44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 21, 2023 10:00AM
- Mar/21/23 10:16:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the Bloc members on committee who voted for this motion.
A very simple first step would be to take the list of entities that the United States has done the research on. It has said that it very clearly knows that these companies are involved in the use of forced labour. This is just with respect to the Xinjiang region of China. We can look at other parts of the supply chain, of course.
They could take that list today. As I have said, we are prepared to table it. The members could walk it over to the respective ministers and tell them that it is a well-researched list and to give it to CBSA to say that any goods from the companies on the list will be automatically seized because we know they are using forced labour. It is a very simple solution. They could do it quickly and have it in place within a couple of days. I just do not understand why they will not.
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- Mar/21/23 10:17:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the question of the use of forced labour in our supply chains is a very important question, and I am glad we are debating it, but it also raises the question of the huge level of exploitation we have seen through the myth that globalization could lead a race to the bottom and we would all be better off.
I would refer my colleague to the Joe Fresh brand, the cheap clothing sold by Loblaws. When a building collapsed, killing over 1,000 people in those sweatshops in Bangladesh, Loblaws paid out the equivalent of 150 bucks per person killed due to the negligence, yet when workers attempted to get their rights heard in a Canadian court, Loblaws and Joe Fresh walked free. They were not responsible for what was happening because they had outsourced this misery to a third world jurisdiction.
We have to have standards in Canada. We have a right to ensure that what we buy is sourced ethically. I would ask my hon. colleague if the Conservatives are willing to look at changes to the laws to make sure that these kinds of practices are not allowed to go on without accountability measures.
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- Mar/21/23 10:18:23 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we absolutely have to look at the use of forced labour, not only in the Xinjiang region of China but also, of course, in any of our supply chains. We have to be willing to work with any party in Parliament to try to get some progress on this.
I would say a good first step would be, if the Liberals will not take a copy of the list, maybe the member from the NDP could walk it over to them. They could copy and paste it, and we would at least have a good start.
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- Mar/21/23 10:32:08 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, if one wants to deal with slave labour products, all one has to do is walk through any shopping mall. It has been identified that 83 major brands are tied to slave labour, like Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Carter's, The Gap, Bosch, Calvin Klein, General Motors, Google and Dell.
We have seen the reports. We know where these corporations are. Is it about working with our allies or simply saying, in Canadian law, that if a corporation is selling products in Canada from slave labour, it will be held accountable? I imagine that if we actually put laws in place to deal with that, the companies would up their standards. Right now, they are getting a free pass and it is not acceptable.
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- Mar/21/23 10:54:01 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, if my life is ever on the line and I have an untenable case, I am going to get in touch with the member, because he tried to take a lot of information to create a case that the Liberals have done something, when the absolute result is nothing. It is like writing a 20-page paper on a particular topic, getting an F, and the teacher says that the topic was something else, so of course I got an F.
The issue is whether the government has actually intercepted any goods made from the Xinjiang region of China where we know forced labour is being used. The answer to that is no. The member said the Liberals talked about it, that he went to a conference and he had a stern word with a representative for the PRC.
That is great, but the United States has created a rebuttable presumption that goods from the Xinjiang region are based on forced labour. It is rebuttable. If a company can prove the goods are not, they can come in. In addition, the U.S. has put together a list of entities they know, so it is two things that are going on.
This is not hard. It is really simple. I can give the member both of these things. Will the Liberals just do it? Will they take this list, put together the list and create the rebuttable presumption that goods from Xinjiang are being made with forced labour and therefore are not importable into this country? Will they do it?
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- Mar/21/23 10:56:10 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. Essentially, businesses must be required to be more transparent about the efforts they make to eliminate child labour. Unfortunately, it exists everywhere. My colleague spoke about clothing manufactured in Bangladesh, but we also see it in food and protective equipment. Child labour is also used to make our computers.
The United States, France and several EU countries have stricter laws.
What does my colleague think of Canada's efforts to be stricter and to require greater transparency from businesses?
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- Mar/21/23 10:56:57 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the question from the Bloc member. This type of question highlights the pervasiveness and complexity of the situation.
