Senator McPhedran: In the act that President Biden signed into law in December, it specifically mentions coordination with Mexico and Canada to effectively implement Article 23.6 of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement to prohibit the importation of goods produced in whole or in part by forced or compulsory labour.

I wonder if you might comment on the nature of your bill in relation to the American bill in this regard.

Senator Housakos: This bill is very similar. Obviously, the bill we have on the books right now, which we passed only a couple of years ago, was in response to, of course, the Canada-United States-Mexico free trade agreement. It was done as a reflex, trying to be compliant with the agreement. But, again, was this done — implicitly, explicitly, I really don’t know — by our government, but that bill certainly doesn’t meet the objective of combating forced labour. The American bill is far more rigid, the one that was just passed, than what we currently have in the bill.

You will forgive my ignorance, but I don’t know what the Mexican position is in regard to this. It just became, to me, common sense: Why is the onus on CBSA agents to try to implement what currently is on the books, when it cannot be implemented? They, themselves, in all good faith, have expressed that view. I’ve had discussions with people from CBSA who tell me that they consider this bill really window dressing because the government knows that they can’t actually execute this in an effective fashion. The proof is in the pudding because, over the last year and a half while the law has been on the books, they have confiscated and stopped one container of what I suspect is a significant amount of imports that come in from that region.

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