Thank you for the good question, Mr. Chair.
I want to start by saying that, 100%, EV batteries are also.... Exploitation in the DRC is very prominent.
When it comes to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act of the U.S., specifically, the Canadian government has released a study called “Study of Supply Chain Risks related to Xinjiang forced labour”, in which it clearly states that this is legislation we want and are trying to adopt within Canada.
The U.S. legislation is significantly stricter in assuming that all products coming from that region...because there was a lot of evidence and there were a lot of reports that showed us that things such as cotton.... Even the report that the Government of Canada released states that 85% of so-called Chinese cotton comes from East Turkestan, which means it is directly linked to the slave labour of Uyghur people. This is also true for things like tomatoes, solar panels and polysilicon. They are also coming in from the region of East Turkestan.
Therefore, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act assumes that because of the backing and the reports, and the fact that behind these different products, there is forced labour, anything coming from that region can be assumed to be from forced labour. This is because of how it is all interlinked.