Bill S-211

Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act

An Act to enact the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act and to amend the Customs Tariff

This enactment enacts the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act , which imposes an obligation on certain government institutions and private-sector entities to report on the measures taken to prevent and reduce the risk that forced labour or child labour is used by them or in their supply chains. The Act provides for an inspection regime applicable to entities and gives the Minister the power to require an entity to provide certain information.
This enactment also amends the Customs Tariff to allow for aprohibition on the importation of goods manufactured or produced,in whole or in part, by forced labour or child labour as those terms are defined in the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act .

[Emily Dwyer]

Sure.

We have testified to this aspect and submitted this to the Government of Canada and to the CORE's office itself. Without the power to compel documents and testimony, the CORE is not very different from the offices that already existed in Canada.

A national contact point is a requirement in all OECD countries and we've had one in Canada since 2002. It has the ability to receive complaints, offer mediation and report publicly. What would have distinguished the CORE and made it the first of its kind in the world are those robust investigatory powers that exist in other ombudspersons' offices in Canada.

What we're seeing around the world in terms of best practice is momentum towards mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation. There are the French and the German laws. There are also laws that are expected to cover the entire European Union before the end of this year. There have been several other national proposals around the world.

This is what the United Nations is calling on Canada to do and what the UN guiding principles really are expecting of the Canadian government. It is to put in place mechanisms to ensure that companies are required to respect human rights and to ensure that people can access remedy.

I think the notion that Canada is somehow a leader when it comes to business and human rights is not something that could be substantiated by the facts.

Surya Deva, former chair of the UN working group on business and human rights, testified before the Senate when it was studying Bill S-211. He was quite clear that if Canada wants to be a leader in business and human rights, it should empower the CORE with the powers to independently investigate and it should pass comprehensive human rights and environmental due diligence legislation.

Mr. Deva also testified in that committee that he was very surprised that Canada would be trying to replicate models in the U.K. that were established to be failures, that have not changed corporate practice and that are not catching up to global practice, which is towards human rights and environmental due diligence legislation.

[Emily Dwyer, Policy Director, Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability]

Good afternoon, Chair and distinguished members of the committee. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here, and for your interest in studying this vital issue.

We are thankful that Parliament takes this issue seriously and we urge it to quickly address the many reports of human rights violations linked to mining activities abroad.

My name is Emily Dwyer. I'm the policy director at the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability, CNCA.

Founded in 2005, the CNCA unites 40 member organizations and unions from diverse sectors. They collectively represent the voices of millions of Canadians. Our members are located across the country and have long-standing relationships with workers, women and indigenous peoples in every corner of the world.

I work from the unceded and traditional territories of the Algonquin Anishinabe peoples.

What I can tell you in no uncertain terms is that the mining sector is linked to serious risks of human rights abuse and environmental harm. To illustrate, John Ruggie, author of the UN's “Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights”, reported to the UN Human Rights Council that “The extractive sector is unique because no other has so enormous and intrusive a social and environmental footprint.”

In addition, for the past seven years, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has reported on attacks on human rights defenders and it has consistently documented that mining is the most dangerous sector for people who work to protect human rights.

These facts are particularly relevant given Canada's outsized share of the global mining sector. According to Natural Resources Canada, around half of the world's mining companies are headquartered in Canada, and Canadian-based companies are present in 97 foreign countries. As a result, we have a particular responsibility to act.

To be clear, I am not here to argue that all mining is bad. I am also not here to argue that all mining is good. What I am here to demonstrate is that Canada's approach to Canadian mining abroad is flawed. It is an approach that is based on voluntary oversight. What mining companies do is almost entirely based on their own goodwill, benevolence and their bottom line, without real rules requiring companies to respect human rights and no real consequences if companies are involved in harm-causing behaviour.

Canada's approach therefore allows companies to get away with serious human rights abuses, and it ignores the very real impacts on a large number of people around the world. The kinds of abuses we're talking about are serious. They include threats, killings, bodily harm, gang rape, unsafe and exploitative working conditions, forced labour, failure to respect the rights of indigenous peoples and women, and serious environmental damage.

