Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 28th, 2017

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Bonjour à tous.

Welcome to meeting number 87 of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights.

Mr. Anderson, you wanted to cover something briefly.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

I want to remind committee members about the letter we discussed last week that people were asked to sign and return to the folks who had lobbied us for it.

I just want to point out that it has a Wednesday deadline on it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Is there any input for Mr. Anderson?

No? All right.

Also, two colleagues approached me at the end of the last meeting regarding stand-alone meetings on emerging issues in two other countries. Ms. Khalid was one of them. I'll set aside about four minutes at the end for that.

To give witnesses a heads-up, we'll be going in camera. We'll ask you to give your testimony and then the questions, and then when we go in camera, I'll have to ask you to exit. We'll deal with that business at about four minutes to two.

First off, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much to the witnesses for coming, Michael Messenger and Simon Lewchuk of World Vision Canada; and from UNICEF Canada, Simon Chorley.

From World Vision, will there be one presenter, or are you going to share your time?

[Michael Messenger, President and Chief Executive Officer, World Vision Canada]

There will be just one. We may both answer the questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Okay.

Mr. Messenger, please go ahead, for 10 minutes or less.

[Michael Messenger]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and honourable members, for inviting World Vision to be part of this important and timely conversation.

My colleague Simon Lewchuk is our senior policy adviser on child rights and protection.

You also have a written brief in addition to our testimony today.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak to you today about these critical problems. We are encouraged to see that the committee is listening to what Canadians have to say about improving children's lives.

As I start, I think it's important to remember that the issue of child labour is not just a head issue but a heart issue, and it should be. We fundamentally believe that every child should experience a full life, a life that's free of poverty and full of promise. That's what I want for my son and daughter, as a father. As Canadians, it's what we want for our children. As I've travelled the globe in my work with World Vision, I see that it's what parents everywhere want for their children: a good education, good health, safety, security, protection, freedom from violence and fear, and a bright future. We owe it to today's children, the future leaders of our countries, to make sure that we're doing all we can to help make this come about.

Nelson Mandela once said that there can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way it treats it children, so it's in that spirit and in that hope that we are making this contribution today.

I'd like to share a brief description of World Vision's experience related to child labour, and then some of our research, which highlights the fact that child labour and global supply chains are a Canadian issue, the challenges faced by consumers and civil society, and then our recommendations around this, particularly, that the Government of Canada should commit to legislation that would require large companies at a minimum to annually and publicly report on what steps they are taking to prevent and address child labour and forced labour in their global supply chain.

Let me give you a sense of why World Vision is involved with issues of child labour. We are a child-focused organization committed to promoting children's rights and well-being through development, relief, and advocacy initiatives in nearly 100 countries. We've advocated with Canadians on issues of child labour. We have direct programming and advocacy experience with child labourers in more than 25 countries.

As just a couple of examples, in the Philippines we ran a large-scale project that reduced child labour in the sugar cane industry by 74% over a three-year period. We did this by increasing economic alternatives, advocating for laws and policies, providing education and vocational training for children who had fallen behind in school, and empowering children to speak out.

In a regional project across east Asia, including Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar, we operated a project to support children and families at risk of forced labour, including in the seafood industry—an issue you're interested in on this committee—by implementing protection, prevention, and policy initiatives. It involved such things as raising awareness for children in communities on safe migration and helping children transition out of exploitative work.

Earlier this year I travelled to Bangladesh where I saw first-hand how children are being exploited. I know the committee is interested in the seafood and the garment industries, both sectors in which the risk of child labour is high. On that trip we saw children working in both of those sectors.

One person I met there who left a mark on me was a girl named Tania. She is 15 years old. She works in southern Bangladesh's shrimp processing industry. She works eight hours a day. She is the sole provider for her family. She often works overnight shifts peeling piles of ice-cold shrimp in a dark room, only to return home to do a full day's work.

The fact is that Canadians may well be consuming that shrimp. We imported 163 million dollars' worth of shrimp from countries in Southeast Asia with known child labour problems.

Like child labourers elsewhere, Tania is missing out on school. She is putting her health and well-being at risk, and as a girl she is particularly vulnerable to issues of abuse and violence in the workplace.

Child labour is a complex issue, and there are no easy solutions. Not all child work is bad; in fact, age-appropriate work can play an important part in a child's development. That, however, is not what we're talking about today. We're focusing on the 152 million child labourers, including the 73 million child labourers in particularly hazardous jobs whose work jeopardizes their education, health, safety, and dignity.

Poverty is the root driver, and we have to continue efforts to change the conditions that push children to work in the first place.

