I was staggered to find out that perhaps as many as five million women work in Bangladesh in the textile industry—a truly staggering figure. It really dwarfs anything that I can think of anywhere except perhaps in China.
I've been told by some people from Bangladesh that there are companies, retailers, that go to manufacturing outlets in Bangladesh that are complying with safety standards and generally charge a certain price, say $7 or $8 for a shirt, but that there are also non-compliant manufacturers where you can get the same shirt made for about three and a half dollars. It may sell for $35 in Canada, but it only costs about three and a half dollars to make it there, and they are working on such thin margins that they do not consider themselves as having enough money to make sure they are safety compliant.
This person pointed out that quite a few Canadian firms go to these non-compliant ones, because it's a very fierce market and that they will go for the three-and-a-half-dollar shirt, as opposed to some other companies that will go for a more expensive shirt but from a compliant manufacturer. What are your thoughts on that? Does that kind of thing happen? This comes from fairly reliable sources.