Foreign Affairs Committee on Nov. 21st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

How is that a problem, Mr. Genuis?

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

It's because we have an agreed-upon calendar. I mean, we're supposed to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes, but a chair can also make sure that we move along apace to make sure that all those issues that are of concern to the members are actually dealt with.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

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

We can discuss this on Wednesday, but I don't think the chair can just change the calendar if it's been unanimously agreed on.

I'll leave my comments there. I won't have anything to add. I've made my point.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Yes, Mr. Bergeron.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Mr. Chair, I certainly would not want to question the clerk advising you that you can change the calendar at your leisure to render committee business as efficient as possible. However, to avoid this kind of issue, it might be useful for you to consult with the two vice-chairs of the committee, who, along with you and another member from the Liberal Party, make up the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure. It would be more legitimate if you go through the subcommittee to make these kinds of changes.

I understand very well that sometimes changes have to be made to the agreed upon calendar to make committee business more efficient. However, look at the trouble it puts you and the committee in when we have witnesses present.

Mr. Chair, I simply and respectfully suggest that you go through the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure in the future, which should prevent these kinds of situations.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Bergeron. We'll certainly consider that.

If we could now go back to our study—

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Yes, Mr. Zuberi.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I'd like to say that I respect the fact that you as chair have the prerogative to make swift decisions that reflect the overall will of the committee. I would ask that all members also respect that fact, that it is your prerogative to do exactly what you are doing. The decisions you have taken thus far are right and appropriate.

I hope we can get into what we need to study right now.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you, Mr. Zuberi.

I think that in the terminology Mr. Bergeron used, he said it was to add to the legitimacy of the process. I wasn't bringing up anything new. This was something that all members of the committee had agreed to consider, and I simply moved around an hour, but going forward perhaps that would be a better approach.

Now, if we could go back to the study at hand, allow me to say that concerning the drafting of amendments, I'd like to remind all the members to contact Alexandra Schorah, the legislative counsel, should there be any amendments of the draft.

All that having been said, it is now my pleasure to welcome our witnesses today.

We have with us Mr. Martin Dumas, a lawyer and a professor of industrial relations at Université Laval; Mr. Matt Friedman from The Mekong Club, who acts and serves as chief executive officer; Mr. Stephen Brown, from the National Council of Canadian Muslims, who serves as chief executive officer, with Ms. Fatema Abdalla, the advocacy officer; and finally, from the Shareholder Association for Research and Education, we're happy to have Mr. Kevin Thomas, who serves as chief executive officer.

Each of our four witnesses will be provided five minutes for their opening remarks, after which we will open the floor to questions by the members.

Mr. Dumas, you have five minutes. Once you are down to 30 seconds, before you hit that target, I will put up a paper to guide you so you have a sense that you should be wrapping it up soon.

Thank you, Mr. Dumas. Please do proceed.

[Martin Dumas, Lawyer and Professor, Industrial Relations Department, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to make it clear to committee members that my English is good enough that I can answer any questions they ask in English after my presentation.

I'm appearing before the committee today not only as a lawyer and professor, but more importantly as a researcher. I completed my doctoral studies in labour law at the London School of Economics. My field of study was specifically child labour in countries or regions that are not as developed as Canada, and specifically in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and in Africa.

I'd like to summarize my three comments on Bill S‑211.

My first comment is about the preamble.

The first whereas of the bill's preamble suggests that forced labour and child labour are forms of modern slavery. I agree wholeheartedly that forced labour constitutes a form of modern slavery, but I wouldn't say that all forms of child labour constitute modern slavery. In my opinion, the definition of what constitutes slavery is problematic. Many forms of child labour do not constitute slavery. For terminological reasons, it would be important to correct that, in my view.

My second, more substantive comment concerns the very definition of child labour found in the “Definitions” section of the bill. This definition should not be used. Let me elaborate.

It seems to me that two paragraphs in the proposed definition are somewhat inappropriate for an initiative aiming to realistically reduce child labour. I'm referring to paragraphs (a) and (c).