We can't just look at those push factors. Our submission is that we need to look at the things that pull children into exploitative work. Some of those things are our own Canadian insatiable demand for new, low-cost goods and corporations' desire for rapid production and cheap labour.

Last year, World Vision did some research to try to gauge the extent to which child and forced labour could be present in the supply chains of goods we consume and use here in Canada every day.

We found a couple of things. First, more than 1,200 companies operating in Canada are importing goods that may have been produced by child or forced labour. These companies represent nearly every sector imaginable, from the garment sector to the food industry to retailers. Together, these companies imported over $34 billion of goods that could be considered risky for child labour in 2016. That's a 31% increase since 2012.

Whether it's clothes we buy from Bangladesh, tomatoes we eat from Mexico, or even the palm oil from Indonesia—which has had a 9,000% increase since 2012—that ends up in things like shampoo, laundry detergent, or ice cream, we are importing more and more goods with known challenges with child and forced labour.

Now there's nothing wrong with importing these goods in and of themselves. It can be an important source of decent work and sustainable economic growth for many developing countries. However, the prevalence of child labour does mean that companies need to be proactive to minimize the risk of children being exploited in their supply chains.

This brings us to the third key finding of our research. The majority of companies operating in Canada are disclosing very little, if any, meaningful information about the policies, practices, and due diligence that they have in place to ensure that their supply chains are free of child labour.

For Canadian consumers like you and me, it's impossible for us to know what, if anything, these companies are doing to address and mitigate these risks. The lack of public information doesn't mean that companies aren't being proactive. We know some are, but it does raise questions. It makes constructive dialogue and accountability about these issues next to impossible.

World Vision believes that greater transparency by companies can be a powerful catalyst for change. It can be the basis for constructive dialogue with civil society, NGOs, and unions. It can generate accountability and trust, and ultimately, it can lead to greater action. We believe that supply chain legislation is a key tool to support this dialogue and action.

Legislation has been adopted by some of our closest allies: the State of California—Australia has announced it—France, the Netherlands, and notably, the U.K. through its Modern Slavery Act. Each year in the U.K., public companies are required to file a statement signed off at the board level that outlines their risks and the actions they are taking, and that reports on the progress.

We've seen that publicly shining a light on companies' practices is making a difference. The U.K. legislation has led to 39% of companies implementing new policies and systems to prevent labour exploitation, and 50% of companies collaborating more with other stakeholders to take action. We think there are some ways that the U.K. Modern Slavery Act can be applicable to us in Canada, but most importantly, we believe that focusing on the issue of child labour will be a unique and specific action we can take in the scope of any Canadian legislation.

This lines up with our international commitments as well, and it's something we have learned that Canadians want. When we asked them through an Ipsos poll earlier this year, 84% of Canadians told us that they are frustrated at how difficult it is to determine where, how, and by whom the products they buy are made, and 91% of Canadians think the Canadian government should require Canadian companies to publicly report on who makes their products.

This is a step for us to put in place legislation that would not place a heavy burden on business. It is a direction that we feel will allow us to address child labour. The Canadian government can use its convening powers to pull together a multi-stakeholder approach to determine how we can work together. It will break down the barriers for us to address, collectively, the issue of child labour in supply chains. It will help girls like Tania, who we met in Bangladesh, and especially girls who are following behind. We can help children have a brighter future.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. We look forward to questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you for your timely evidence, Mr. Messenger.

Now we'll go to Mr. Chorley.

[Simon Chorley, Deputy Director, International Programs, UNICEF Canada]

I'd like to thank the committee for this opportunity to appear. As UNICEF Canada, we welcome this opportunity to address child labour and supply chains. I understand the ILO has already addressed the scale and scope, and you've already heard from Walk Free and World Vision around some of the legislative issues, so I'll seek to address and touch on some of the other issues that I believe are of interest to the committee.

The first of these is around root causes. A couple of years ago, UNICEF Canada conducted a study of the root causes of child labour in artisanal and small-scale mining in western central Africa. It appeared that there were three main groups of root causes: social norms, lack of protection and support, and limited public and private sector engagement.

In terms of social norms, this includes valuing income over education and valuing boys over girls. In terms of lack of protection and support, that includes lack of access to education and increased gender and environmental vulnerabilities. In terms of limited capacity, that includes weak child protection systems, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and also lack of private sector engagement on this issue.

That's why UNICEF takes a system strengthening approach, and the Government of Canada also needs to take a system strengthening approach to address child labour in supply chains and provide solutions that are truly sustainable. In one instance, UNICEF in Burkina Faso removed over 20,000 children from artisanal and small-scale mining over a period of five years and placed them in education, training, and employment opportunities.

