movement of narcotics and arms. There is a link with Israel and with Jordan. This is all documented by American intelligence sources. They have been identified by the U.S. State Department as the most serious terrorist threat in the western hemisphere.

    I've read all the testimony before this committee, and some of it is remarkably naive. FARC is not a social democratic organization, ladies and gentlemen, it is a terrorist organization. There are several generations of people who have grown up within FARC. They are better paid, they make better incomes than Colombian soldiers do, and as much as the rhetoric is committed to significant reforms in Colombian society, given the leverage they currently possess, were they seriously interested in and committed to reform in Colombian society, they would engage in meaningful negotiations. They have not done so. FARC has everything to lose from negotiations, FARC has everything to lose from peace, and FARC has everything to lose from being cut off from the narcotics industry.

    But the same is true of the paramilitaries. There is nothing positive that one can say about the paramilitaries either, except for the fact that until the Colombian state, by which I mean government, is sufficiently strong to maintain the kind of protection for its citizens that we take for granted in the Canadian context, either through the national police or the military or local authorities, there will not be peace in the country and paramilitaries will continue to gain strength, as they have over the last two years. They're now at a level that's comparable to FARC in membership, at least according to official calculations--around 13,000 or 14,000 members. They've grown astronomically in the last couple of years, starting from what were really self-defence organizations, which have moved to become, under Carlos Castano, a veritable independent army, which does have linkages, directly or indirectly, with the Colombian military.

    Let me explain that last point, because I think it's important. I'm going to give you an anecdote, which is designed to illustrate what I mean--I try to avoid mentioning names.

    About a year and a half ago President Pastrana gave consideration, very publicly, to allocating a piece of territory in the lower Magdalena River Valley, which is between Bogota and the Caribbean coast, to the ELN that would have been smaller than, but nonetheless comparable to, the demilitarized zone that is currently held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC. The state oil company, Ecopetrol, when it learned of this, discovered that a number of its operations were in the region that would be assigned to the ELN. They had not been consulted on this. There was also significant foreign investment in gold mining and other activities in that region. When officials from Ecopetrol inquired of the presidency as to why that territory was being set aside for the ELN, it was learned that the recommendation had come from the Colombian military, and the reason for the recommendation was that the paramilitaries were extremely strong in that area, as was the ELN. The military perspective, therefore, was that this was a very convenient way to get the paramilitaries and the ELN to fight it out, so that the military would not have to lose manpower or engage in direct combat with the ELN.

    So it is not primarily that the Colombian military funds the paramilitaries, it's not that there is necessarily, although there has been in the past, a direct connection between the military and the paramilitaries, but some segments of the military see the paramilitaries as a very convenient vehicle for accomplishing the objectives they should be engaging in themselves. I think that's very important for us to understand.

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    The paramilitaries are funded in essentially the same way the guerrillas are funded. It's extortion, but even more, it is through the narcotics industry. Again, without the narcotics industry, I don't think the conflict could be sustained, certainly not by FARC. If you look at the international implications of the narcotics industry and the link to international terrorism and to criminal activity, I think this is a very serious problem.

    I embellished my original presentation a little for you to note the extent to which the Russian mafia is now very heavily involved with FARC. Russian cargo planes fly weapons and other supplies into the demilitarized zone, and they carry narcotics out of the demilitarized zone. So when you add the Russian mafia to Hezbollah, the IRA, and other terrorist organizations to which FARC is linked, I think the danger of regional destabilization in the Andean area, involving Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, and potentially Peru, is extremely serious. And it is obviously in the Canadian national security interest to try to address this. Human migration, narcotics trafficking, and regional destabilization are all issues that should be of concern with respect to Canadian national security.

    Now let me touch for a moment on the upcoming presidential elections, about which those of you who are going to Colombia in several days are going to hear a great deal more. I would like to be optimistic and say I felt a change of presidency, a change of government was going to have some significant impact on the current situation. I can't say that. I don't see that the past has given us any reason to think a presidential change results in any significant departure. President Pastrana came to power, I think, with a very sincere intention to engage in open negotiations with FARC and the ELN. It hasn't worked. There have been four years of on again, off again negotiations, they have gone nowhere.