For years, our network, along with hundreds of thousands of Canadians, organizations from diverse sectors, impacted people from around the world and multiple UN bodies, has called on Canada to implement effective mechanisms to prevent and remedy Canadian corporate human rights abuses abroad, particularly in the mining sector. Other advanced economies are increasingly recognizing that meaningful measures to address corporate malfeasance are essential to long-term prosperity and sustainability. There is growing momentum towards mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence laws that require companies to respect human rights and the environment. Canada should join this race to the top.

Our network is urging the Minister of Labour to move swiftly to deliver on his mandate letter commitment to “introduce legislation to eradicate forced labour from Canadian supply chains” and ensure that companies don't contribute to human rights abuses abroad.

To be effective, Canada needs a law that goes beyond a basic reporting requirement and includes these three key elements: The law should require companies to prevent harm rather than focusing on reporting; it should help impacted people to access remedy; and it should apply to all human rights.

Unfortunately, modern slavery reporting Bill S-211, which will soon come before Parliament, will not help to address corporate abuse nor help Canada catch up with legal trends in other advanced economies.

As a final comment, we note the absence of directly impacted people on the witness list for this study. We would encourage this committee to expand the number of hearings so that MPs could hear directly from impacted communities and workers. We would be happy to facilitate that.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to responding to your questions.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

You didn't have to stop there, but you can.

The argument on the other side is that they prefer due diligence legislation. There are only two countries that have due diligence legislation, Germany and France. The French are still fiddling around with their due diligence legislation. In fact, there's a report that says that the law is still very poorly applied. Some of the companies they'd hoped to get involved haven't even bothered filing a vigilance plan.

In the event that Bill S-211 does apply, what regulations do you think the government could attach to the bill that would move us a little bit further along towards what everyone would agree is an aspiration?

[Sheri Meyerhoffer]

I want to start by stating that strong supply chain legislation is critical for preventing and addressing human rights abuses in global supply chains and ensuring that Canada remains competitive. I believe—my office believes—that Bill S-211 is a first step forward in strengthening respect for human rights by Canadian companies operating abroad. We support any efforts to strengthen supply chain transparency.

As you know, we believe that Bill S-211 can be strengthened. We submitted a brief to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights during its deliberations, and we suggested four ways to strengthen it. Those were to add fighting labour trafficking, to add the ability to make regulations identifying thresholds, to make reporting requirements more detailed and to strengthen oversight, including through independent audits and annual reports.

You can find our brief on Bill S-211 on our website, but to summarize, we support the legislation. We believe that it can be strengthened. We said in our brief that strengthening can happen through regulation. No law is perfect.

I think I'll stop there.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Chair. I'll direct most of my questions to the CORE representative, Ms. Meyerhoffer.

It's good to see you again.

As you know, Bill S-211 is on the docket for March 6 for report stage and third reading. It's gone through the Senate, and it had a unanimous vote in the House. Then it went through the foreign affairs committee, and now it's back on the floor of the House. The witness who will follow you will say that it would be better if parliamentarians voted against this bill as it is counterproductive to the, quote, “momentum” around due diligence.

As my first question, given the resolution of your organization that Bill S-211 should pass as quickly as possible, what would you say to anyone, let alone the witness who will follow you, that Bill S-211 should not see the light of day?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to weigh in on the debate about transparency legislation versus due diligence legislation and what's on offer and what's not on offer.

Transparency legislation is what it seems to be, which is that every year a Canadian entity has to examine its supply chain and satisfy itself that there is no slavery in the supply chain. A CEO has to sign a statement to that effect, and if the statement they sign is false, there will be the same impact as there would be if an accountant signed a false statement, for instance. This applies to a certain level of entities all across the country. If you don't file, you're fined and you also expose yourself to various investigations by the Minister of Public Safety.

