Canada’s prohibition on forced labour goods is ineffective, says NGO

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This article was published 21/06/2021 (1807 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER — As other western nations forge ahead on measures meant to prevent goods made with forced labour from entering their borders, Canada is lagging behind, according to a new report from a human rights organization.

Canadian NGO Above Ground issued the report “Creating consequences” Monday, saying Canadian companies are importing goods from industries known to be “rife” with forced labour and calling on Ottawa to employ more substantive action to stop it.

“To date, the Canadian government’s response to these problems has largely consisted of studying the issue, informing companies about it and encouraging them to act responsibly,” reads the report, referring a ban on such items brought in last year.

“Ottawa has yet to begin enforcing the ban, and early indications suggest that in practice authorities may take enforcement action only in rare cases, without publicly disclosing which manufacturers are involved.”

More attention in Canada has been cast on importing goods made from forced labour recently, particularly since accusations were made against companies in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of using ethnic Uyghurs for forced labour.

A Toronto Star and Guelph Mercury Tribune investigation published in January found more than 500 containers worth of shipments made by companies sanctioned by the U.S. over forced Xinjiang labour concerns were coming into Canada.

A followup to the story revealed, despite the prohibition on such items, not a single shipment had been stopped from entering the country. The Canada Border Services Agency confirmed as of Friday the prohibition has yet to be applied to any shipments.

A refugee support group is now taking Ottawa to court in an attempt to ultimately force the government to presumptively ban goods from Xinjiang.

Above Ground’s report says, in using software for tracking imports, it found more than 200 additional shipments of goods made by companies “reportedly involved in China’s labour transfer programs targeting Xinjiang minorities.”

The U.S. currently has a bill in the House of Representatives aiming to ban imports from Xinjiang from unless the importer can prove they were not made with forced labour.

But China is not the only concern for the organization.

The report says nearly 25 million people around the world are victims of forced labour “on any given day” and it highlights seafood from Thailand, coffee from Brazil and cocoa from the Ivory Coast and Ghana as three major sources of forced labour goods coming to Canada worth hundreds of millions of dollars in imports since 2019.

It says the findings are just “the tip of the iceberg” because Canadian import data is not public and the software used to find shipments of concern only captures those coming to Canada through the U.S.

Above Ground spokesperson Lori Waller said countries in Europe as well as the U.S. are ahead of Canada when it comes to enforcement. Both countries and Mexico agreed to strengthen their efforts against forced labour via the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, which came into force last year.

“We can see that the U.S. has been taking much stronger action on forced labour, at least in terms of imports coming into the U.S.,” Waller said. “It’s hoped that Canada will follow suit having adopted a similar legal provision but the devil is in the details of how it will be enforced.”

But, Waller said, so far Canada’s enforcement has been ineffective. The approach is to use education rather than enforcement to stop the practice, which Waller argues doesn’t produce firm results.

Making matters worse, she said, is Canadian authorities told Above Ground they don’t have to divulge the names of companies that have been found to import prohibited goods, among other information, citing both the customs and privacy acts.

“The things that the border authorities are saying they can’t disclose really raises the question of how anyone’s going to know the extent to which this is being enforced,” she said.

CBSA spokesperson Louis-Carl Brissette Lesage told the Star that Ottawa is working to enforce the laws brought about by the agreement with Mexico and the U.S., but said it’s challenging.

Brissette Lesage said “in-depth analysis” of specific cases is underway.

“Unlike most other inadmissible products, there is no visual clue for a Border Services Officer to understand the labour standards by which a particular import was produced,” he wrote in a email. “It takes research, coordination and diligence amongst all stakeholders to establish reliable and actionable sources of information to stamp out this practice.”

Above Ground is calling for better enforcement of Canada’s existing ban on forced labour products as well as new laws forcing companies to rid their supply chains of them.

Jeremy Nuttall is a Vancouver-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @Nuttallreports