Against the Odds: Fighting Canada’s Free Trade Deal With Colombia https://nacla.org/node/6604

After the failure of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2005, the United States and Canada were not about to give up on their hard-fought hemispheric vision. They embarked on a new strategy to promote the NAFTA model, pursuing bilateral free trade and investment arrangements with strategic political allies in the region.

A key partner in this strategy was Colombia’s president, Álvaro Uribe, arguably the government leader with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere. Although Canada and Colombia did sign a free trade agreement in 2008, the Canadian Parliament has still not ratified it, thanks largely to an effective civil society campaign.