That's what Bill S-211 is. That's on offer. The third reading and debate are coming up on March 6.

What's being talked about is Bill C-262, which is due diligence legislation, which, as the witnesses have acknowledged, places a very significant obligation on companies. Bill C-262 is, with greatest respect to Mr. Julian, an aspirational bill, because it's not likely to be debated in this Parliament.

If the House is to do anything, the only thing really on offer is Bill S-211.

That being said, there are two countries that have due diligence legislation—Germany and France. Germany's threshold is 3,000 employees. Any company with fewer than 3,000 doesn't have to comply with the legislation. France's legislation stipulates 5,000 employees, or 10,000 worldwide. Those are the companies.

The transparency legislation catches a lot more companies, and it generates information. Maybe, in the fullness of time, you'll be able to move to due diligence legislation.

Due diligence legislation cuts off the vast majority of Canadian companies, because who has 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 employees, plus multiple billions of euros in revenues?

That's the essence of the debate. It's not as though I think a bill on due diligence wouldn't be useful for companies. It's just that we're not there yet.

What's on offer is that we go from being, frankly, Canadian laggards to world leaders. Only a couple of other countries have written transparency legislation. They have rewritten it to make it stronger, but it's still weaker than ours. Australia have just implemented theirs, and we jump Australia as well because, again, our legislation is stronger.

The debate here is that, as particularly the witness from the steelworkers and some of her colleagues believe, perfect is actually the enemy of good. I do not take that view and, colleagues, I don't think you should take that view.

Who knows what the life of this Parliament is going to be, but I'd really like it if, following the March 6 debate, it would come to a final vote and we could have something on the books.

May I say that Canadians talk a good talk. Walking the talk is sometimes a little more difficult. This will enable us to actually walk the talk, and it will bring us forward.

I have to say that this legislation has been broadly supported. It's not limited to the mining industry, although it will certainly affect the mining industry. Maybe I shouldn't say it, but the Mining Association of Canada and PDAC, the prospectors and developers, welcome the legislation because it distinguishes them from some of their somewhat unscrupulous competitors. It has considerable support.

In the 31 seconds I have left, I'm going to ask the witness whether she thinks that the good should be the enemy of the perfect, or if she supports the idea.

By the way, before you answer that question, I would support Bill C-263—which, again, is an aspirational bill—and I do think the CORE ombudsperson should have the powers that are in it.

Thus endeth the homily. I thank you very much.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

No, no, no. Bill S-211 is mine. The last witness and I would not see eye to eye.

[Meg Gingrich, Assistant to the National Director, United Steelworkers Union]

Thank you, Chair. Through you, I would also like to thank the clerk and all members of the committee for the opportunity to join you here today.

My name is Meg Gingrich, and I'm here with the United Steelworkers.

The United Steelworkers union is the largest private sector union in North America. It includes 225,000 members in nearly every economic sector, right across Canada, about 15,000 of whom work in the mining industry.

As a labour union, our core mission is to improve the lives of our members. That work necessarily extends to fighting for better conditions for all workers everywhere. Our members understand that to serve Canadian workers, we have to fight the race to the bottom of salaries and working conditions and flip that old paradigm on its head.

That starts by holding Canadian companies accountable for their global operations. By raising the basic standards everywhere and closing the delta between fair pay and the need to respect human rights in Canada and in other countries, we can decrease the incentive to cut Canadian jobs and compensation in favour of operations elsewhere, and we can secure a new foundation on which we can build stronger workers' rights here.

Put simply, doing the right thing for workers around the world is good for working people in Canada. At the USW we do this work directly through our Steelworkers Humanity Fund and in collaboration with civil society organizations and a variety of coalitions, some of whom you've heard from here, and that includes the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability.

It is through the CNCA and the Non-Negotiable campaign that we've been actively lobbying Parliament to pass mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation. As you know, that legislation, Bill C-262, is at the heart of addressing the concerns that are being raised in and by the study you're undertaking.

