Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Costa Rica Thursday to discuss trade, travel and policing and to meet with a hockey team run by Canadian expatriates.
It was the third stop in Harper's four-country tour of Central and South America. He began in Brazil, then travelled to Colombia before landing in Costa Rica. Harper's next and final stop will be in Honduras.
Though Canada signed a free-trade pact with Costa Rica in 2002, the two countries still only do about $500 million in trade per year, said CTV's Roger Smith, who is travelling with the prime minister.
In San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, Harper met with President Laura Chinchilla and business leaders in an attempt to foster stronger trade relations between the two nations.
Harper was also due to visit a Costa Rican police academy, in a country where Canada is a strong supporter of efforts to fight the drug trade and child prostitution, Smith said.
After meeting with Chinchilla, Harper announced Canada will open a visa application centre in the Central American country to help attract more Costa Rican visitors to Canada. The centre will open in September, allowing applicants to obtain Canadian travel documents without having to send their passport out of the country.
Later the prime minister was scheduled to visit a country club that has a skating rink rather than a golf course. While there he will meet a hockey team led by a pair of Canadian expatriates, whose players range in age from six to 23 years old, Smith reported.
The focal point of Harper's trip was his visit to Brazil -- the economic powerhouse of Latin America and the world's seventh-largest economy.
Harper will head to Honduras next, one of the region's poorest and most violent countries. It will be the first state visit by a foreign leader since the country was allowed back into the Organization of American States following a recent coup.
Ottawa has drawn criticism from human rights groups for courting closer ties with the Honduran government.
In November 2009, the country's elected president, Manuel Zelaya, was deposed by the military. Canada later became one of the first countries to voice support for Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who was elected as Zelaya's successor months after the coup.
Ottawa has since stepped up trade talks with the country's government.
About 60 percent of Honduras' population lives below the poverty line, according to the World Bank. The country is also afflicted by one of the highest murder rates in the world -- suffering 12 murders per day among a population of 4.5 million, according to the United Nations Development Program.
With files from The Canadian Press
