Harbourfront's pan american food festival partners with rights violator pacific rubiales
Por Latin American and Carribbean Solidarity Netw - Monday, Sep. 23, 2013 at 11:58 AM

A Partnership in Bad Taste: Harbourfront's Pan American Food Festival Partners with Rights Violator Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp.

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It is with grave concern to see the upcoming Pan American Food Festival at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto being sponsored by Pacific Rubiales Energy; a Canadian based oil and gas company listed on the Toronto and Colombian stock exchanges. Pacific Rubiales Energy has been accused of being engaged in serious human, Indigenous, environmental and labour rights violations in Colombia. These abuses have been well documented by Colombian civil society and also Canadian based organizations.
Most recently, this past July, a 17 person delegation from Canada traveled to Puerto, Gaitan, Meta to partake in a People’s Tribunal on the Extractive Industry in Colombia. This delegation included labour leaders, a member of the Québec National Assembly Parliament and community based organizations.
While in Colombia, we heard heart-wrenching testimony from Indigenous communities about how Pacific had displaced them from their ancestral homelands and polluted their local water sources.
Indigenous communities fall very close to the actual oil wells used for extraction. The primary Indigenous communities impacted by the operations of Pacific Rubiales Energy in the Meta department are the Sikuani. Delegates heard testimonies from Indigenous leaders accusing Pacific Rubiales Energy oil operations of creating water scarcity, contaminating community water wells, using security forces to restrict the movement of Indigenous people on their own land and the stigmatization of those opposed to Pacific Rubiales Energy operations as guerrillas.
We heard testimony from workers who described inhumane working conditions at Pacific oil fields and discrimination and repression against those who attempted to speak out and improve those conditions.
The Colombian oil workers union, USO (Union Sindical Obrera), was invited to represent oil workers contracted by Pacific Rubiales Energy in Puerto Gaitan due to a series of complaints about working conditions, including the following; poor sanitation and toilet facilities at worker oil camps, cramped living quarters, the use of ‘hot beds’ (a system where one bed is shared by multiple workers using shifts), insufficient access to clean water, employment insecurity due to the use of 28 day contracts and uncompensated labour. In response, Pacific Rubiales Energy fired 90% of the workers affiliated with USO and used the threat of unemployment to suppress any support for, or activity by, the union.
These types of rights violations do not provide a fertile ground upon which to celebrate a Pan American identity, and we cannot imagine that the Pan American food festival and the Harbourfront Centre would knowingly engage with such an irresponsible company. We know that Torontonian’s from both the Latin American and Caribbean community and the community at large would be outraged to have a cultural festival associated with such an irresponsible corporation.
As David Coles, former president of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) said in his recent article on Pacific Rubiales Energy; “ As Canadians we need to stand up to say not in our name' when corporations like PRE do things that would never be permitted in this country”.
We implore you to rethink Pacific Rubiales Energy as a sponsor of your event to avoid being associated with corporate greed and exploitation.

traducción a español

Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association Toronto
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE)
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario
Council of Canadians (Toronto)
Circulo Bolivariano Louis Riel
Committee for Human Rights in Latin America
Common Frontiers
Grupo Cultural Victor Jara
Latin American Trade Unionists Coalition (LATUC Ontario Chapter)
Latin American-Canadian Solidarity Association
Mining Injustice Solidarity Network (MISN)
Ontario Public Services Employees Union (Social Justice Fund)
Projet Accompagnement Solidarité Colombie
The Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA)
The Latin American and Caribbean Solidarity Network (LACSN)
Toronto Bolivia Solidarity
Toronto Forum on Cuba
Toronto Haiti Action Committee (THAC)
Unifor – the Union
United Steelworkers (USW)

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What Can You Do?
Please write to the director of the Pan American Food Festival, Daniel Garcia-Herreros, and Toronto city councillor, Adam Vaughan, who sits on the board of directors for Harbourfront Center, expressing your concern with Pacific Rubales being a sponsor for this event and request that Harbourfront publicly break this partnership to avoid being associated with corporate greed and exploitation. http://www.commonfrontiers.ca/#Sep15_13

Adam Vaughan – Email: councillor_vaughan@toronto.ca,
Phone Number: 416-392-4044
Daniel Garcia-Herreros - Email : director@panamfoodfest.com,
Phone Number: 416-877- 0638

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Is This How The System Works?
Por Latin American and Carribbean Solidarity Netw - Monday, Sep. 23, 2013 at 11:58 AM

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Canadian Government Looks the Other Way as Toronto-Based Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp Faces Accusations of Rights Violations in Colombia

John Barber Sept. 19/03

‘The system works. The overwhelming majority of Canadian mining companies are world leaders in responsible mining practices... The corporate social responsibility counsellor's review process is a common sense approach that enjoys broad support within the mining community.’