Paragraph (a) refers to work or services that are “provided or offered to be provided in Canada under circumstances that are contrary to the laws applicable in Canada”.

Paragraph (c) refers to work or services provided or offered by persons under the age of 18 years that “interfere with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school, obliging them to leave school prematurely or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work”.

In my opinion, these two paragraphs are problematic and I will quickly explain why.

Based on the studies I've done in developing countries, I would say that the types of work some children are found to do are quite acceptable from the perspective of parents who are in absolutely dire straits. However, we don't always consider such dire straits when taking a critical look at child labour around the world.

I will simply give you a typical example to clarify my opinion.

Sometimes children find themselves in situations where, although their work forces them to postpone or suspend their schooling, it doesn't necessarily harm their health or safety and it's legitimized. When a ban on child labour is strictly enforced, situations arise where children are essentially forced to perform even more dangerous work, with their parents' permission. This is what we've observed on the ground. For example, children who were forbidden to weave carpets found themselves making bricks a few weeks later in even more dangerous circumstances that were detrimental to their health. We have seen situations where young girls who were forbidden to weave saris would later find themselves on the street working as prostitutes.

I'll give you a very simple example—imagine a mother whose husband has died and must have her 13‑year‑old son work to support her family.

That's the gist of what I wanted to tell you today. I'll save the rest of the time to answer your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dumas.

You will have more time during the question period to conclude any remarks you may have.

Now we go to Mr. Friedman.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Matt Friedman, Chief Executive Officer, Mekong Club]

Thank you very much for this opportunity.

My name is Matt Friedman. I have been working on the issue of addressing modern slavery for over 35 years in over 40 countries. I now run an organization that works with the private sector in a positive, supportive and non-naming and shaming way.

I can't emphasize the urgency of the fact that we really need to do more to address the issue of modern slavery. According to the slavery index and ILO, the new number is 50 million people, up from 40 million people, as a result of COVID and many other things that are going on around the world. That translates to about 25,200 people entering per day. With a $150-billion industry and with all of the collective work of all the organizations only resulting in 100,000 people being rescued each year, which is about 0.2%, we really have to do much more in order to address this issue.

As we have seen from the statistics, 75% of what we're dealing with is forced labour. Of that, 60% is associated with supply chains, which basically brings the private sector into this fight. As a result of that, it's very appropriate that we are moving in the direction of talking about legislation that basically brings the private sector into addressing modern slavery.

Transparency legislation has been around since 2012. The first legislation was the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act. It basically just said that if you're a big company, you have to put on your website what you're doing to address modern slavery. That's all it said.

The U.K.'s Modern Slavery Act came and added more bells and whistles, which basically said you have to have an annual report that you submit that addresses a number of things. As a result of that, you will have to have that signed by the board of directors. With each incarnation of this transparency legislation, you see more things being added.

This is important because it helps to sensitize the private sector to what they need to know, not only in Canada but in their supply chains around the world. It also allows for consumers to get a general sense of what companies are doing or not doing. This is a very relevant and important part of what needs to be done in order to offer the transparency that this legislation is proposing.

Why is this bill needed? It will help to educate and inform the companies as well as the government. What's interesting about this legislation is that it includes procurement for government agencies as well, which is a twist that we haven't really seen in a lot of the other legislation.

This will increase the basic understanding. I know this is needed and essential, because I recently did a presentation tour across Canada for three weeks. I was going to Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa. I was hearing from a lot of companies that they didn't really know much about this issue. They recognized the importance, but they didn't really have the basic information.

This bill will allow for that to happen. It will allow companies to submit their basic submissions. If they don't, fines and penalties will be in place. A lot of the other transparency legislation implies that this happens, but they don't actually have that in place. This is really encouraging because it will ensure that companies take this seriously.

It will encourage other countries to add the public sector element to this because with each incarnation of transparency legislation, the other countries go back and try to revise and add things so it's consistent with the global norm. This will create peer pressure because the companies that are submitting will be able to look at the public inventory that's online to compare themselves to other organizations. That's an amazing increase.