    As you know, a week ago President Pastrana mobilized forces around the demilitarized zone, provided an ultimatum to FARC to renew negotiations, and with the involvement of our ambassador, the French ambassador, and several others, there was at least a cooling-off period implemented. But President Pastrana will be gone in a short period of time, and I don't see, regardless of who is elected to succeed him, that there will be any significant change in the current policy or in the current situation. There is too much, again, I think, on FARC's part, to lose from real negotiations for them to move in any significant way in that direction.

    Now let me touch very briefly on some of the candidates and their approaches to these issues. Again, I have noted in the text that the vice-president, as has been the case since 1994, will also be popularly elected by the vote in May 2002.

    I think it's important to understand that Colombian presidential elections for the last couple of decades have been very close contests, requiring frequently a second round of voting, very much like the situation in France and elsewhere, with a large number of candidates, independent candidates as well as official party candidates. If you look at the last election, in 1998, as an example of this, although President Pastrana won in the second round with 50.3% of the popular vote, in the first round he won just over 34% against Horacio Serpa, who is the likely winner in the next election--but then, who knows? In the popular vote Serpa only received 34% as well, and he was the official Liberal Party candidate. Significantly, another individual who is a important candidate, I think, this time around, Noemi Sanin, the candidate of the multi-party Life Option, which was committed to national reconciliation, took about 26% of the popular vote in the first round, and then, of course, she dropped out. But she had the significant support of Alfonso Lopez Michelson, a former president and the son of a former president in the 1930s and 1940s and a very influential figure, the father, of course, of the former Colombian ambassador to Canada as well.

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    Pastrana in the last election ran under the party banner “Great Alliance for Change”, and he drew a tremendous amount of support from independent liberals and even from mainstream large L Liberals, and largely for that reason, was successful. He came into office committed to negotiations with FARC and with the ELN.

    I've touched very briefly in the written text on the parliamentary elections and some of the political parties, but let me just touch briefly on the leading candidates, some of whom you may have an opportunity to meet with when you're in Bogota.

    Horacio Serpa is the official Liberal Party candidate. He is clearly the front-runner at this stage, and it has been commented by a number of people that it's his election to lose. He has the full support, I think, of his party, with the exception of some independents. He is committed, as was Pastrana before him, to continuing negotiations with the guerrilla leaders. He was also impressed by the appeal of Sanin in the 1998 elections, in particular, I think--and this is why his campaign has taken the direction it has--her call for national reconciliation, but also her call for a fundamental shift in Colombian politics to address in a more meaningful way social and economic problems. Serpa has always had the populist strand, but I think his reading of Sanin's appeal in 1998, to him at least, meant that he should move even further in that direction. So he represents now not only the mainstream liberal choice, but also a very clear populist choice, with commitments to social action, to land reform, and to comparable developments.

    Noemi Sanin, who, again, won 26% in the last election, in this election represents the “Yes Colombia”, “Si Colombia”, movement and remains committed to the same objectives she articulated in 1998. She represents a moderate position or a middle position, I think, between Serpa, on the one hand, and Uribe, who I'll talk about in just a moment. Although very publicly opposed to a military solution to the relations with FARC and the other guerrilla movements, she has also indicated she would not hesitate to use military force if the guerrillas do not negotiate in good faith and do not move away from their practice of terrorism and violence.

    The position of Alvaro Uribe Velez, a very bright, young, entrepreneurial, conservative man, who represents the “Primero Colombia”, “Colombia First”, political movement, is known very publicly to have a hard line on the guerrillas, he's a strong promoter of economic development, he represents very much the opposite end of the political spectrum from Serpa. There's very little of a social development program that Uribe has identified, but on the other hand--and I've met with him on previous occasions, when he held a different political office--he's remarkably successful, he's one of the best government administrators I have encountered in Colombia. He would run a very tight ship, he would run a very conservative government, I think, and my guess is that he would take a very hard line on both the narcos and the guerrilla movement. Whether that's a desirable thing or not is, of course, open to debate.