With all due respect to the work done by diplomats and those in any form of foreign service, I'm sure we can all agree that a country's foreign policy includes the international operations and business dealings of the private sector. Canada's mining sector is active in at least 100 countries. Without oversight of the private sector, the Canadian government risks harming some of its bilateral relationships and foreign policy goals in aid, trade, diplomacy and defence.

The impacts on the Canadian economy as a whole, as well as on communities and individual workers and their families, is significant. Governments in other countries are understanding these facts and are taking action. Recent G7 discussions saw a reinforced collective support for working together towards trade that lifts up workers, businesses and peoples.

However, frankly, here at home we're discouraged to see the Canadian government pushing legislation. We're talking about Bill S-211 now, which does not actually create a legal obligation to stop the practice or provide a path to remedy for anyone affected by a violation. This will not stop the abuses.

As this committee has already heard, to be robust and effective, legislation on this must legally oblige Canadian companies operating or sourcing abroad to identify, prevent and mitigate violations and provide remedies to those affected and for damage caused by their operations. This must apply to all human rights violations and environmental damage.

Some might suggest to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, but as you may be aware, the experience of a similar law in the U.K. and other jurisdictions shows that modern slavery acts and the reporting only requirements have not brought the change they promised. Worse, when compared to the effective changes proposed in legislation before the House, for example, the corporate responsibility to protect human rights act, passing Bill S-211 could actually hurt the movement towards increased corporate accountability by being pitched as enough and used as an excuse to stop further work on this file.

Another more effective course of action would be to finally give the Canadian ombudsperson for responsible enterprise the investigative and enforcement powers she needs to effectively do the job she's been tasked with doing. Again, another bill before the House, Bill C-263, would be a step in the right direction in terms of that goal.

In advance of any questions, I would like to close on this point. We all understand that jobs and increased compensation rely on corporate success and profitability. It's not about deciding between doing the right thing or making a profit, because as we watch global awareness and the focus on corporate accountability rise, these goals are increasingly connected.

Thank you.

[Catherine Coumans]

That's a really important question. It goes to the core of what we're talking about today.

Right now, Canada cannot enforce the laws and rules that we have for mining in Canada. We can't extend those laws and rules to mining overseas. What we can do is require any Canadian company that's headquartered in Canada to do what we call environmental and human rights due diligence. This means that the company would now be required by law to review all the operations of all of its subsidiaries and contractors to see if these operations were possibly harming human rights or the environment. Then the company would have to report on the risk assessment that they've done.

It goes beyond that. This is like the reporting requirement in Bill S-211 right now on slave labour and child labour. On mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence, once they've reported on it, they'd also have to show what they've done to mitigate or to stop the harm that they're doing. If they're using slave labour—because we have two Canadian companies right now in the Uighur territory in China that are very likely using slave labour—they have to not just report that they are or possibly are, but they have to stop.

Then there's the final piece, which is that if people are harmed by a Canadian company, they can bring a case to Canadian court.

We believe this suite of sanctions, issues and encouragements—because this is really to prevent harm—will actually really force the Canadian industry to change the way it operates. They actually have consequences, unlike the “towards sustainable mining” protocol or e3 Plus. These voluntary measures have no consequences. There have to be consequences for companies to take it seriously.

[Catherine Coumans]

Just briefly, there's a major argument right now that in order to have the energy transition that we need, we have to do more mining. We would really oppose that idea. There will have to be some new mining, but there needs to be far, far more recycling and technology developed, for batteries especially, that doesn't rely very heavily on metals.

That is happening. The battery industry is moving in that direction. They are no longer wanting to use cobalt and many of the other metals that we're still pushing companies to go and mine. That's number one.

Number two, the only way that mining can be done better.... I'm speaking from 23 years' experience. Watching TSM and watching [Technical difficulty—Editor] e3 Plus, I can see that these voluntary measures from the Government of Canada and voluntary measures from the industry associations don't work. We really need measures that have more teeth. We really need mandatory environmental and human rights due diligence legislation. This is where things are moving in Europe. France has already passed such legislation. The European Union is considering it right now.