There's an additional context that the committee should consider, and that relates to fragile states and also emergencies. Global Affairs Canada has supported work in response to typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, whereby UNICEF-trained police officers and other enforcement agencies identified and responded to child trafficking as a result of that emergency. We're seeing disturbing reports of that pattern being repeated with the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh right now.

I had the privilege of visiting refugee camps in Jordan, where we see major issues around child labour, because the adults are not allowed to work, and they're not allowed to leave the camps. Moves have to be taken to prevent those children from going into child labour.

As well as that, we're also looking at specific security context, so we welcomed the recent announcement of the Vancouver principles to address the recruitment of child soldiers, which ILO Convention 182 identifies particularly as the worst form of child labour. As a result, we now need a multi-sector approach to address these specific forms. One example is where Global Affairs Canada, together with UNICEF and the mining company, Barrick Gold, have produced a child rights and security checklist to address child soldiers and child security issues in volatile contexts.

The second issue is around the garment industry, and this has already been touched on by my colleagues at World Vision. The root causes I've already identified are also evident in the garment industry. Bangladesh and Vietnam are the second and fifth largest global exporters of garments. Both employ approximately four million workers, and 80% of those workers are women. The majority of those workers are domestic migrants moving from rural to urban locations to work. In two UNICEF studies in the last two years, we've identified that the major issues they face are lack of maternity protection, little support for breastfeeding, limited child care options, poor health, nutrition, water, sanitation, hygiene, education, and protection. The list goes on, and combine that with low wages and long hours. This should be a concern to business because this affects employee productivity. It affects employee loyalty, absenteeism, turnover, and ultimately business reputation and profitability. This is relevant to this study because these all contribute to child labour, particularly in the 15-, 16-, and 17-year-old age range.

Bangladesh and Vietnam have been relatively successful in eliminating some of the child labour in global supply chains, but in the domestic garment industry in those countries, we still see a very worrying prevalence of child labour. In one particular area, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, of 169,000 workers, 59% of them were under the age of 18, so that also needs to be addressed. That's why UNICEF is implementing a factory engagement program to engage with global retailers, national suppliers, and local factories to address some of these issues.

This brings me to my third point about the important role of the private sector. It is essential to eliminating child labour, and we have to work with them together. Where there is no legislation, companies are already moving to fill the gap. We've seen that in several examples, particularly in the extractive sector. Following civil society pressure, for example, around child labour discovered in cobalt artisanal and small-scale mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we're now seeing that major companies have begun to map their detailed and complex supply chains, from artisanal mine, through the traders, through the smelters, up to the suppliers and the industrial mining. So it is possible.

We've also seen, for example, industry come out and actively advocate for transparency legislation. If you look at the 2014 Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act, the mining industry actively advocated that so they would have to disclose the payments that they make to governments.

We saw a couple of months ago the Mining Association of Canada require as part of their membership criteria that all member companies independently verify that their mines don't use child labour. Some of those companies are already voluntarily complying with the U.K. and California supply chain requirements. This therefore demonstrates the need, and I echo the comments my colleagues made around the need for Canadian legislation. Europe, California, and Australia are leaving Canada behind, and the private sector is already filling the gap.

In conclusion, I would say that, in line with general comment number 16 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Government of Canada should require business to publish how they have addressed slavery and forced labour, and in line with the UN guiding principles, the Government of Canada should ensure that this requirement includes the identification of a policy commitment, a due diligence process, and access to remedy, which is approved at the most senior level, which is applicable across business supply chains, and which is accessible publicly, and that in line with children's rights and business principles, which the Government of Canada has endorsed, the government should support business in this regard as part of a wider approach to taking a holistic child-rights-centred approach to all of its programming and activities overseas.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chorley.

We'll begin our rotations of questions, beginning with Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Messenger, it's such a complex issue and I'm trying to get some clarity. You use child or forced labour together. Do you distinguish between the two of them when you're talking about numbers? This is our second hearing on this and these things seem to be mixed together a bit.

You have some great material in your submission. I'm talking about your definitions about what constitutes child labour and that. When you're talking about child or forced labour and using numbers, do you break them down or do you leave them mixed together?

[Michael Messenger]

I will actually turn to my colleague, Simon, because he has the details and the specifics around that. We are addressing both of those things together, often because some of the global statements and commitments that Canada's been part of also use child labour and forced labour together. They are distinct.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We got some numbers from the ILO the other day, and it was intriguing the way they fit together.

Go ahead.