Lastly, the kind of emphasis on forced labour and the child labour clause that focuses on customs and border protection is essential. I think a lot more clarity is needed in order to identify exactly what that means, but in reality that's a plus.

My advice is that if this legislation gets enacted, it should actually get operationalized. We have seen in other countries that they have it on paper and things are done, but a lot of organizations don't necessarily comply with what is required of them.

I think it's important to get feedback from the private sector. The private sector has a lot to offer when it comes to helping to understand the complexity and the range of supply chains around the world. The people who are actually overseeing this and who will be managing the process really need some training to understand what's needed. I say this because I have met with customs and border protection organizations that have similar types of oversight. Many of them just don't have the kind of experience that's needed to really address this.

I think it's important that we not reinvent the wheel. A lot of these companies really don't know where to start. They are willing to be in compliance. We have tools available. We have organizations that know how to address this issue and we have, basically, consultation series and procedures. Add something in there that ensures there are resources to ensure that the private sector can get up to speed.

We saw this with the U.K.'s Modern Slavery Act. Initially, there was some grumbling from the private sector, but once it crossed over the line, they asked, “What do we need to do?” When it comes to that, what you need to do, there are organizations such as mine and others that are able to help, and, within a fairly short period of time, a lot of these organizations could be brought up to speed.

With that, I'm done.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Friedman.

We go to Mr. Brown.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Stephen Brown, Chief Executive Officer, National Council of Canadian Muslims]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for providing us the opportunity to offer you our thoughts on the study of this committee on Bill S-211.

My name is Stephen Brown. I'm the CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims. I'm joined today by Fatema Abdalla, the advocacy officer for the council.

There are two key submissions I want to provide to this committee.

First and most important is the issue of urgency. We must move swiftly, as there should not be another day in which Canada tolerates the products of forced labour on our grocery shelves.

Second and critical is amending the language of Bill S-211 to clearly indicate that all products arising from East Turkestan, also known as Xinjiang, should not be allowed to come into Canada, subject to a reverse onus provision where companies operating in the area need to demonstrate that those products do not arise as a product of forced labour. Such an amendment is not novel and would bring us into alignment with the current legislative schema of countries like the United States.

We want to be clear. This is a strong bill bolstering transparency obligations pertaining to forced labour risks. We are here to ask you to pass this bill urgently, but with one key amendment. For the three key reasons that I will lay out below, we submit that there are reasons that inexorably compel this House to amend the legislation to ensure that Canada does not tolerate forced labour products from East Turkestan specifically. That is because I'm here on behalf of those who, until recently, were forgotten.

In 2006, our organization called for the Government of Canada to secure the release of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian Uighur activist who has been detained in China and rendered to the concentration camps. We still do not have definitive evidence as to whether he is alive or not. His wife, Kamila, continues to fight and pray for his return.

Let’s start with reason number one. This House passed a motion that, while non-binding, labelled what is happening in China right now as a genocide. There is simply no reason to have any equivocation as to whether the CBSA has to use discretion in ascertaining whether products arising from East Turkestan violate Bill S-211. Rather, based purely on this ground, it offends common sense and, more importantly, our collective humanity to allow products to be coming to Canada from East Turkestan specifically. Therefore, we have a duty to ensure that the ambit of the legislation captures what is happening in East Turkestan clearly as a prima facie case of forced labour.

Second, this brings us to the issue of enforcement. Presently, despite memorandum D9-1-6, the CBSA has been unable to deal with forced labour products arising from East Turkestan. To quote CBSA director, John Ossowski:

Unlike most other inadmissible products, there is no visual clue for a [customs officer] to understand the labour standards by which a particular import was produced. Establishing that goods were produced by forced labour and compiling evidence requires a significant amount of research and analysis in coordination with other government department partners.

The CBSA should not have this level of difficulty in turning back shipments from East Turkestan, and the current context of Bill S-211 will not fix the issue.