    Jose Serrano is a very interesting candidate. He's running as an independent, and he has, I think, rightly been identified as the true dark horse in this election. He was, of course, the former head of the Colombian National Police, which has a remarkably positive reputation, both within Colombia and outside. I've met with him on one occasion. He's very impressive. He was highly regarded in the United States when he was head of the Colombian National Police, and is considered, as I've noted here, one of the world's best policemen. But he's a dark horse. His political views are not particularly well known. What he would do in social and economic reform is not really known. He's not been very public on that. But he is an interesting dark horse.

    Juan Camilo Restrepo is official candidate of the Conservative Party. His movement of “National Salvation” is a kind of conservative version of Noemi Sanin's national reconciliation approach, and it's rather unclear what he actually stands for, except that he wants to be elected.

º  (1600)  

    Ingrid Betancourt, a congressperson, a very prominent individual, running as an independent candidate, is very much a marginal figure, but she is still important in that first round, I think. She's running under the banner of the “New Colombia” movement, and she also is a strong advocate of continued negotiations with the guerrillas.

    There's not much difference, and so I can easily stop at stage. Sorry.

    The Chair: Okay. You're going to go into your recommendations now. Can you shorten that a little, because we do want to give everybody a chance to ask you questions?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: Of course. I'll focus on only one dimension, then, in my closing remarks.

    The Chair: That's okay.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: I'm sorry to have taken so long.

    I think the Canadian government--as I come to my recommendations--is doing precisely as it should do, although I and many others would like to see a more significant financial contribution to development assistance through CIDA and other initiatives. Working with Colombian and international NGOs is a very positive approach. The promotion of human rights is an extremely positive approach. Working with other international representatives, the European Community in particular, is precisely, I think, the right direction for Canada to go, with the European Community more generally, but also with individual European countries.

    As I've noted here, I think our current ambassador, Guillermo Rishchynski, has done a remarkable job in building bridges to many groups within Colombia, as well as with the international community. We need to work, I think, very hard to continue to strengthen judicial institutions there, to promote professionalization of the military, to offset the U.S. approach to a military solution to this conflict, and also to push, on the Colombian military side, for civilian control over judicial processes to protect human rights.

    I'll stop at that.

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    The Chair: Okay. Thank you. I'm sure the rest is all going to come out in the questions.

    Mr. Elley, we're glad to hear that you're going to be going on the trip with us. Would you like to start off?

    Mr. Reed Elley (Nanaimo--Cowichan, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I want to thank Dr. Randall very much for coming and sharing with us today.

    As our chair has already indicated, I am going on this trip, and I'm a replacement for our critic, Deepak Obhrai, from Calgary, who either is having or is going to have very serious heart surgery and is unable to go on this trip. So I'm at somewhat of a disadvantage, because I'm trying to be brought up to speed quickly on what's happening in Colombia. So my questions may be somewhat naive and mostly posed out of great ignorance of this whole situation.

    The Chair: Do you want to go first, or would you rather--

    Mr. Reed Elley: No, I'm okay, I think, as long as people recognize that and will bear with me.

    I think you've given us a good overview, and you come to conclusions, which are very important to us as we go down there and do have some interaction with people. In your second point you talk about the Colombian economy. It's even worse than the Canadian economy by the sound of it.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: No question about that.

    Mr. Reed Elley: I' m sure there's no comparison. We tend to have great worries about our own economy, but certainly down there....

    If there were any specific areas you thought Canadians should be giving more attention to by way of partnering and helping with the economy, bringing it up to a better level, what specific areas would you suggest?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: That's a very good question. Petro-Canada, as you know, at one stage worked very closely with Ecopetrol, but the perception on the part of Petro-Canada, when it was Petro-Canada International Management Systems, was that Ecopetrol in Colombia essentially had its own self-sustaining capacity in respect of its ability in the area of natural resource development, particularly oil and natural gas.

    Canadian companies are active there. They are less active than they would be if there were a greater degree of stability and if it were safer to send their workers into the countryside. So this is a chicken and egg question in some respects. Where we should be active is in an area where it's difficult for us to be more active because of the security situation. We're very active in telecommunications, with Bell and other companies, Northern Telecom, etc.

    What I'm thinking of here are the kinds of projects that are going to generate real employment, which means infrastructure kinds of projects, rural development projects under CIDA. There's a major need--and this is not primarily a development initiative--to address the two million displaced persons in the country, who not only are unemployed or underemployed, but are homeless and living in refugee camps or worse, on the whole.