We could talk about the fact that clothing is produced with cotton from Xinjiang, China. However, when we consider our computers, telephones and other goods, such as furniture, we should know these goods are all tainted by the scourge of child and slave labour around the world.
The complexity of the situation requires that we study the matter several times and develop, as the Minister of Labour is doing, a bill that applies to any region in the world and any type of product—not just clothing, but also computers and telephones, for example.
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- Mar/21/23 11:00:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, for decades, influential consulting firms have been telling companies, especially American and Canadians ones, to outsource their production to cut costs associated with wages and corporate social responsibility. That has led to massive job losses here, but also working conditions abroad that are worse than they were during the period from the 18th to the mid-20th century, in other words, since the start of the industrial age.
Obviously, we need to consider here how not to be complicit in forced labour. Is my colleague aware that the thirst for profits and the blind use of consultants on the sole basis of their reputation have had disastrous consequences for decades on workers' and human rights?
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- Mar/21/23 11:02:49 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, previously the member for Dufferin—Caledon brought up the fact that an answer from the government to a written question, Question No. 1112, signed off by a parliamentary secretary, indicated that since 2016, CBSA has not actually seized any goods coming into Canada that were made through slave labour or forced labour. I listened carefully to the speech given by the parliamentary secretary, who did, indeed, do his very best to defend the government's record, but it has been seven years and no goods have been seized at the border. One shipment was stopped, but then released.
Can the parliamentary secretary simply answer this question: When can we expect the government to actually direct the CBSA to seize goods made through forced labour, as the Americans are doing?
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- Mar/21/23 11:23:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Dufferin—Caledon did his job and looked into the matter. He submitted a written question to the government. Question No. 1112 asked whether the Canada Border Services Agency had intercepted any goods from the Xinjiang region of China that were made or produced using forced labour, and, if so, how many times since 2016.
The answer was zero. Because that answer came from the government, I would like the committee whose report we are debating in the House to look into that.
Since we know the answer is zero and no products have been intercepted at our borders since 2016, what more can we do, as opposition members, to force the government to direct the CBSA to do its job?
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- Mar/21/23 11:30:17 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise in the House. I will be sharing my time with the member for Windsor West.
The fact that we have to discuss, in 2023, the need to stop slave labour products from entering Canada is a very telling indicator of where we are in the world right now.
Of course, the focus of the Conservatives is the horrific treatment of the Uighurs in China, but we need to broaden this to look at the global race to the bottom that has led to such massive exploitation of environment, indigenous people and the rights of working people around the world.
What we are talking about is the dark side of globalization. Five years ago it would have been heresy to question the great myth of globalization, but that was before COVID and the fact that the supply chains were not able to withstand it, that we could not provide our frontline medical workers with proper PPE because we did not have the factory capacity. This was due to the fact that we had offshored all these basic things that a country needed to keep itself safe to the lowest common denominators and to the sweatshops in the global south.
Before, with globalization, we were told that it would lift all boats. It certainly lifted some boats. It lifted the superyachts, but it was always about freeing the power of capital to live and move wherever it wanted without obligation, the environmental or legal obligations in the jurisdictions they worked within. In fact, globalization was about limiting the power of countries and regions to protect their interests. We know what happened when Mexico tried to stop toxic chemicals. It was targeted because that was supposedly unfair to trade.
We are now at a point where the global supply chain is using slave labour. This is not some dark, obscure fact. All one has to do is go to any shopping mall and into any of the big stores. We know the companies that have been named as being complicit in slave labour, companies such as Adidas, Carter's, Gap, General Motors, Google, Bosch, Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch, Dell. Those are just a few of the 83 that have been identified. Those corporations have their products in all our stores.
I find it interesting that the Conservative focus is that we should try to work with our international allies to deal with this somehow, as opposed to saying to these companies that if they deal with slave labour, they get charged, end of story.
What we see here, again, is this myth of the race to the bottom, that somehow people are surprised that we would end up with slave labour. I go back to the free trade debate with Brian Mulroney.