The above quote is from a Conservative MP speaking in the House of Commons a year ago. Having recently returned from participating in a delegation to Colombia that witnessed public hearings against the Canadian mining corporation, Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp., PRE, I was taken aback with how much the quote stood in complete contrast with what I had heard and saw in Colombia and yet also explained much of what is happening there.

The system the MP was referring to is the Conservative’s Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy, created in 2009. Four years earlier, the federal government’s own Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade had urged the government to ‘establish clear legal norms in Canada to ensure that Canadian companies and residents are held accountable when there is evidence of environmental and/or human rights violations associated with the activities of Canadian mining companies.’ Canadian accountability mechanisms are required because often companies are operating in countries whose own government is either unable or unwilling to provide protection of those rights.

The CSR Strategy was the Conservative government’s response. Eschewing mandatory reporting on rights standards and penalties for corporations found in violation of those standards, the CSR Strategy is not an accountability mechanism. Instead, it establishes voluntary reporting guidelines and a CSR counsellor who, only if given permission by the accused corporation, is mandated to mediate, not pass judgement on, complaints against Canadian companies.

For a party that prides itself on being tough on crime, this approach to accountability is disturbingly soft. If you find yourself wanting to cut the Conservatives a break in the belief the ‘overwhelming majority of Canadian companies are world leaders in responsible mining’, don’t. The same year that the CSR Strategy was introduced, a report commissioned by the Canadian mining industry association (the Prospectors and Developers Association on Canada, PDAC) found that Canadian extractive corporations were involved in more CSR violations than any other country in the world.

So how is the system working? In Colombia, Toronto based PRE, now the largest independent oil producer in Latin America, is a signatory to the UN Global Compact, a CSR mechanism in which corporations make voluntary commitments to internationally recognized core human, labour and environmental rights. But the testimonies voiced at the public hearings in Colombia tell a very different story from that which is included in the annual CSR reports that PRE completes. According to those testimonies, PRE is involved in a vicious fight with the local community, Indigenous people and workers at its primary production site in the Meta department of Colombia.

For example, PRE is accused of firing over 90% of the 5,000 odd oil workers who had attempted to associate and bargain for labour improvements under the national oil workers union, USO. PRE then allegedly circulated lists amongst its contractors, identifying USO affiliated workers who were not to be given employment. Workers had requested representation from USO to help address a slew of complaints associated with labour conditions at the PRE operations, including poor living conditions, below industry average wages and an employment system based on 30 day contracts.

Accusations against PRE are not limited to labour issues, numerous Indigenous leaders stood up to accuse PRE of contaminating their drinking water, displacing them from their land and reneging on commitments to provide financial assistance. Community, Indigenous and labour leaders who have opposed and protested against PRE have been met with severe repression and death threats from PRE security guards, Colombian police and private armed paramilitary groups. For their own safety, union leaders are forced to travel in armoured vehicles and are constantly surrounded by private bodyguards.

That PRE is not self-reporting these accusations of its own rights abuses is not surprising. Why would they? That is not how the system works. The Conservative CSR system is one in which victims of rights violations at the hands of Canadian corporations are prohibited from seeking redress and justice. It is a system that allows corporate criminals, like PRE, to pursue profits at the expense of rights and dignity with impunity.

That system may work to enrich Pacific executives, but it does not work for Hector Sanchez, a community leader who received a death threat after providing testimony against PRE at the public hearings. The system did not work for Milton Rivas Parra, a union activist opposed to PRE who was gunned down days after receiving a similar death threat in December 2012. And the system does not work for the Sikuani Indigenous people, whom are now at risk of extinction.

A system that does not work needs to be replaced. At great risk to themselves, Colombian human rights, Indigenous and labour leaders are working to make that change, it’s time for Canadians to step up and do their part.

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