Moved second reading of Bill S-216, An Act to enact the Modern Slavery Act and to amend the Customs Tariff.

She said: Honourable colleagues, I rise at second reading to explain the relevance of Bill S-216, An Act to enact the Modern Slavery Act and to amend the Customs Tariff. It is an improved version of Bill S-211, which died on the Order Paper with prorogation.

I am very grateful to have the support of the All-Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking to introduce this bill. This will transcends party lines. This is about our humanity.

Bill S-216 is a tool for transparency to fight against child labour and forced labour in the supply chains of Canadian businesses. This will help Canada adhere more strictly to the letter of its international commitments. It is clear that we have fallen behind many other countries in our efforts to hold our companies accountable for wrongs they commit outside Canada.

This bill is a step in the right direction. Of course, it does not claim to eradicate all human rights violations committed in the production of the goods we consume, a scourge that is exacerbated by systemic causes such as poverty, insecurity and gender inequality.

The pandemic ramped up the urgency to intervene, and the United Nations sounded the alarm. COVID-19 has increased the risk that millions of children, women and men will be reduced to forced labour, many of them producing PPE such as masks, gloves and antibacterial soap for western countries as quickly as possible. In Malaysia, observers documented dormitories and buses crowded with people working in close quarters 12 hours a day to produce latex gloves. In South Africa, workers were literally locked inside a mask factory for days to fulfill orders. The Muslim Uighur minority in China was back in the news because of investigative reporting linking forced labour camps with the mass production of masks.

An estimated 40 million women, men and children around the world are victims of modern slavery, a term not explicitly defined in international law but that encompasses a whole range of practices, including human trafficking, sex trafficking and forced marriage, that employ violence, threats, coercion, abuse of power and fraud to exploit people or force them to work.

Of that number, 25 million human beings, both adults and children, are trafficked for forced labour. The bill uses the International Labour Organization definition of forced labour, and I quote:

...all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of a penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily.

The definition of the worst forms of child labour includes forced labour as well as the following:

...work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

Ways to trap people into forced labour include debt bondage, withholding identity documents, threats to report labourers to immigration authorities, and violence or threats of violence. Cases of shameless child exploitation have made the headlines: Thailand’s shrimp industry, Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa fields and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt mines. Cobalt is used in the production of lithium batteries, such as the ones in our cell phones. Let’s not forget the cheap clothing made by the tonne in slave labour conditions in Asia.

This shameful exploitation does not just occur abroad. The Global Slavery Index estimates that 17,000 people live in conditions of modern slavery in Canada. Farming is an area particularly at risk. I recently met a Cameroonian woman who lived for two years under the thumb of a Quebec farmer, who prohibited her from having a cell phone, confiscated her bank card and threatened to send her back to her country if she did not work up to 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

She said the following:

I was terrified of him. I was afraid that he would carry out his threats and for two years I did everything he told me to do even when I was tired, even when I felt sick. I no longer complained even if I felt dizzy. I worked as long as he needed me to so he would not threaten me and so he would have nothing to blame me for. I did absolutely everything to make sure the work was impeccable.

An immigrant told me about spending her childhood working in Mexico’s tomato fields. Her father signed her up for this exhausting work. That was the norm in her village and she was not able to attend school for very long.

In general, it is not the Canadian companies that are directly involved in human rights abuses, but rather the subcontractors they deal with, their suppliers of raw materials and unprocessed agricultural products. That is where the danger lies.

Beyond the headlines in our day-to-day lives, as consumers we don’t know which products were made by children or by people working under some form of threat. Not all fair-trade product certifications are equal, and some can be confusing to consumers.

It is estimated that $34 billion worth of goods imported into Canada are at risk of having involved forced or child labour. That’s significant. World Vision Canada estimates that 1,200 companies doing business in Canada have imported one or more of these high-risk products.

For too long in Canada, we have counted on self-regulation alone, relying on the social responsibility of businesses to investigate their suppliers.