In that original free trade debate, it was argued that if we merged our environmental and labour standards with the United States, we would all be better off. Of course, we saw a huge bleed-off of manufacturing jobs. At least with the United States, we were dealing with comparable economies. However, it was Clinton and Mulroney's decision to extend it to Mexico that was the real indicator, because Mexico had much lower wage standards. It did not have the protection of laws that Canadian and American workers had.
Once the free trade agreement was set with Mexico, we saw the setting up of the maquiladora sections, where these companies just moved across the border and were protected under Mexican law from all kinds of obligations to pay proper wages, to pay even properly into the Mexican system. It was the race to the bottom. Our country signed on right then, and 766,000 U.S. jobs moved over the border into Mexico, to low-wage maquiladora plants.
It is interesting that those plants were also locations where horrific numbers of young women were being found murdered and sexually mutilated. If we are creating disposable products, we somehow are creating disposable people. We have never actually dealt with that.
From the model that they had with the maquiladora section set up in Mexico was the idea to offshore to the global south. Remember Jean Chrétien and the great China initiative? It was not that we were going to be able to sell our furniture into the world's biggest market. This was about capital being able to offshore its jobs.
The company known at that time for the biggest drive of going to American and Canadian corporations and saying that they could make more money by shutting down their operations and shifting that work over to places like India or China was McKinsey; McKinsey that is now getting $100 million in contracts from the federal government; McKinsey being the company that has been called the single biggest factor in the destruction of the American working and middle class.
What we saw in the move to shift work to low-wage jurisdictions without legal accountability or legal standards was the race to the bottom, and it became more severe as economic precarity grew in North America.
We ended up with a situation like, for example, Joe Fresh. I spoke about it earlier today. Joe Fresh and Loblaws were selling cheap clothing. People could pay $2 for shirts for their kids. These were being made in sweatshops in Bangladesh in horrific conditions.
A collapse of one of these sweatshop factories killed 1,135 human beings. Those human beings died because of corporate negligence. Another 2,500 people were injured. There was no accountability for Loblaws, which makes record profits, or for Joe Fresh. They paid $150 per person and walked away. That is astounding.
We know the story of Apple, the very cool iPhone company, and of its people working in sweatshops in China. Workers were so mistreated that they started to kill themselves in such numbers that the contractor put nets out to try to catch them from jumping. That is a degrading, despicable race to the bottom, yet there was no accountability. Apple remained the cool company.
In fact, speaking of Apple, if people have its phone, when they pick the phone up, they are picking up at least a ton of rock. That is what it takes to make a phone. That ton of rock is coming out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is coming out of the slave labour conditions in the Congo. Our supply chains have not even addressed that.
We need to start talking about the corporate accountability and responsibility for allowing this race to the bottom to happen. What has it meant for the jobs that used to be here?
I will quote from the RAND Corporation, not exactly a left-wing think tank. It has worked for the U.S. military for the last half century or much longer.
RAND looked at the growth of inequality in the United States and it identified, from the 1980s, that $50 trillion from the savings and wages of the working and middle class was transferred to the upper class, the 1%. RAND says that this is the equivalent of $1,144 for every worker for every month for four decades. That is what created the growing political inequality in the United States, the growing uncertainty and the anger out there.
We have to address in the House accountability for what happened that allowed globalization to shift responsibility, to shift work to brutal, underfunded conditions where people are exploited, while undermining the middle and working class in North America. To do that, we need corporate accountability.
If subcontractors commit crimes against people in the Global South, they need to be held accountable for it. If they are using slave labour and selling those items in malls, they need to be held accountable for it. Canadians expect that. They also expect that corporations are going to be held accountable for this offshoring of work to sweatshops, the slave labour conditions and the brutality that we have seen over the last few decades.
The time has come where we have to start to shift back to corporate responsibility, environmental responsibility and fair labour standards.
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- Mar/21/23 11:43:31 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I wish I could have stood and cheered at every syllable of the speech by the member for Timmins—James Bay, because it is exactly right.
