Good afternoon.
I'd like to begin by thanking the committee for inviting me to appear.
As an engaged citizen, I've been interested in international trade for going on 25 years. As a member of Action citoyenne pour la justice fiscale, sociale et écologique, or ATTAC-Québec, I'm primarily interested in free trade agreements and social justice concerns.
I believe that commercial ties with other countries fall into three categories: ties with economies equivalent to ours, ties with developing countries and ties with countries where forced labour is a major presence.
The problem with the latter is twofold. First, it creates a competitive advantage for those countries, which exploit labour to reduce production costs. However, the worst problem by far is the humanitarian catastrophe that this exploitation entails.
Canada has recognized offences against the Uighurs and other Turkic peoples in China. We're talking about genocide, forced labour and political re-education camps that employ practices such as torture. This is all happening against a backdrop of unimaginable surveillance capacity supported by technology and artificial intelligence. Moreover, Uighurs are even being harassed outside of China in countries such as Canada.
This situation should prompt a strong response from Canada because China is setting a new bar for repression, which other countries may seek to emulate.
Our options when it comes to a country as powerful and influential as China are limited. At the very least, Canada can respond by banning goods produced by forced labour in Xinjiang, but Canada is hardly exemplary on that front.
Over the past few years, 2,547 shipments of goods suspected of being made with Uighur forced labour have been banned from the United States. During that time, Canada stopped only one single shipment from China; it was eventually allowed to enter the country.
What we're seeing here is complacency and a dire need for more robust criteria for blocking goods produced under questionable conditions.
Countries such as France, Germany, Norway and the United States have adopted such policies. Canada should do at least as much as them and create its own model, a model that could, in time, become exemplary.
In the past, Canada has not been known for its strong desire to take action against the exploitation and repression of specific populations. In 2014, it signed an investment protection agreement with China despite concerns articulated by human rights advocates and the agreement's lack of reciprocity. To justify its actions, Canada has always invoked investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms, even though they favoured mining company expansion at great environmental cost to countries in the global south.
The economic liberalism underpinning the free trade agreements Canada negotiated over many years has encouraged the expansion of worker exploitation zones, such as the maquiladoras in Mexico.