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.