Third, amending Bill S-211 would allow Canada to come into line with other jurisdictions when it comes to removing forced labour from supply chains. The United States is a good example in this case, since it has already taken a similar measure by passing the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, ensuring that all goods, wares, articles and merchandise mined, produced or manufactured wholly or in part in the Uighur region are denied entry to U.S. ports.

We know that you and your colleagues may wonder whether this critical amendment is out of scope or whether it opens a can of worms by raising the question of other specific countries that should be listed. We think both of these concerns are overstated, for reasons I'm happy to expand upon.

We are urging this committee—we're begging you as parliamentarians—to ensure that we take this opportunity of legislation that has strong bipartisan support to give it enough teeth to make sure that Uighur human hair doesn't end up in Canadian pillows. That’s all we're asking today.

Also, I note in closing that we expand significantly on the submissions before you today in our brief, which will be submitted next week.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Thank you very much, Mr. Brown.

We now go to our last witness for this first panel, and that is Mr. Kevin Thomas.

Mr. Thomas, you have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Kevin Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Shareholder Association for Research and Education]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for inviting me to present today.

I am the CEO of the Shareholder Association for Research and Education, which is also known as SHARE.

We regularly coordinate investor advocacy on environmental, social and governance issues alongside most of the major pension and asset management institutions in our country and also with international coalitions of investors with trillions of dollars in assets under management.

We represent a group of direct institutional investor clients of SHARE, on whose behalf we engage in regular dialogue with boards and management at over 120 Canadian and international companies in which—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

I'm so sorry, Mr. Thomas. Would you just pause for a second?

I'm being advised that your mike is not connected.

Can you try unplugging and plugging it in again?

[Kevin Thomas]

I just tried that.

Is it any better?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

Could you also select, on the left-hand side, the microphone on your screen?

[Kevin Thomas]

Yes, that is selected.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ali Ehsassi]

It appears that we have a technical problem. The interpreters can't hear you.

I will ask that we go straight into questions.

In the interim, Mr. Thomas, you will have someone calling you to ensure that you can connect with us and respond to some of the questions. Thank you.

Now we're going to open it up to questions. For the first round, every member is being provided four minutes for their questions.

We will first go to Mr. Genuis.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I signalled at the beginning, I want to use the first minute of my time to provide a notice of motion regarding an urgent and deeply concerning situation related to Iran. This notice of motion is as follows:

That given recent reports of threats to lives of individuals in Canada from the Iranian regime, the ongoing freedom movement in Iran and the killing of dozens of Canadians by the regime including the shooting down of flight PS 752, and pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee undertake a study of the threat to Canadians from the Iranian regime and how the Government of Canada should respond; that the committee invite the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Public Safety, the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to testify as part of this study; and, that the committee seeks to hear from these officials prior to Friday, December 16, 2022.

That is the notice of motion, Mr. Chair.

I think, given what all members would understand to be the urgency and sensitivity of the situation, and that the calendar seems to be more fluid than we thought it was anyway, this motion would be worth discussing as soon as possible. We would propose that it be considered for discussion on Wednesday.

I'll now turn back to the witnesses. Thank you so much for being here.

I want to start by asking our friends from the NCCM whether there are different models proposed for what some would call a regionalized approach to responding to forced and child labour—recognizing that there are specific situations, especially in the case of East Turkestan, where forced labour is not something that happens in the shadows. It's actually being organized and coordinated centrally by the state as part of a genocide, which is very different from some of the other kinds of forced labour we see in other parts of the world.

You mentioned the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the United States and other cases of targeted legislative instruments. I very much agree with you that Parliament needs to act on this. We have Bill S-204 from Senator Housakos, which would ban goods coming from East Turkestan. We could do what the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act does and provide a reverse onus, where no goods come in unless there's proof that no forced or child labour was involved.

Could you speak to why you think it's important to have a regionalized approach as part of our response to forced and child labour? Why is it not good enough having the same piece of legislation apply to the whole world? Why do we need to specifically, either in legislation or regulation, name regions and respond to the particularities of those situations?