Broadly speaking, Bill S-216 would require corporations doing business in Canada to report on the measures taken to prevent or reduce the use of forced labour or child labour at any step in the production of their goods. This is supply chain transparency legislation.

Who does it target? Any company listed on a stock exchange or that operates in Canada and meets two of the following three criteria: It has at least $20 million in assets, it has generated at least $40 million in revenue, or it employs at least 250 employees. Clearly, the bill targets big corporations with the means to produce these reports—

Thank you very much, colleagues.

Clearly, the bill targets big corporations with the means to produce these reports, not SMEs and little local shops for which it would be too great a burden. This is a pragmatic approach.

I should also note that these are companies that import goods into Canada, or produce or sell here, so not just companies such as supermarkets that do business directly with consumers. What is more — and this is critical — the legislation targets companies that have direct or indirect control over other entities involved in the production chain.

The obligation enshrined in the legislation is the following: An annual report filed with the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness on the measures taken to prevent or reduce the risk of forced labour at any step in the production of goods, whether in Canada or elsewhere, or at the time of their importation to Canada. Production of goods means the manufacture, growing, extraction or processing.

This report should include information on the goods, policies on forced labour, measures taken to assess the risk, and training provided to employees on this issue. These aspects will be further detailed in the regulations that will accompany the legislation.

To be clear, this law has teeth. It includes oversight mechanisms. For example, company directors or officers must attest that the information provided in the report is true, accurate and complete. The people at the top are responsible. In addition, a person designated by the minister may enter a company’s premises to investigate, which includes inspecting computer systems, if they have reasonable grounds to believe that documents relating to the act are in that place. The act also authorizes entry into a home under the authority of a warrant.

Offences and punishment are set out for those who fail to comply with the obligation to publicly report or who knowingly make a false or misleading statement. It is important to note that company directors and officers are considered parties to the offence and liable on summary conviction to a maximum fine of $250,000.

In addition, in the wake of the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement, this winter our government amended the Customs Tariff to prohibit entry into Canada of goods manufactured through forced labour. This is very good news, as it is part of the latest version of my bill. However, Bill S-216 maintains the wording of the original amendment to the Customs Tariff, because the prohibition on the entry of goods must apply not only to the product of forced labour, as it currently stands, but also more broadly to the product of child labour.

Some of the other improvements in Bill S-216 include the creation of a centralized electronic public registry to facilitate access to information provided by companies in their reports. We also expanded the definitions of forced labour and child labour.

Also, to better reflect the realities of the business world, going forward, companies would have up to six months after the end of their fiscal year to provide a report to the minister. Lastly, a review mechanism will authorize a committee of Parliament to review the legislation five years after it comes into force.

Let’s talk about public transparency legislation elsewhere. While Bill S-216 is innovative in some respects, it has also been inspired by transparency laws elsewhere in the world.

In 2015, Great Britain passed its own law on modern slavery. This law includes an obligation to report annually, but, paradoxically, the law allows the report to indicate that the company did not do anything at all to combat forced labour.

The law does not provide for any penalty, but an injunction may be sought against those who break the law. In 2017, 57% of companies listed on the stock exchange complied with the law. The most recent research indicates that a rather small group of British business leaders took action, but there still have not been any large-scale changes. There are examples of good and bad reports. Last year, in the face of criticism, the authorities decided to audit 17,000 companies in the hopes of increasing transparency. An independent report recommended strengthening the British law and adding penalties.

The most recent example is the Australian law adopted in 2018. It is the first transparency law that imposes obligations not only on corporations but also on the federal government and its agencies. There are mandatory reporting criteria. The Australian law is innovative in one respect: The state must publish the list of companies that fail to submit a report, and there is a central registry that is very useful for identifying and outing offenders. Here again, there are no penalties for non-compliance in Australia. Therefore, the British and Australian laws have somewhat less “teeth” than the bill proposed here.