Canada really needs to get serious. We can't take small baby steps anymore. Bill S-211 doesn't go nearly far enough. It doesn't consider all human rights and it doesn't actually ask companies to stop using slave labour.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thanks, Ms. Coumans. I want to give Mr. Thomson a chance to jump in.

Can you comment on the due diligence standard? There are lots of things floating out there. Bill S-211, John McKay's bill, is coming out of committee. There's the potential Peter Julian bill. There's also the mandate given to Minister O'Regan.

Among those three, do you have a preferred vehicle for getting a due diligence standard legislated, Mr. Thomson?

Criminal Code

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

, seconded by the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard, moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.

He said: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be speaking today to Bill S-223, the next, and hopefully the last, in a long line of bills that have been proposed here and in the other place to begin the fight against the horrific practice of forced organ harvesting and trafficking.

I want to thank the member for Pierrefonds—Dollard for seconding the bill and recognize the incredible work done by Senator Ataullahjan as well, who proposed the bill. I have the honour of carrying that work on in this place.

The bill would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ taken without consent. Bill S-223 would also create a mechanism by which a person could be deemed inadmissible to Canada for involvement in forced organ harvesting and trafficking. The bill recognizes the basic moral principle that killing people or exploiting them for their organs is wrong everywhere and should be stopped everywhere.

Efforts to combat this practice have been ongoing in Canada's Parliament for close to 15 years, and the time that has elapsed underlines the sad reality of how long it takes to pass good private members' bills, even when everyone agrees. However, Bill S-223 has now made it further than any of its predecessors. Having passed the Senate and now been reported back from committee without amendments, the bill only needs to complete this third reading stage and receive royal assent before becoming law. Thanks to the member for Bow River trading with me today and the member for Simcoe North trading the second hour slot on Wednesday, the bill will complete debate this week and should pass its final vote in time for Christmas.

In the past I have always given uncharacteristically short speeches on the bill, trying to engineer an early collapse to debate to move the bill along more quickly. However, given that we now have the security of a second hour for debate lined up and a tight time line to move forward in any event, I will use the opportunity to now, for the first time, to lay out my views on this subject in the level of detail that the full time allows.

The bill responds to one particularly egregious human rights violation, but it would also take an important step toward the embracing of a vital principle of human rights more broadly; that is, the idea of the universality of human rights and of the responsibility of nations to prudentially use the means at their disposal to protect fundamental human rights, not only within their own nations but for every human being in every corner of the globe.

Bill S-223 would apply criminal prohibitions against organ harvesting and trafficking beyond Canada's borders. It recognizes that organ harvesting and trafficking is not just wrong in Canada as a result of particularly Canadian values or a particularly Canadian social contract. Rather, it recognizes that organ harvesting and trafficking is wrong because it denies the universal principle of inherent human dignity and value, a principle that should be understood and applied universally. In this sense, the bill seeks to continue the process of innovation around the principle of national sovereignty that began in 1948 with the promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Today, I would like to make the case for the importance of embracing this continuing process of innovation, though with appropriate balance and with necessary parameters.

The principle of national sovereignty comes most sharply from Peace of Westphalia, which ended 30 years of war in the Holy Roman Empire in 1648. National sovereignty emerged as a necessary practical compromise from the new reality created by the Protestant Reformation. Prior to the Reformation, western Europe had a kind of moral and religious unity, with the Pope as spiritual leader and the Emperor as a temporal ruler whose practical jurisdiction varied from place to place, but who expressed a kind civilizational unity of the western Christian world.

The Reformation ended that unity and led to generations of wars, with most of the Catholic powers struggling to restore that civilizational unity and with the Protestant powers, with the periodic help of France, seeking to break the power of the Pope and Emperor and create a reality in which nation states could be their own authority in most areas. The Peace of Westphalia, more from exhaustion than decisive victory, marked the end of this period of religious wars and the beginning of the period of nation states.