    I do want to stress on the economic side two things. The first is that Colombia has a remarkably diversified economy, and there's tremendous potential there for it to return to a more stable environment, if the security situation can be resolved. Colombia is one of the countries that did not suffer in the 1980s recession with massive debt problems, as the rest of Latin America did. It has never reneged on a contract, so that foreign investment is very safe there, and it has never had to renege on its international debt. We're not dealing with an Argentine situation here at all.

    What has happened to fuel this particular recession is the violence, combined with the fact that the repatriation of narcotics money is no longer taking place in the way it did in the 1980s and much of the 1990s. With the Colombian government and, indeed, with international banking controls, much of that money is simply not being laundered back into the Colombian economy, with the result that it's had a tremendously negative impact on infrastructure expansion, the construction industry, and so on. That sounds like a contradiction. I'm not urging that narcotics money should be effectively laundered back into the Colombian economy, but I'm just observing one of the factors that has accounted for the recession in the last several years.

    So I can't be more specific than that in regard to what we should be doing on the economic side. I would like to see more Canadian natural resource companies there in the private sector. It's not a secure environment, but it's a very secure environment on a contractual level. Contracts are honoured. It takes twice as long, however, to bring an oil or a natural gas field into operation there as it might in some other parts of the world. It's a pretty lengthy process, but there are potentials there for foreign investment, and encouraging foreign investment is fine, if we can provide a secure environment for it.

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    The Chair: We have to move on, Mr. Elley.

    Before Mr. Dubé speaks, I would just like to mention to those of you who are not going on the trip, we have added a day on to the trip, so that we can visit a military base. This is a very rare occasion that they're allowing people to visit the military base. We'll be seeing some of the United States training etc. This was just so you know we are doing that.

    Mr. Dubé.

[Translation]

    Mr. Antoine Dubé (Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chairperson.

    Mr. Randall, I do not doubt that you know a lot more than most of us and certainly more than I do about Columbia. You don't encourage us to be very optimistic, because on your second page you seem to say that we should not hope for change in the short term. You say, and I quote:

Yes, there is widespread violation of human rights, but let me be very clear that the main instigator of such a violation is not the government, as much as there have been serious violations over the years by the military. There is no democracy and freedom within the FARC-governed zone.

    That is my second point.

    Some of the witnesses we heard had some reservations about the statement that the government itself may be violating human rights to some extent. I would like you to substantiate your statement somewhat,because we have not heard that very often here.

[English]

    Mr. Stephen Randall: When I say the government is not principally responsible for the human rights violations, I mean that very seriously. FARC is not a democratic organization. I don't know how we can perceive it in any other way. What has happened with the demilitarized zone, which FARC controls and which is approximately the size of Switzerland, as we know, is that it has used it as a training base for terrorists, it has used it as a military training base, and it has used it as a way to expand its aircraft landing facilities so that now large Russian cargo planes can come in with weapons. I don't find that very democratic, to put it mildly, and I think we're very naive if we think otherwise. You do not survive within the demilitarized zone if your political views are not sympathetic to FARC and if you do not conform largely to their perspective.

[Translation]

    Mr. Antoine Dubé: You are moving straight to the second topic I wanted to discuss with you, which is the FARC. If it is true that FARC is a terrorist organization, how can we then accept that the government is negotiating with terrorist forces? That seems almost inconceivable to me. If that is what the Columbian government is doing, it is surely because it considers, as you do, that FARC is not a terrorist organization. On the face of it, this does not seem to make sense.

[English]

    Mr. Stephen Randall: I think you're right, there is an inconsistency there, but the perception was, I think, when Pastrana and his predecessors came to office, that a military solution to the problem was not possible and some level of negotiation was necessary. I agree with you, by negotiating, they give legitimacy, as well as credibility, to the organization, but you also note in what I've provided here that all the public opinion polls indicate that 95% of Colombians do not have any sympathy for FARC at all. So it's a dilemma. I think you're absolutely correct in this regard.

    The international community has lent some legitimacy to the process of negotiations as well by having an official representative of the United Nations there, recently changed, as you know. This is the only alternative to a military confrontation, which, from the point of view of most international observers, and I think of Colombian officials, would be very close to another Vietnam type of situation. It is not a winnable war, even though FARC is a relatively small organization. The conflict would simply continue. That's why I'm not very optimistic about a resolution.