All these transparency laws are more or less based on the name-and-shame concept. Corporate offenders can be shamed by human rights advocacy groups. Consumers have a little more information they can use to make responsible choices. The underlying assumption is that transparency will increase accountability.

So what impact do these laws have on transparency? Adopting these laws has certainly contributed to a broader conversation about modern slavery among business people, investors, unions and the general public. Many businesses are still turning a blind eye, but there is a growing awareness, no doubt because investors, particularly millennials, are increasingly making this an investment criterion.

Many companies know that their reputation is at stake and that finding slaves in their supply chain may result in a drop in sales and profits. Moreover, the impunity of Canadian companies operating abroad is called into question by an unprecedented Supreme Court ruling which allowed a forced-labour lawsuit against mining company Nevsun Resources to proceed in Canada.

Some CEOs even believe that transparency legislation reduces unfair competition from those who cut corners on human rights. There are a few champions who have paved the way: the Canadian athletic clothing company lululemon, but also adidas, Gap and H&M, according to a KnowTheChain ranking. For instance, lululemon requires remediation actions to be taken if child labour were to be discovered at their vendors’ facilities. The education of the child needs to be fully taken care of.

Even small players are applauding Bill S-216. The president and owner of Equifruit, a Quebec company that imports fair-trade fruit to Canada, told me that she hopes this bill can give her more access to supermarket chains because they will have to ask their usual large-scale suppliers more questions about the presence of modern slavery in their supply chain.

All this is happening in a context where investigative reporting is condemning the use of forced labour. Consumer awareness campaigns are growing. I am thinking in particular of palm oil. In Indonesia, palm oil plantations use child labour in conditions that are considered to be dangerous and difficult by Amnesty International.

A survey of 26 major Canadian businesses and 37 managers sheds light on the concerns of the business world: 75% believe that legislation on supply chain transparency could drive change and benefit their own organizations. Only 29% of businesses carefully examine the first level of their supply chain, when modern slavery is often present in the second or third level.

Here is one last very worrisome statistic: According to a British survey of 71 major companies, including 25 international brands and retailers, more than threequarters of businesses surveyed believe that there is a good chance that there is forced labour in their own supply chain.

So why did we feel compelled to introduce such a bill? The reason is that, surprisingly, Canada has not yet set out in its legislation and national measures the numerous commitments it has made on the international scene. Therefore, I will repeat that we lag very far behind.

Perhaps even more striking is that Canada has ratified all eight core conventions of the International Labour Organization, including those on the worst forms of child labour and the abolition of forced labour. Why, then, is the use of forced labour not explicitly prohibited in the Criminal Code and in the Canada Labour Code?

Unfortunately, while the federal government is sensitive to this issue, it is still considering how best to proceed with businesses — same slow pace to make public procurement policies more accountable — while huge shipments of masks have been purchased in parts of the world where there is a significant risk of forced labour.

In all transparency, there is not unanimous support for this bill. International Justice Mission, Lawyers Without Borders Canada, and eco-sociologist Laure Waridel, among others, see Bill S-216 as a step in the right direction. A number of advocates are calling for a stricter law modelled on due diligence legislation in the Netherlands and France. These laws require companies to do due diligence to ensure that their supply chain is reasonably free of forced and child labour. Offenders are subject to civil liability. On the business side, the Mining Association of Canada welcomes the tabling of this bill, but like many other private sector actors, suggests changes.

In any case, consumers want to know. According to a survey by World Vision, 91% of Canadians believe the government should require Canadian companies to publicly report on what they are doing to eliminate child labour from their supply chains.

The debate, which began in February, must resume in the Senate, and I therefore invite my colleagues to participate. The committee’s study will enable senators to decide whether the bill needs improvement.

It is high time we took action. Canada cannot just pay lip service to defending human rights. The reality of world trade is that goods produced under modern slavery conditions cross borders into wealthier countries like Canada. The crime is committed elsewhere, but the product of the crime is sold right here.

Society can no longer turn a blind eye to this problem.