Notably, this was not the beginning of some great flowering of individual freedom, liberty and human rights. The division of Europe into blocs meant that Catholics were persecuted in Protestant nations just as Protestants were persecuted in Catholic nations, and later as Catholics were brutally persecuted in anti-religious revolutionary France. Westphalia was not about saying that individuals could believe and do what they liked; it was “cuius regio, eius religio”, the religion of the ruler shall be the religion of the state. Under these circumstances, religious persecution continued for hundreds of years, and nations, though less inclined to fight wars over religion, fought wars that reflected the aspirations of rulers, no longer checked or mediated by super-national structures that reflected civilizational unity.

The 18th and 19th centuries saw the rise of new universalist movements. The French Revolution and later Marxism were great threats to existing structures and ideas of national sovereignty, because they made universal claims about the kinds of power structures that should exist, instead of accepting the Westphalian idea that it was up to the local political authorities to decide how a place would be governed.

These movements were obviously different, but a common thread can be discerned in the thinking of political universalists of both the pre-Reformation and the Revolutionary type. They believed that, insofar as there is such a thing as truth, insofar as there is such a thing as human nature and insofar as there is a resulting right and wrong way for a people to be governed, efforts should be made to apply these principles universally. There is intuitive logic to the idea that truth and justice for human beings in one place should be the same as truth and justice for human beings in another place.

There are more modern arguments made for the rejection of this kind of moral universalism that propose the general subjectivity of truth. I will comment more on these arguments later. For the time being, we should note that the emergence of national sovereignty as a principle in European politics did not arise from the rejection of absolute truth in religious and political matters. Rather, it arose from the practical recognition that such universals could not be practically enforced through warfare, at least not at any acceptable cost. The idea of national sovereignty was seen as a necessary political compromise to preserve some measure of peace and security.

It is hard to say how well national sovereignty actually worked at achieving its objectives. One can never test counterfactuals, but we can never know what would have happened in Europe if this piece of political technology had not been invented. Certainly, Europeans kept fighting wars of various kinds after 1648, but the return of the broadest and most devastating European wars tended to align with the emergence of new universalist ideologies.

Following the last of these total European wars, nations came together to try to shape a new kind of settlement. This included the formation of the United Nations in 1945 and also the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exactly 300 hundred years after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia.

Many of history's human rights declarations, especially prior to 1948, were calls to arms or efforts to justify a violent revolution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was radical insofar as it asserted the universality of various fundamental human rights, but it was also conservative in the sense that it was the project of nation states, within a framework that still recognized nationality with sovereignty, it did not legally bind the state signatories to actually uphold the rights therein, and, of course, it did not contain a call to armed enforcement by the people.

This provided a somewhat contradictory foundation, and international human rights law has continued to evolve and grow since 1948 on that foundation that recognizes both national sovereignty and universal human rights as being of great importance.

Notwithstanding the evident tension between these concepts, international diplomacy and law today recognizes that we cannot and ought not dispense with either. An absence of recognition of national sovereignty would lead to perpetual conflict between nations representing irreconcilable philosophical systems. This was the background prior to the Peace of Westphalia and a reality intermittently renewed by the rise of universalist revolutionary and totalitarian movements.

However, the absence of any limits on national sovereignty aimed at protecting universal human rights would create a reality in which we would look the other way when nations would commit the most dastardly crimes toward their own people. Any moral person who believes in justice and universal human dignity must, at a certain point, refuse to consent to allowing certain evils to be committed in the name of national sovereignty. Even if the only consideration is national sovereignty, history shows us clearly that nations that show capricious disregard for the rights of their own people quickly become a menace to their neighbours.

Recognizing the necessary tension between national sovereignty and international human rights, the approach of many nations has sadly been to talk the talk of international human rights, but not to put in practice meaningful mechanisms to enforce such rights.