We lived through an era, particularly through the 1990s, of triumphalism of transnational corporate rule. That included the World Trade Organization rules that we were not permitted to ask “Was this product made by child labour?” That was called a process and production method, PPM. We were not supposed to be able to look behind where the carpets came from that were made in India, or where our chocolate bars that we give our children on Halloween came from. Did slave children pick those cocoa beans? Probably yes, over and over again. There is slave trade in the shrimp that we buy at the grocery store. There is slave trade in the chocolate bars that we are still buying.
When do we get rid of these pernicious rules that protect human slavery?
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- Mar/21/23 11:55:02 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, over the last number of years in particular, I have witnessed a great deal of advocacy within the chamber from all sides of the House in terms of dealing with the issue of forced labour in general and forced child labour in particular. I have found that we are now at a stage in which we have a department that is actually developing and looking at ways to bring in legislation.
Could my colleague provide his thoughts on how this issue of forced labour is something that offends members on all sides of the House?
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- Mar/21/23 11:57:50 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my excellent colleague from Windsor West for his intervention. I was not surprised by his point of view on this topic. I would like him to take it a bit further.
What can we do to be less dependent on the Chinese market? What can we do to make our supply chain more domestic? How can we do this without passing on costs to consumers? That is the big issue.
How can we be more resilient and increase local production in order to improve conditions for workers? They are affected by the supply chain. We also need to offer help for foreign countries that are often in difficult situations when it comes to child labour.
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- Mar/21/23 11:59:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this is not the first time I have risen on the issue of forced labour and the impact it has had not only on Canadians but throughout the world. We have had a number of debates on this issue. It was not that long ago that we debated Bill S-211.
I know the member for Scarborough—Guildwood, whom I consider a dear friend, has put a great deal of effort into the issue of corporate responsibility and good behaviour for many years. It is well over a decade. I can recall being in the third party with the member when he talked about this, and sitting beside individuals like Stéphane Dion. We understood and wanted to deal with this issue, which is no doubt of critical importance.
One aspect that I always thought of was the way to get corporations to take certain actions as corporations. Individual board members were never really held accountable. There are many aspects in Bill S-211, but one of the aspects I liked was putting more responsibility on the board of directors so we could go after them for forced labour in general. We had very healthy debates on this issue.
What I find interesting is the way the Conservative Party has brought forward what we are debating. If I read the motion itself, which does not take long to read because it is pretty straightforward, it says the committee looks at the bill and comes back with a report. It is pretty straightforward. It states:
That the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to immediately take any and all actions necessary to prohibit the importation of any goods made wholly or in part with forced labour and develop a strategy to prevent the importation into Canada of any goods mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part with forced labour.
This report was tabled here weeks ago. I find it interesting that the Conservatives chose today to ask for concurrence in the report as opposed to just accepting it, because after all, I do not think there is anyone in this chamber who does not understand the importance of the issue, whether it is the Prime Minister or members of the opposition wanting to see something done on this file. I suspect the motivation for the debate today has more to do with preventing the NDP from bringing forward a concurrence motion on a PROC report. It is interesting that the Conservatives chose this particular topic. I understand the way the rules work in the chamber, and at the end of the day, I am always happy to talk about an issue that is so very important.
As for the motion itself, I would like to share something with members. I do not need to table it because it is public knowledge. The member across the way who introduced the motion asked what the government is doing. The parliamentary secretary spoke exceptionally well about how Canada, in many different fora, can play a leading role in dealing with the issue of forced labour and the impact it has on our supply chain. The Conservatives were very quick to scoff at that.
It is interesting to hear the Conservatives when they are in opposition versus when they are in government. When I posed a question to the member, I noted it is all fine and dandy to be so critical of the government and to make accusations that are not necessarily founded. I asked what the former government did, the Harper regime. The member mocked the question, of course, because Stephen Harper did not do anything.
I do not have a problem with contrasting that with what we have been able to do and deal with. The parliamentary secretary made reference to our international presence. What people do not necessarily recognize, which we should acknowledge, is that Canada, with a population base of 38 million people, carries an incredible amount of weight when it comes to international policy. We have seen that in many different ways.