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[Translation]

    Mr. Antoine Dubé: You were referring to possible candidates. A certain number of them continue to favour negotiation with the FARC, for the most part, but also with other paramilitary groups. I have heard a number of witnesses say that it is not that they mistrust the government, but that they do not believe that the current government will manage to solve the problem. Don't you consider that, also, to be a paradox?

[English]

    Mr. Stephen Randall: You're absolutely right, it is another paradox. My view on this is that what the negotiators, the Colombian government, have to do is to find a carrot that is sufficiently large and valuable to reintegrate FARC into Colombian society in some way. What would that be? If this were a magic bullet, we would not have a problem, but there isn't a single solution. This is the problem. FARC has far too much to lose by surrendering it's weapons. Individual members, as well as its leadership, have too much to lose. If they really wanted to participate in the main stream of Colombian society, they could do politically, but when the Union Patriotica ran candidates in the late 1980s, there were about 1000 Union Patriotica candidates who were killed.

    There is a real problem on the paramilitary side here as well, because when FARC has tried--and I'll give them credit for this--or when the M-19 movement has tried to move into the mainstream of Colombian politics, people on the extreme right, extremist groups, paramilitaries and others, have frequently killed them or harassed them in other ways. It was particularly vicious in the late 1980s, as I'm sure you know.

    The Chair: Mr. Cotler, do you have a question? You have five minutes.

    Mr. Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Lib.): You mentioned during the course of your remarks something I think you've also addressed now, but I thought I might just put it anyway, that some of the testimony before this committee was somewhat naive. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: There are two things I'm really thinking of. One is the tendency to try to assign very explicit percentages of killings to the groups, government, paramilitaries, military, FARC, ELN. You can't do that. It simply is impossible to know precisely what percentage of the human rights atrocities are performed by which group. They are all guilty, we recognize that, and unless we treat this in a holistic way and try to have the country as a whole address the human rights problems, as opposed to casting blame on the Colombian military or the Colombian government or FARC or the ELN, we won't get anywhere, it seems to me.

    Certainly, the paramilitaries are just as guilty as FARC, and the Colombian government has not brought the paramilitaries under control. This comes back to your question, I think, as well. The one sine qua non for FARC has always been to bring the paramilitaries under control and to disarm them. Any legitimate state must be responsible enough to disarm organizations like the paramilitaries. That's a fundamental responsibility of the state. We wouldn't tolerate it in Canadian society. On one level, that is a sine qua non from the perspective of FARC, and I think from the perspective of the international community as well.

    With respect, Mr. Cotler, to your question, I think the first aspect is what I have just commented on, and the second I can't recall. Sorry, I lost my train of thought.

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    Mr. Irwin Cotler: It had to do with why you found some of the testimony naive.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: The second element was a tendency to view FARC's activities as though they grew only out of socio-economic problems, income disparity, and so on. That was true to some extent in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when FARC was established; in 1959 the civil war ended. But if you look at what happened at the fate of FARC, by 1972-1973 it was down to a couple of hundred members. It had become an almost irrelevant entity in Colombian society. It was not until the significant expansion of cocaine as an international commodity involving Colombians, and then more recently, of course, of opium transport, that FARC really took off in its membership and its power, and further, its linkages with international terrorist organizations and with criminal organizations like the Russian mafia. That's why I say it's fundamentally naive to think of FARC as an organization that's driven solely by humanitarian and social democratic instincts. I read a lot of that in some of the testimony before this committee.

    Mr. Irwin Cotler: This leads me to the second question. I gathered from your testimony the salience of the drug trade to the ills of Colombia, and that is in large measure why it is difficult to predict that there can be any solution in the short run, or even an improvement. Do you have any recommendations as to how one could address or redress the problem of the drug trade, either on an international level or with respect what Canada might be able to do?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: I think we're doing some of those things already that relate to interdiction etc. If we make it impossible for the groups to operate, we're making some progress, but look at the massive numbers of seizures, of cocaine in particular, both nationally and internationally, outside Colombia. The levels of production have not declined, so I don't see a simple solution in that regard.