The clearest example of this approach is the approach taken to the crime of genocide. Canada is a party to an international convention that seeks to define and make illegal the crime of genocide, regardless of assertions of national sovereignty. I strongly support this idea in principle and in practice. Slaughtering a group of people in an attempt to eradicate them is a horrific denial of universal human dignity of the person, and we should do what we can to prevent it. However, unfortunately, while assenting to the idea in principle that genocide should be an international crime, the Government of Canada has been reluctant to actually recognize any acts of genocide while they are progress. It claims that its obligation to act in response to genocide is triggered by a determination by some undefined competent international authority, even if such authorities are easily manipulated by the state committing genocide.

Additionally, this line from the government is fundamentally out of step with our actual legal obligations under the Genocide Convention. Our obligations, as a signatory to the convention, are to uphold that convention, which includes our responsibility to protect victims of genocide, regardless of national sovereignty and regardless of determinations by UN bodies. This is the legal obligation that we have assumed.

I also acknowledge the reality that it is not prudential to send in our troops in every case where genocide is happening. However, rather than burying our heads in the sand and denying the existence of genocide, the government could seek to clearly define the nature and also the limitations of how we would operationalize a responsibility to protect.

In my view, we need to develop real tools for practically integrating a commitment to universal human rights with a commitment to some form of national sovereignty. If an individual is involved in a violation of international human rights and if the nation state in which the person lives elects not to punish them or even condones their actions, national sovereignty limits our ability to punish this criminal. However, without resorting to means that are imprudent and likely to lead to even greater violence, we should still seek ways to punish those involved in human rights violations beyond our borders and thus deter criminals from committing these crimes.

Enter Bill S-223, a little bill with a big idea. It is the idea that we should use the means reasonably at our disposal to punish violations of fundamental human rights that happen beyond our borders. We could do this by punishing Canadians who are complicit in these acts of violence and by shunning foreigners who are involved in such violence. In light of the emergent reality of global connectivity, these kinds of limited tools are still meaningful and begin the process of deterring crime that happens beyond our borders.

It is a good thing that, if we agree it is always and everywhere wrong to do such and such a thing to a human being, we try to come up with some mechanism of accountability for these crimes that is prudent and that does not return us to the kind of world that existed between the Protestant Reformation and the Peace of Westphalia.

This idea of actively applying international human rights principles extraterritorially is about us doing what we can under the circumstances to advance justice. A commitment to this principle is why I have worked hard on this bill and also why I strongly support similar legislative mechanisms, such as the increasing use of Magnitsky sanctions, the adoption of Bill C-281, which is the international human rights act, and the adoption of Bill S-211. I support these legislative efforts to promote justice beyond our borders, because my children here in Canada are no more or less human than Uighur children, Rohingya children, the young nephew of my assistant who faces a hard winter in Ukraine or Kian Pirfalak, a nine-year-old boy who was murdered by police while attending a pro-freedom protest in Iran.

In conclusion, I want to return to a question I raised earlier: the case for universal moral claims in a world made up of diverse cultures and political traditions.

Every society since the dawn of time has tried to regulate itself with doctrines of something like morality. It is impossible for people to live together in a community if they do not regulate their interactions in some way. Furthermore, it is in our nature as beings to try to live rationally, to try to explain the decisions we make with reference to some good or goods.

However, while there has never been a society without some kind moral doctrines, and while those moral doctrines have sought to protect the lives and security of certain individuals, most societies have excluded certain groups or individuals from that protection. They have sought to protect an in-group without protecting an outgroup, seeking to narrow the definition of what it is to be human and perhaps allowing the exploitation of the outgroup for some advantage.

The core of my political philosophy is a simple commitment to universal humanism. It is the idea that we should not think in terms of in-group and outgroup when making decisions about fundamental human rights. If we are to speak authentically about human rights, then these are rights for all humans, regardless of age, environment, citizenship, skin colour or any other factor. Throughout history and still today, there are many who seek to limit the human family for their own convenience, but I believe that a person is a person.