I have always been a big fan of Lloyd Axworthy. If we look at the banning of land mines, an issue Lloyd Axworthy championed on behalf of the Government of Canada, and the success we were able to achieve, we again have to put that into the perspective of the world. The same principles apply for a wide variety of different issues, and this is one of those issues. Unlike the scoffing coming from the Conservative benches, I believe in what the parliamentary secretary who spoke before me said when he talked about the influence of standing up and speaking out, even in the presence of China.
We hear a lot about China, because it was the example and has been the example used. Whether it is the Uighurs or Tibetans, we recognize that, yes, there has been a great deal of exploitation. However, the government is not just talking about that on the floor of the House of Commons. We are talking about that internationally, even in the presence of China. That means the Government of China, and often Chinese officials, will be very irritated, but I believe it is a role that Canadians expect because it is a part of our values.
If we look at the sheer immigration numbers and the people who want to come to Canada, it is a very impressive thing. I believe that is because they look at the values and opportunities Canada has to offer, which translates into the House of Commons and the role we play not only domestically but internationally. That is the reason it is important that, whether it is the Prime Minister or a critic from the opposition party, if we have the opportunity to talk about Canadian values, this is the type of value we should be talking about.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the United Nations many years ago. It talks about the rights of children and their protection, and there are things we can do. That is one of the reasons why a few minutes back I made reference to a public document, which the parliamentary secretary made reference to earlier. I actually printed out a copy of it. It is the ministerial mandate letter for the Minister of Labour, authored by the Prime Minister. It provides instructions, and members who are watching or following the debate can easily look into it themselves by doing a simple Google search.
The letter that comes from the Prime Minister states:
As Minister of Labour, your immediate priorities are to work with federally regulated workplaces to ensure that COVID-19 vaccinations are enforced for those workers and to advance amendments to the Canada Labour Code to provide 10 paid days of sick leave for all federally regulated workers. I also expect you to work with federally regulated employers and labour groups, and with provincial and territorial counterparts, to make workplaces fairer and safer for everyone across the country as well as lead our efforts to eradicate forced labour from Canadian supply chains.
To realize these objectives, I ask that you achieve results for Canadians by delivering the following commitments.
Then the letter lists a number of commitments, and this is one of them:
With the support of the Minister of Public Safety, the Minister of Public Services and Procurement and the Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development—
I would like to emphasize this.
—introduce legislation to eradicate forced labour from Canadian supply chains and ensure that Canadian businesses operating abroad do not contribute to human rights abuses.
I challenge the member who chose to turn this into a political issue by saying the government has not done anything and who then went on to criticize Canada's border control. That is why I posed the question. In opposition, it sure is easy for the Conservative Party to be as critical as it wants, knowing full well that when it was in government it did absolutely nothing on this file.
Even during a pandemic and many other aspects like a war, we can see that this is a priority of the government. We have different departments coming together to provide legislation. Tell me where the former government had any interest in passing legislation. The Conservatives can talk about this, but their math is all messed up, as pointed out earlier after one member said it is eight years later. Sometimes it takes a little while to clean up the Conservative mess. We went on to have a pandemic, and now a war is taking place, but we have seen other budgetary measures and legislative measures, some of which have already been pointed out by a previous speaker. There is a very clear indication that we are developing legislation.
I will note something interesting in the EU:
On 14 September 2022, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation to prohibit products made using forced labour, including child labour, on the internal market of European Union (EU). The proposed legislation fits into the context of EU efforts to promote decent work worldwide.
I do not know all the details of this, but I think it is important for us to recognize that this is not just about Canada alone. Canada does work very closely with its partners, with its allied forces, the EU being one of them. That was referred to in 2022. The Prime Minister's letter to the minister was back in 2021. It does take time, as a great deal of consideration must be factored in. From a good governance, corporate perspective, companies want to ensure that supply chains are being supported by non-forced labour, and those that are prepared to put in that extra effort will ultimately have more security going forward.
I do not believe that Canada is alone. I believe it is working with other like-minded nations in recognizing the harm that forced labour causes. Forced labour takes many different forms. There is exploitation of individuals here today in Canada. When we think about exploitation of labour, we should not believe it is just something beyond our borders. There is a role for provinces in particular, along with the federal government, in looking at what is not only happening abroad but also happening here in Canada.
