ls -G varies by OS.

[dmtucker]

On BSD-like systems, -G adds color:

-G      Enable colorized output.  This option is equivalent to defining
             CLICOLOR in the environment.  (See below.)

On Linux-like systems, I think you want --color=auto or --color=always:

--color[=WHEN]
              colorize  the  output.   WHEN  defaults to ‘always’ or can be ‘never’ or ‘auto’.  More
              info below
-G, --no-group
              in a long listing, don’t print group names

This may have gone unnoticed because of the exports at the end of the bashrc.