Thank you for your question.
I think many solutions exist, and the other witnesses talked about some. Canada needs to make smart strategic investments. As a lawyer, I think some of our normative frameworks need reworking. Canada is a laggard on the due diligence front.
Do we want our businesses to be competitive in international markets? Do we want them to be able to export products to Europe, Japan, North America and anywhere else in the world where countries have brought in, or are bringing in, extremely restrictive legislation, countries like Mexico?
Sometimes only applicable to multinationals or companies with very high revenues, these laws force companies to pay careful attention to every step of their production lines as well as various other considerations, including environmental standards and human rights. This pushes companies to modernize operations and become much more competitive, using methods that are greener, more sustainable and more responsible. They can then export their products to countries with highly restrictive laws.
I would say that Canada is behind because, generally speaking, we don't have any due diligence laws. Yes, we are thinking about passing a law to prohibit imported products created under conditions of forced labour and modern-day slavery, but we are already way behind the pack. As a result, we need to modernize our legal frameworks to impose due diligence requirements on our companies at every stage of production.
That must, however, go hand in hand with a modernized procurement framework, one that forces our public institutions to purchase products and services, and to conduct procurement processes for major infrastructure projects, in a more sustainable and responsible way.
If we change both of those normative frameworks, we can restructure our market, help our companies compete much more effectively and give them the ability to bid on foreign procurement projects. That would, by extension, drive their growth.