44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 6, 2023 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.
Clearly, there is an incredible amount of support for this bill in the House because it deals with an obvious issue. No one wants to encourage slavery or child labour. One has to wonder why Canada's current legislation and practices allow for the importation of such products. Now is the time to act, so let us do that.
One might also wonder whether the necessary resources will be allocated. It is all well and good to set out good intentions in a bill, but the government needs to put the necessary resources in place and ensure that it has the relevant information.
I had an opportunity recently to give a speech about the situation of the Uighurs and, at that time, I learned about forced labour in certain regions. That issue is also mentioned in this bill.
I would like my colleague to reassure me in that regard. Is his government prepared to allocate the necessary resources so that we have the information we need?
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Madam Speaker, Oxfam Canada, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch want to hold companies accountable for their actions and to allow victims of human rights and environmental harm the statutory rights to bring a civil lawsuit against those companies.
This bill does not do that. The NDP tried to move six amendments at committee to make that change. The government members and the committee members voted against it. Some would argue that not ensuring there is action to hold companies accountable is more damaging than just pretending something is being done.
Why did the government members vote against the amendments that the NDP put forward to address the issues around child labour and modern-day slavery?
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Madam Speaker, today we are debating Bill S-211, which claims to fight against forced labour and child labour in supply chains. There is no question that global supply chains continue to be tainted with forced labour and child labour. Millions of people around the world experience conditions of modern slavery. Horrifically, this includes young children who, too often, harvest the food we eat and manufacture the clothes we wear.
Sadly, progress toward eradicating child and forced labour has stalled and even reversed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the report from the International Labour Organization warned that child labour was increasing for the first time in two decades. Between 2016 and 2020, the number of children in child labour increased to 160 million worldwide; 79 million of these children, some as young as five years old, are working in conditions considered to be hazardous, which means that the work is likely to harm their health, safety and morals.
Economic impacts of the pandemic, leading to school closures and income loss among low-income families globally, have pushed more children into these dangerous working conditions to try to earn a living. The reality is that forced labour conditions exist in nearly every country. Canada is deeply implicated in perpetuating these human rights abuses. Under the current legislative framework, there is no corporate accountability for companies that profit from the exploitation in their supply chains.
According to a report from World Vision in 2016, it is estimated that over 1,200 companies operating in Canada are importing over 34 billion dollars' worth of goods at high risk of being produced by child or forced labour every year. The agricultural and grocery industry is one of the worst offenders for forced labour and child labour: 71% of all child labour takes place in the agricultural sector, and many of these items end up on Canadian grocery store shelves.
In 2019, more than 3.7 billion dollars' worth of risky food products were imported into Canada, a 63% increase from 10 years ago. During the same pandemic period when Canada's major grocery chains raked in record profits, the use of child and forced labour in agricultural supply chains increased. As Canadians get gouged with greedflation at the grocery checkout, corporate giants fail to take action on ending forced and child labour in their supply chains. World Vision reported that corporate social responsibility reports from Loblaws, Metro and Sobeys, Canada's three largest grocers, yield “little meaningful information about what they are doing to address the risk of child labour in their supply chains.” There are record profits, yet zero accountability to respect human rights. This is egregiously wrong.
Unfortunately, we know that these issues extend far beyond the agricultural sector. In 2021, CBC reported that Canadian clothing brands sold items manufactured by North Korean forced labour at a Chinese factory. Recently, I spoke about the genocide against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims. This is again relevant to raise, because these issues are connected. Many products sold in Canada are manufactured with Uighur forced labour. Between 2017 to 2019, it is estimated that more than 80,000 Uighurs were forcibly transferred out of the Uighur region to work in factories across China. In 2020 alone, reports reveal that 83 global companies were indirectly or directly involved in employing Uighur workers under conditions of forced labour. From food products, clothing and textiles to the supply chains of major auto manufacturers, the use of Uighur forced labour is widespread.
Canada can and must do more to uphold human rights and work to eradicate child and forced labour. The NDP wants to ensure that products imported into Canada are not produced with forced labour or child labour. New Democrats believe that Canada has a responsibility to ensure that supply chains of products sold in Canada are free from these egregious human rights violations.
The government has an international human rights obligation to do this, but due to the inaction of successive Liberal and Conservative governments, Canada is lagging behind other jurisdictions. European countries such as France have already passed due diligence legislation, which requires that companies take action to address child labour and forced labour. Importantly, this also provides legal recourse if efforts are shown to be inadequate.
The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability has been calling for human rights and environmental due diligence legislation in Canada. The organization has even drafted model legislation, providing a blueprint for writing into Canadian law the corporate duty to respect human rights and the environment.
For over a decade, the CNCA has also been calling for an independent ombudsperson office with the power to investigate human rights complaints related to Canadian corporate activity abroad. The Liberals announced that they would create this independent ombudsperson office in 2018, yet today this is just another empty promise from the government. Instead, the government has created a powerless advisory post.
It is clear that there is much work to be done. That is why NDP members, in working with policy experts on these issues, have put forward two critical pieces of legislation. Bill C-262, the corporate responsibility to protect human rights act, would implement the human rights and environmental due diligence that is needed. It would hold companies accountable for their actions and allow victims of human rights and environmental harm the statutory right to bring a lawsuit against that company. Bill C-263 would give the Office of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise the powers needed to actually do its job and investigate and hold companies accountable.
The CNCA, which includes member groups such as Oxfam Canada, Amnesty International Canada and Human Rights Watch Canada, supports these steps, but it is yet to be seen whether other parties will do the right thing.
Today, we are here debating Bill S-211. From the outset, the NDP recognized that this bill was deeply flawed. New Democrats agree with the view that CNCA shares: that, unamended, this bill is damaging because it creates the appearance of action to end modern slavery without actually having that effect. As currently drafted, Bill S-211 advances none of the essential elements of an effective supply chain law.