Naturally there are certain kinds of rights that do flow from exchange. A worker has a right to wages. That is a right particular to the worker. A citizen has certain rights that accord with the obligations they have taken on to the nation in which they live. However, when we speak of human rights, these are rights that do not exist because of exchange. Rather, they are rights that flow from the universal nature of the human person.

Ideas of rights and justice are philosophical propositions that cannot be proven scientifically. All doctrines of human rights have their roots in something like faith: in the embrace of propositions that are not scientifically verifiable. However, the idea of universal human rights flowing from a universal humanness can be supported by observing how it accords with the universal aspirations of all people.

Today, as we speak, the people of China and the people of Iran are taking to the streets bravely demanding change. As we speak, incredibly, both of these totalitarian governments are at least feigning in the direction of concession. Also, the people of Ukraine have resisted and continue to heroically resist Putin's invasion, even as more and more Russians bravely express their own discontent.

I am proudly here today endorsing this universal movement for freedom and justice, to say that a person is a person no matter where they live and to say that we can and should prudentially work to affirm and give greater meaning to the idea of universal human rights.

International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, December 2 marks the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery.

Slavery has been a blight on humanity since the dawn of time. Canadians unwittingly participate in this scourge by purchasing products made by slaves. We can hardly decry the plight of these slaves if we simultaneously create a market for their products. A transparency bill works on the theory that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Yesterday, Bill S-211 returned to this place for its final reading. Is it enough? Should we stop here? Of course not. The bill is merely a marker on this journey.

However, I hope colleagues will reflect on the legislative genuis of William Wilberforce. When the legislative path to the abolition of slavery was blocked, he got the trading of slaves abolished instead, thereby making the ownership of slaves worthless. Shortly thereafter, the British Empire abolished slavery forever.

On this occasion of the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery it is important to remember that sometimes one has to do indirectly what cannot be done directly.

Foreign Affairs and International Development

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the eighth report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development in relation to Bill S-211, an act to enact the fighting against forced labour and child labour in supply chains act and to amend the customs tariff.

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House without amendments.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and Mr. Chong.

Sam and Aileen, it's great to see you both. Thank you for your presence here, but, more importantly, thank you for your work on such a vital issue.

I think it's important to underline how this issue—products made by slave labour being imported into Canada, and Canadian pension dollars, or other dollars from Canada, being invested in companies that are part of repression in China—is fundamentally not a new issue. This is an issue both of you have been working on, and sounding the alarm on, for years. We've discussed it in Parliament and various committees.

I'm pulling up a 2019 question by my friend Mr. Kmiec, who's sitting here beside me. He asked the government specifically about CPPIB investments in companies that are complicit in crimes related to the Uighur genocide. It was three and a half years ago, at least, that we raised these issues in Parliament. I think the extent and horrors of the situation called, then and now, for an ambitious action plan from the government. We continue to talk about it and hear some of the right words from government members, but the fact is that we haven't seen any kind of action, or action plan, around this.

We talked a bit about Bill S-211. That's a private member's bill. It was proposed by an independent senator, championed by various members, and sponsored by a backbench member of the governing party, but we haven't seen any kind of government legislation, efforts to negotiate new international agreements, or substantive proposals. There's been a lack of government response and ambition in trying to address this very significant problem. It's great that you're here and we're talking about this, but I think it's far past time that the government take some action on this.

When it comes to the CPPIB specifically, the response to my honourable friend, three and a half years ago, was that CPPIB operates independently, at arm's-length, and that the government trusts its decision-making. The response to questions I've posed to directors at the CPPIB has been, “Well, we operate under framework legislation. We're constrained by that framework legislation. That defines the factors we should or shouldn't take into consideration.” There is a bit of finger pointing both ways going on here, but we desperately need some action. I think leadership has to start with the government.

Could you comment specifically on what kinds of concrete actions you would like to see the Government of Canada take, as soon as possible, to address the unacceptable importation of goods involved in slave labour, or investment in companies involved in this?