    Let me answer your question, then take a slightly different tack. What we have to do, I think, is work with Colombian authorities and with the international community to promote alternative economic activities. There is no other solution. If you have a campesino who is growing coca plants, partly for profit and partly because there's a gun to his or her head from the narcos, the only way you're going to wean them away from that is to provide them with an alternative source of income that is comparable to what they could make otherwise. The campesinos don't do terribly well from this process. That's not where most of the money goes, as we know.

    So economic development is critically important. The crop substitution program has been only marginally successful so far. Growing yucca and corn and rubber plants and so on will not generate the kind of individual profits for farmers that selling semi-processed cocaine will. It's not an easy solution in that regard.

    The other comment I would like to make relates to your question as to what we can do. It's not necessarily an economic one. One of the things that's happened in Colombia in the last 20 years is that what was an international problem in narcotics has become increasingly a domestic problem as well in the use and abuse of narcotics. Marijuana was ubiquitous in the 1960s and 1970s, as it was in lots of other places, but it's now necessary to provide programs for elementary school children to deal with cocaine use. I was at a drug and alcohol program in Medellin a couple of years ago, and a schoolchild can buy a line of cocaine for a few cents on the streets of Medellin. Given that situation, use, particularly among disadvantaged children, has become very high in the last decade. That wasn't the case before.

º  (1625)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Marlene.

    Mrs. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce--Lachine, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for your presentation, Doctor Randall. I really appreciated it. I particularly appreciated your comments about how some of the testimony this committee has heard from different witnesses on Colombia is incredibly naive--I think I'm using your exact terms. I might not go that far--

    Mr. Stephen Randall: It's a bit too strong, but nonetheless....

    Mrs. Marlene Jennings: --but I would definitely say it is naive.

    I basically have three areas. It's clear that FARC has no interest in coming to peace, because it's making incredible amounts of money through the narcotics trade. It controls a whole area. It is not a democratic organization, that's very clear, and it has no interest whatsoever, as you said, in actually coming to sustainable peace. It's also clear that the paramilitary has a definite role to play in the destabilization of any peace talks and of building on the democracy that exists within Colombia. With the presidential elections, you said it doesn't matter, basically, who actually wins, it's not going to make any significant change to the situation in Colombia as it is now and as it has been for some time.

    My question, as a Canadian parliamentarian, representative of a government that does provide some monies for international development in Colombia, for governance type projects, for projects that deal with trying to shore up the civil society, so that the civil society may fill the vacuum that exists there, is, what can we do? That's the first.

    The second one is about the paramilitary. You're quite right. It's the state's responsibility either to bring to justice or to eliminate the existence of paramilitaries within its sovereign territory. Do you see any of the presidential candidates, whether they have a chance of winning, in your view, or not, as having a program where they would actually make a real effort to eliminate the existence and the control and the power of the paramilitary?

    The third point--and I hope I'm not taking up too much time--is on the question of the civil society. We had testimony here, and I actually examined some of the witnesses. I found it incredible, because I put out some suggestions to say, from what you're saying, it sounds as though you can't depend on FARC or the paramilitary to provide any kind of governance, and the government doesn't seem to be, according to your testimony, protecting you in that; so are you saying it should, in fact, be your organizations or some other mechanism? Some of them actually said yes. That, to me, is a denial of the very fact you stressed here: Colombia is a democracy. For all its problems, for all the difficulties it has experienced in the past, it is a democracy.

    So how do we then deal, as a committee and as a government, with the fact that you do have representatives and organizations of civil society in Colombia, but also here in Canada, that are, in fact, to a certain extent, naive about the situation and appear to refuse to acknowledge the fact that a democracy can be a democracy, notwithstanding the fact that it is in serious crisis?

º  (1630)  

    Mr. Stephen Randall: I realize you're very short of time, Madam Chair, so I'll be very brief.

    The Chair: We started late; we have enough time.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: Let me take the last point. It's a very interesting one. I suppose I'm a small c conservative on certain issues, and in this particular respect, and that's civil society versus government linkages, I think the Canadian government has a fundamental responsibility to work through the Colombian state institutions and the officially elected individuals and organizations.