According to the CNCA:
Bill S-211 would require companies to report on what steps, if any, they have taken to prevent and reduce the risk of forced or child labour in their supply chains. It would only apply to a small minority of companies; it does not require these companies to stop using child or forced labour or to conduct human rights due diligence; and it is silent on other egregious human rights abuses (such as mass rape, murder and torture), as its focus is limited to child or forced labour.
Recognizing the flaws of this bill, the NDP proposed six amendments at committee stage to improve the legislation based on expert testimony, yet the government rejected all of them.
Canada needs to do much more to fight forced labour and child labour. The Minister of Labour's own mandate letter instructs him to “introduce legislation to eradicate forced labour from Canadian supply chains and ensure that Canadian businesses operating abroad do not contribute to human rights abuses.”
Bill S-211 fails to do that. Therefore, the NDP will be voting against this legislation. We will continue to advocate for legislation that actually addresses the issue and commit to eradicating forced labour and child labour. Having the appearance under this bill to be doing something is not good enough.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank all the members who have expressed themselves thus far on this extremely important piece of legislation, Bill S-211.
We need to take a step back and look at the path this bill has taken. First off, the very notion of forced labour being enacted into legislation has been something that this Parliament has been discussing for several years. Thankfully, we are on the cusp of actually passing something: from the vantage point of where we are currently of having nothing in terms of a piece of legislation that directly deals with forced labour to having a piece of legislation that will address forced labour head-on.
We can just take a step back and look at how procedure works. We know that it would be great to strengthen this legislation, but if we were to do so, it would require us to go back to the Senate to have those amendments approved within the Senate, and then it would have to wind its way back over here to the House, which would create a significant delay for us to actually pass something. That is why this is a moment that we actually must seize to pass this legislation.
In terms of Bill S-211, I would like to thank Senator Miville-Dechêne and the member for Scarborough—Guildwood for their advocacy on this issue and for shepherding this and bringing it to the point where we see it right now.
This legislation requires that large companies and the federal government examine supply chains and identify forced labour, so they have to go through their supply chains, which is a lot of work. It also has a compliance mechanism. Therefore, it has teeth. It would levy significant fines on companies that do not comply with the legislation, for up to $250,000. That is important, not only in terms of the monetary amount, but also in terms of the naming and shaming of those companies, which I will get to later on. The naming and shaming of companies, if they do not comply with this legislation, is quite powerful. It also requires that companies provide reports in terms of how their supply chains are operating and whether there is forced labour or child labour within those supply chains.
There is an added component in terms of teeth with this legislation, which gives the minister the authority to ban imports of products if this legislation is not respected by companies. It also gives power to the minister to have warrants to seize information within companies to ensure that there is compliance with the legislation. This is not just a value statement or an airy-fairy piece of legislation. It actually has teeth and mechanisms to force compliance.
Thus far, several of our allies, such as the United Kingdom and Australia, have similar legislation to this. This is critical so that we can send a signal to companies that forced labour is unacceptable. The Canadian government thus far has addressed this issue of forced labour and child labour through trade agreements that it has with other countries, but Bill S-211 will make it more robust.
A lot has been said about the Uighur region within the debate on Bill S-211. It has been highlighted that America has an interesting piece of legislation around a rebuttable presumption, where everything coming in from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region is assumed to be produced with forced labour. This chamber has discussed the condition of the Uighur people, that at least one million are in camps where they are forced into labour. This chamber has heard that 48% of polysilicon, which is the base product of solar panels, is produced within the Uighur region. We have heard that 20% of cotton is produced within the Uighur region, and 35% of tomato products, which are the base material of pizza, pasta sauce, etc., are also produced within the Uighur region.
This is an issue that we have been seized by. This legislation would help us address that concern, to ensure that Canadians are not unwittingly importing forced labour products. While I would love to see and do hope that there will be more robust legislation in the future, I think this legislation, as it is currently, is an important mechanism and an important addition to what is already out there. As some have said, having something is better than having nothing, and we are going to do something important by passing this.
I would like us to take a step back and think about what happened several years ago in Bangladesh, when we learned about the garment industry and the factories that were destroyed. That caused us, as Canadians, to reflect upon where our goods are produced and the conditions in which our clothing is manufactured and created, and to be mindful about forced labour.
That really made us think about the products we are purchasing and ask a serious question: Are our products being produced by labour in terrible conditions, through forced labour or child labour? At that point in time, some companies were named and shamed. Canadians asked for a much higher standard with respect to the products that were being produced in these garment factories.
That is exactly what this legislation will do. It will give a chance for companies to be held accountable. If they do not reach the standard required or if we look at their supply chains and see that their products are produced from forced labour, they will be named and shamed. That is the power of this legislation. Similar to how several years ago the garment industry in Bangladesh was looked at critically and examined carefully, companies in the future would be given the same scrutiny.
I would also like to highlight that certain companies have actually stepped up and taken a hit in dealing with forced labour. H&M is one of those companies. It has pulled out of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and ensured that it is not taking goods and content produced within that region. We need to highlight the positive examples.
I will conclude by saying that it is important for Canadians, and not only legislators and those in government, to highlight this issue and pass laws around it. However, it is also important for Canadians to demand that their companies not take goods that are produced from forced labour and child labour. It is through this call that companies will change their behaviour. Canadians have asked that companies go green, that we produce goods that are respectful of the environment. This same call needs to be made when it comes to respecting labour and the workforce.
I will leave it at that. I am happy that members of the loyal opposition are supporting this legislation. I would ask that all parties in this House do the same, the reason being that we need to have something on the books that holds companies to account. This legislation not only puts out important values but also has teeth.
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