Photo: cmozz / flickr

Canada’s economic plot for Honduras is wavering. The “Charter Cities” initiative that Harper’s Conservatives have been discreetly championing for months has erupted in a constitutional challenge and a flurry of human rights abuses.

Yesterday, NDP MP for Toronto-Danforth Craig Scott submitted a letter to Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Diane Ablonczy regarding recent violence in Honduras and links to Canadian investment.

In particular, the letter draws attention to the assassination of Antonio Trejo-Cabrera, a Honduran human rights lawyer who had recently presented a Constitutional challenge to the Charter Cities initiative and was planning a trip to Washington, D.C. to testify before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. 

Scott submitted the letter as an individual MP, not as official NDP policy. Nevertheless, it calls on the Conservative Ministers to halt any political and economic support for Charter Cities and to report on what the government has done to protect human rights defenders in Honduras, “particularly those defending rights in cases linked to Canadian investment.”

Until his election as MP, Scott served as a commissioner to a community-based “Commission of Truth” investigating human rights abuses since the coup. The Commission just presented its final report, “The Voice of the Greatest Authority is that of the Victims” in Tegucigalpa on October 3, 2012. 

Independent of Scott’s letter, NDP Human Rights Critic Wayne Marston tabled a motion in the House of Commons Subcommittee on Human Rights to study the situation in Honduras in light of the recent violence. The Subcommittee — which is dominated by a Conservative majority — discussed the motion during an in-camera session also taking place yesterday.

At long last, Harper’s Conservatives may have to backtrack on the neoliberal program they have been so zealously pushing since Honduras’ 2009 coup against President Mel Zelaya.

Since Zelaya’s ousting, Canada has made explicit economic and legislative interventions in the coup-rattled country. First came the 2011 Free Trade Agreement, signed on the heals of Honduras’ accelerated re-admission to the Organization of American States. Following this, Canadian government representatives were involved in the proposal of a new mining law that would invite extractive development, unhindered by environmental regulations and the need for community consent.

“The government Ministers literally have said, the best approach to human rights, the best approach is trade, is economic growth,” says Scott. “They have the crudest possible understanding of how mainstream economic activity, commercial activity, somehow or other, is a panacea for everything.”

The Charter Cities initiative is its own special species of this uninhibited neoliberalism. Also known as “Special Economic Regions” (or RED in its Spanish acronym), these legislated enclaves would operate outside of domestic law, managed instead by a team of foreign representatives appointed by de facto President Pepe Lobo. Dubbed “libertarian dignitaries” in a report by the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), these representatives would oversee everything from security and the judicial process to customs and taxation.

The central aim of the Charter Cities program is to allow foreign investors to circumvent domestic governance and regulation. In the context of Honduras’ vulnerable post-coup climate, OFRANEH coordinator Miriam Miranda warns, “Charter Cities will be the final blow to the concept of sovereignty.”

Charter Cities are the brainchild of Prof. Paul Romer of New York University’s Stern School of Business, and include a special role for Canada. According to a report coauthored by Romer and Brandon Fuller, Canada should have judiciary involvement, facilitate foreign direct investment, and deploy an RCMP presence to train and manage local police. 

Indeed, U.S.-based NGO Friendship Office of the Americas has implicated Conservative Senator Gerry St. Germain in joining Romer in advocating for Charter Cities in a meeting with Honduran Congress in 2011. Romer visited Ottawa on April 25, garnering a flurry of favourable coverage in Canadian mainstream media. As Scott’s letter reports, Romer then presented the idea as a witness before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in May, 2012. By August, he was invited to a retreat with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. 

Ironically, the free-market initiative has spiraled out of Romer’s control, and he is pulling out of his own project just as it is coming to fruition. Just two weeks ago it was reported that the Honduran government signed a $14 million agreement with their first international investor group — U.S. based MGK Group (Scott also notes in his letter that MGK’s website boasts membership from Canada). However, Romer wasn’t privy to the deal. Miffed that he wasn’t consulted on the agreement, the New York Times reported last week that Romer was walking away from his neoliberal experiment.

Although no mention of the violence and political controversy shrouding the Charter Cities initiative has been made, Romer’s withdrawal immediately follows the assassination of Trejo-Cabrera. At their own peril, human rights organizations throughout Honduras have long been battling Charter Cities, and Trejo-Cabrera had received numerous death threats since filing a Constitutional challenge to the project. These persisted up until his assassination last week.

With the human rights situation in Honduras so critical, will Canada continue to support such a tenuous economic initiative? It is yet to be seen how the Ministers will respond to Scott’s letter. Plus, the Subcommittee’s decision on Marston’s motion could provide the NDP with the opportunity to further challenge the Conservatives on their economic involvement. 

“Canada has to get away from this fixation with neoliberal economic paradigms as solutions, when, in so many respects, they’ve been proven to be often exactly the opposite,” says Scott. “There is a lack of nuance about what that means and whether or not in the end you’re causing greater instability and maybe more loss of life.”

 

Emma Feltes is a writer and researcher based in Toronto and sometimes elsewhere.  She has written for Spacing Magazine, Spacing Atlantic and The Dominion, among others. Her work centres on Indigenous-State relations in Canada and Latin America, land rights, economic relations and urban issues.

Photo: cmozz / flickr