    Helping those official institutions, organs of the state, I think is the most constructive route we can take. Strengthening the state institutions, trying to help them, sounds condescending and paternalistic for us to say, because you are dealing with a well-educated, sophisticated culture, as you well know, but we should be helping them to maintain human rights standards, helping them to ensure that there are legal reforms, for example, which they are themselves looking for, helping to ensure that the military honours human rights regulations. There have been significant changes in the military legislation in the last several years to try to clean up the human rights abuses, which were certainly characteristic of military behaviour, as we know. There's still a problem with military tribunals, as we also know, hence one of my recommendations.

    So I think, in the first instance, it's our fundamental responsibility to work with those state institutions and agencies. That doesn't mean we don't work with NGOs and with civil society, more broadly defined, that are extremely active in the communities in a variety of ways fostering human rights, fostering social and economic development at the grass roots. I think Canada has a very good tradition of working with grassroots organizations internationally, because they have an impact on the average citizen. So a dual approach is one I would favour, and I think it's consistent with what current Canadian policy and practice has actually been.

    The second point you made is on the issue of the paramilitaries. Is there a presidential candidate who will bring the paramilitaries under control? I may simply have missed this, but I haven't read a clear statement by any one of the candidates that indicates they would immediately act in any way to disband the paramilitaries; I have not seen a single statement to that effect. If I've missed it, I've missed it, but I haven't seen anything along those lines. There are noises to the effect that this is a bad thing, but no one has said, yes, this is going to be the first thing I will turn my attention to. You're not going to get it from Uribe, who, in some respects, has encouraged the paramilitaries, because the state is so weak. Serpa is not going to do it, because that's not the way he's inclined to behave. He wants to negotiate, he wants social and economic development, he doesn't want war, and disarming the paramilitaries would involve military action, there's no question about that at all.

    Your first question was really on what Canada can do, and I think I've addressed that in the first part of my comments.

    Thank you, Madam Chair.

    The Chair: I'd like you to expand a little on the answer you just gave. You were talking about getting control of the paramilitary. Does the military have the capacity to do this?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: Yes.

    The Chair: Would it have the capacity if it had the will? Would the government have the capacity to do it?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: With the additional equipment that has been coming in from the United States, you have a military force slightly in excess of 80,000. The traditional ratio in dealing with a guerrilla operation is 10 to 1, so they're a little undermanned--underpersoned, if that's the right term these days. They would need probably to double the size of their military if they were to take on both the guerrilla movements and the paramilitaries, and that's something they have not shown any willingness to do. That's if they wanted to move to a military solution, remembering, of course, that the one thing neither the narcos nor FARC have is helicopters at this stage. They have access to planes for transport of narcotics and weapons and so on, but they don't have attack helicopters, and at this stage, it's the only real advantage tthe Colombian military has over FARC, ELN, or the paramilitaries.

    Do they have the military capacity at this stage? No, I don't think they do.

º  (1635)  

    The Chair: Do any of you want to ask any more questions? We're pretty well at the end of time.

[Translation]

    Mr. Antoine Dubé: I will yield the floor to anyone who has not yet had a chance to ask questions.

[English]

    Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland--Colchester, PC/DR): I'd like to have a little clarification. I'm confused about the definition of the ELN versus the FARC versus the paramilitaries. I don't understand where they all fit.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: You're confused about the definition of--

    Mr. Bill Casey: Well, define them again, if you can.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: FARC is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It was established in the 1960s. It grew out of a combination of Communist Party activity and socio-economic protest and dissent following the Colombian civil war from 1947 to 1959. The ELN grew out of essentially the same phenomena, a combination of the Cuban revolution, the Chinese revolution, and the activities of the Communist Party in Colombia. ELN has only a couple of thousand fighters. FARC has between 15,000 and 20,000; it's less than 20,000. It is by far the most important organization.

    There's also the EPL, which is the Popular Liberation Army, and M-19, what's left of it at least, which was largely an urban movement and has relatively no significance any longer.

    The paramilitaries emerged in response to the apparent inability of the state to exercise adequate control in the countryside, in other words, outside the cities. They emerged in the 1980s in response to rural violence, everything from assassinations to extortions to kidnappings to having your cattle and your horses killed, which still goes on, or a protection racket for that matter. The paramilitaries emerged with some encouragement from local officials as a way in which to fill the vacuum left by the absence of state power and state control.

