Canada, Honduras agree on free-trade deal
Posted August 12, 2011 9:12 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Canada and Honduras have wrapped up free-trade talks, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Friday.
The agreement is the culmination of 10 years of talks between the two countries. It includes side deals on labour standards and practices and environmental protection.
Harper’s stop in San Pedro Sula is the first state visit to Honduras by a foreign leader since the country was allowed back into the Organization of American States (OAS) in June, following a 2009 coup that ousted the country’s leftist president.
Canada was one of the first countries to throw its support behind Porfirio Lobo Sosa, a wealthy rancher elected president of the tiny Central American country in November 2009, months after former leader Manuel Zelaya was disposed.
The OAS re-admitted Honduras two months ago, with the backing of Canada and the United States, after the new president allowed Zelaya to return from exile to the country he once ruled.
Since the coup, Canada has stepped up trade talks with Honduras, one in a bloc of four Central American countries that Canada has been conducting free-trade negotiations with for a decade.
Honduras is the first of the so-called Central American Four — which also includes El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua — to strike a free-trade pact with Canada.
Two-way trade between Canada and Honduras was $192 million in 2010.
Delegations have held talks in Ottawa and the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa twice since December.
Troops as well as trade are on the agenda, as Canadian soldiers have been cleared to train with the Honduran military.
On Aug. 4, the National Congress of Honduras approved the entry of Canadian troops into the country to take part in a joint training exercise. The results of three votes on the matter were posted last Monday on the National Congress’s website.
Canada’s Department of National Defence has not announced any exercises in Honduras. The Prime Minister’s Office said it was unaware of any joint exercise.
“There are no Canadian troops participating in exercises with Honduran troops,” Harper’s chief spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, told The Canadian Press late Thursday.
Training with the Honduran armed forces would not be the first time that Canadian soldiers have taken part in such exercises in Latin America.
The Defence Department says 10 Canadian Forces officers recently participated in a peacekeeping drill in Brazil, along with soldiers from the U.S. and 13 other countries from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Canada has drawn criticism for courting Honduras, one of the poorest and most violent countries in the region. The World Bank says more than 4.5 million people in a country of fewer than eight million — or roughly 60 per cent of the population — live at the poverty line.
Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world. The United Nations Development Program reported 4,473 murders in Honduras in 2008. That’s the equivalent of 12 a day.
The group Human Rights Watch claims that at least eight journalists and 10 members of a political group that opposed the 2009 coup called the National Popular Resistance Front have been killed since Lobo took office.
The president has created a truth commission to study the events surrounding the coup and its aftermath.
Canadian mining companies have also been blamed for health problems among Honduras’ indigenous communities.
Honduras is the final stop on Harper’s four-country tour of South and Central America.