I know it exists. I have advocated consistently in the past against the exploitation of human beings. It is just wrong, and as parliamentarians we would like to make sure we are making progress in dealing with that. Human smuggling takes place, and it is pure exploitation, whether it is getting an individual into a factory or selling an individual for sexual services. Unfortunately, it is something that happens.
I believe the United Nations said that it could be as high as 10%. Members should not quote me on it, but I believe it is somewhere in that neighbourhood worldwide, with about 10% of the population of the globe being exploited in one form or another.
I mention children more than anything else because that is where my primary focus is, but there are other vulnerable groups, some more than others, that need to be taken into consideration. I like to believe that, as Canada continues to move forward on this file, we will continue to have healthy discussions. My colleague's legislation will be coming forward at some point in the future once the appropriate consultation has taken place.
I believe this is an issue that has been here since well before any of us have been around. I am not just talking about inside the House of Commons. I am talking in life in general. It is something that is not going to be cured overnight. At the end of day, we do have a responsibility, a responsibility that has been taken very, very seriously.
The government has seen the benefits of trade. Canada, more so than most countries around the world, is dependent on trade. It is dependent on exports and imports. It is not like we are a self-sufficient country in producing that does not require the importation of products. We are far from that. That is one of the reasons that, as we move forward, and we will move forward on this file, we do so in a way Canadians can get behind and support.
Interestingly enough, there was reference to the North America trade agreement. We saw, incorporated into that trade agreement, the issue of workers' rights and environmental concerns. As a government, we have signed off on more trade agreements than any other government before us because we recognize just how important trade is to our country. At the same time, we have very much taken a keen interest in the supply chain and getting rid of the exploitation of people. I believe we are going to see more effort on that issue in the coming months and years ahead.
With those few words, I am thankful for the opportunity to share some thoughts and look forward to any questions, if there are any.
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- Mar/21/23 12:22:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I look forward, as I am sure the member opposite does, to the work the department of labour is currently doing to deal with the issue at hand. It is working with other departments and doing the essential consultations. We have to do those consultations, and it is a wide variety of consultations that have to take place. That work is being done, and I look forward to seeing some of the results of that work in the coming months and years ahead of us.
On the convention of rights for children, I think that, when we compare Canada to other nations in the world, we do exceptionally well, and we can play a very strong leadership role. That is why I indicated that Canada does often punch over its weight when it comes to ensuring human rights and the protection of children and vulnerable people by speaking out in the forums provided to do so, and we will continue to do that.
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- Mar/21/23 12:27:42 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to question the member opposite about Canada's record when it comes to fighting foreign human trafficking and modern-day slavery.
The United States seized 2,398 shipments suspected to be tied to forced labour and modern-day slavery, and Canada seized only one in that same amount of time. After it was contested, it let the shipment go through.
Does the member think that Canada is doing a good job of stopping forced labour coming through our border?
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- Mar/21/23 12:39:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is actually quite simple to answer. I would turn to the member for Dufferin—Caledon and ask him for the electronic list that the Department of Homeland Security has of companies sourcing forced labour goods and trying to ship them in, and I would give it to the CBSA. It is pretty simple.
Also, the particular treaty the member is referring to is not secret; it is a public document that was approved by the House.
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- Mar/21/23 12:42:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to hear my colleague's thoughts on the answer we were given earlier, that consultations are being held on the steps to be taken to improve the forced labour situation, that is to say to eradicate it.
With respect to children, the Convention on the Rights of the Child was signed on November 20, 1989, or almost 34 years ago. They have had 34 years for consultations, so we wonder if they are asking all eight billion people on earth what concrete steps should be taken.
I would like to hear what my colleague thinks about this.
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- Mar/21/23 12:43:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member. As I said, this reminds me of the Yiddish proverb: “A drowning man will reach even for the point of a sword”.
With respect to this file, the government talks about consultations, commissions, websites and attestations. That is not good enough. What we need are results from the CBSA, to ensure that goods imported into our country are not made with forced labour.
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