[Simon Lewchuk, Senior Policy Advisor, Child Rights and Protection, World Vision Canada]

I'll start at the highest level. The ILO estimates there are 218 million children who are in some sort of employment. Of that there is a subset of 152 million children in child labour. Of that there is a subset of 73 million children in hazardous work. Of that there is a subset of 4.3 million children in forced child labour.

To answer your question, we talk about child labour and forced labour as distinct concepts. We often think of them as sitting along a continuum of labour exploitation, but certainly when we're talking about the whole sphere of child labour, we think it's something that needs to be addressed and eradicated. It's something that has a detrimental impact on children.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

When you're using the words “forced labour”, you're talking about child forced labour, not forced labour in general.

[Simon Lewchuk]

The legislation in the other jurisdictions has looked at forced labour for adults and for children. We talk about both, because in the U.K., for example, they look at forced labour, which involves some 20-odd million people, of which 4.3 million are children.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay. This is going to get me a little off my line of questioning, but you're saying that in the U.K., the legislation touches on child labour and includes adult forced labour. So they're more concerned about, if you want to call it, forced labour rather than just focusing on the children.

[Simon Lewchuk]

It's a good question. Modern slavery is a term that's a bit nebulous and not internationally defined. The U.K.'s Modern Slavery Act includes forced labour of adults and children—that 20 million that I mentioned—as well as human trafficking, but human trafficking is a process that results in forced labour.

We feel that explicitly in any Canadian legislation, child labour in its own right should be added to that. The reason for that, as Michael mentioned, is that with children, given the very nature of their age, there are disproportionate power balances. They are disproportionately vulnerable to exploitation. Certainly in the Netherlands, the legislation there is focused specifically on children and child labour.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Okay, thank you for that.

I want to touch on something the ILO mentioned the other day. They talked about there being a dramatic decline in child labour since they began monitoring in 2000. I'm just wondering if you can talk about what factors might have contributed to that decline. It actually contradicts something you said, that in Canada there's been a 31% increase in the imports done through child labour since 2012. When they're talking about a dramatic decline over the years, and you're talking about a fairly extensive increase here over the last four years, what are we comparing, or what's accurate?

[Simon Lewchuk]

The increase has been an increase in the value of at-risk goods. As Michael said, our research has tried to gauge the extent to which there is risk of child labour, so by virtue of the fact that we're importing a higher value of goods that are at risk, the degree of a risk in that sense has increased.

To your question about the decline in child labour and some of the factors around that, probably the two most significant factors in the decline would be an increase in social protection systems and an increase in the access to universal education, but we're seeing some of that plateau, and the progress is certainly slowing, as the witnesses at the last meeting alluded to. That's why we think some of these very targeted measures are needed.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Could I ask something specifically about that? We were told by the ILO that 69% are basically contributing family workers. The ILO suggested that we exhausted the low-hanging fruit. I'm wondering if contributing family workers are part of that—I don't know whether you want to call it—higher fruit because they're helping their parents. It's within their families. Is that a more difficult thing to try to deal with and to eliminate than some of the other aspects?

[Simon Lewchuk]

It's complex to be sure, but it's certainly linked to the global supply chains at the same time. Child labour most often manifests itself at that input level. You think of agriculture, in the cocoa industry, in coffee, and in picking cotton that ends up in the garment industry, but I think we've seen some really good examples of how companies can address that. With cocoa in west Africa, for example, Mondelez International and others have run some really good programs in which they have worked with local farmers and their families to reduce child labour by setting up co-operatives, microfinance. These are some of the ways that even at the top of the supply chain you can address some of these levels that are in the deep-down tiers of the supply chain.

[The Chair]

You have 30 seconds.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Mr. Chorley, you talked about the private sector actually moving prior to legislation. Do we need legislation? Do we need to get the government involved in this and put in some sort of bureaucratic oversight of private enterprise if we can get them to do this on their own? Is that adequate, or do you think we have to bring the government into this?

[Simon Chorley]

No, I don't think that's adequate, because you see that the companies that are taking the lead in this are generally the pioneers in their field. They're what you might call the tip of the iceberg. If you look at something like the extractive sector, where we have thousands headquartered out of Canada—Canada is the largest home to the extractive sector globally—you'll see there are thousands of companies which are not yet compliant with that. Whilst we have pioneers in the field, we have not yet reached a tipping point in terms of that approach, and that's where legislation comes in. You see, for example, I think in the French legislation, if 50% of the companies haven't signed up, the government would bring in legislation. I don't think we can wait for that. I think it's time to create a level playing field so that Canadian companies can engage at the same level as our Australian, European, and Californian counterparts, but also, ultimately, of course, in the best interests of children.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chorley. Time, like life, is always our enemy in committees.

Mr. Fragiskatos.