    Without giving you a long lesson in the history of Colombian guerrilla movements, there's not much more I can say in the time I've got available.

    The Chair: I think it's been covered before.

    Mr. Bill Casey: Who pays these people in the paramilitary?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: It is a combination of the narcotics industry activity, in other words, drug trafficking, as well as extortion and kidnapping. It is primarily narcotics where the paramilitaries and FARC are concerned.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Elley, you have the last question.

    Mr. Reed Elley: Thank you.

    I've got a short question, Dr. Randall. My understanding is that recently the Colombian government asked for more United States intervention militarily. I think Canadians are always interacting with other countries around the world in response to our southern neighbour's wanting to be the international policeman of the world. Do you know whether there is wide support amongst the Colombian population for American intervention, or is this just something the government wants to do?

    Mr. Stephen Randall: It's a very interesting question. I was talking to somebody in the State Department yesterday who said there was no interest in the U.S. in responding positively to such a request, which is, of course, important.

    What I've seen over the years I've been involved in Colombia is--and it comes back to the previous comment--a very paradoxical situation, where there's a love-hate relationship with the United States. And only as the situation has become desperate and the middle-class find that their property is becoming worthless, they can't operate their ranches, they can't get to their ranches, they can't get to their plantations, what have you, has the middle-class gradually come around to a perspective that they're prepared to accept a more military activity and they're prepared to accept more U.S. involvement, in order to help resolve the situation. So if anything, there has been an increase, if you wish--and I can't give you opinion polls suggesting this--in the willingness on the part of Colombians to see a military solution and more U.S. involvement, simply to get the problem fixed, if possible. At the same time, there's a terrible fear of a war really escalating and having a much wider effect.

    One of the things you'll be struck by, I think, when you go is that the war has had relatively little impact on the cities. The economy has had an impact on the cities. There are individual acts of violence, car bombs occasionally, and so on, of course, but generally, the level of individual violence, thefts, and so on was there long before the paramilitary and the narcotics industry and everything else. What is now happening, I think, is that gradually, people in the cities are being affected much more significantly than they were before, and it's going to change public opinion as a result. The Colombians who are now living in New York and New Jersey and Florida and elsewhere in the United States, middle-class and upper-class Colombians, really would like to stay in Colombia, but given the economic situation, the levels of violence, they can't. I'm not going to get into anecdotes, but I can give you quite a few.

º  (1640)  

    The Chair: Just to finish off, before we say thank you, you said we can do things Americans can't. We would like very much to know what you think those things are.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: For one thing, Canadian companies and Canadian personnel, including officials, can move more freely in Colombia than Americans can. The fact that FARC has publicly indicated that any Americans who are working with or for or appear to be giving logistical support, or whatever, to Plan Colombia and to the Colombian military are considered fair game to be killed gives us some edge, I think,over American officials in respect of freedom of movement. The fact that Lloyd Axworthy, a couple of years ago, could walk through the streets of Bogota, whereas Madeleine Albright had a couple of destroyers off the coast of Cartagena and I can't remember how many thousand marines on board in case something happened to her or was threatened against her, I think, is a pretty good indication that we're perceived in different terms from the United States.

    And so yes, we can do things. We can do things at the grassroots level. We can also do things with the Colombian government, with Colombian authorities, and with the international community without being perceived as imperialistic or militaristic or excessively aggressive, simply because we lack power. We can also fall back on our traditional role as peacekeepers, international mediators, and so on as well. What Gil Rishchynski or any Canadian ambassador can do in talking to FARC, talking to other guerrilla organizations, and trying to reconcile differences is something an American official can't do.

    The Chair: Okay.

    Thank you very much. Thank you for coming for the second time. I'm glad we were able to hear what you had to say today.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: I wish you well on your trip. I think you'll find a very beautiful and very interesting country--

    The Chair: Yes, I was there last year.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: --and some wonderful people.

    The Chair: Yes, they are wonderful people.

    Thank you very much.

    Mr. Stephen Randall: My pleasure. Thank you.

    The Chair: We'll just take a five minute break, and then we'll go into the second half.

    [Editor's note: Proceedings continue in camera]