International Trade Committee on Nov. 27th, 2025

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Okay.

What challenges does the CBSA face in verifying the production of origin of goods that pass through complex supply chains or intermediary countries? How do you address that?

[Graeme Hamilton]

Madam Chair, it's a very good question.

Part of the challenge is obviously supply chain traceability. Goods are made up of multiple components and often pass through multiple chains of production before they're imported into Canada. Supply chain traceability remains a challenge for CBSA in terms of its enforcement of the current forced labour ban.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

That is an issue.

How do you decide that the documentation you receive from importers is sufficient and clear? How do you address that? Do you suspend any documentation that is not clear in terms of involving any forced labour?

[Graeme Hamilton]

I would say that there's quite a robust recourse process that exists within the Customs Act. It has several layers, which conclude at a quasi-judicial hearing. Through that process, there's an active discussion back and forth between the agency and the importers to try to attain the information from them, in order to make an appropriate tariff classification on whether those goods were or were not produced via forced labour.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

How often has the CBSA reviewed the effectiveness of its current forced labour screening since 2020? What have been your findings? When was the last review?

[Graeme Hamilton]

I would maybe defer to my colleague, Mr. Lawton, in terms of the operational arm of the CBSA and when reviews last were undertaken.

[Alexander Lawton]

The review of our risking process, the risking methodology, is basically an evergreen process. We're constantly looking at it. The biggest gap we've found is essentially an information deficit in terms of supply chains, but also in terms of the working conditions within each entity within a supply chain. It's something that's very difficult to address. Many importers aren't even necessarily aware of their entire supply chain.

That's the biggest gap, and it's one that we're trying to address as much as possible in leveraging information from partner agencies such as United States Customs and Border Protection and partner agencies here within Canada, such as ESDC's labour program.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you.

This will be more of a trade question. Does Canada require additional trade agreement mechanisms to deal with forced labour issues moving forward?

Maybe you can tell us about the ones that we have in place now.

[David Hutchison]

I'll take this question.

Madam Chair, the committee may appreciate that I'm not really in a position to say what Canada needs in terms of new trade agreements.

We have the import ban that is part of CUSMA. We have various other free trade agreements that include labour provisions and environmental provisions, but decisions on the future of Canada's free trade agreements and what they will include will be taken at a future date.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Would those adhere to what you were saying, to the OECD guidelines you mentioned?

[David Hutchison]

Madam Chair, the OECD is an intergovernmental body that consists of a membership, but the OECD RBC guidelines include other countries that are not OECD members. It's a guideline of best practices. It's advice to the entire international community, whether it's the business community or governments.

What we do with the OECD guidelines as the trade commissioner service is that we provide advice to our clients, which are largely exporters of goods and services. We provide them our best advice based on those guidelines. Those guidelines are comprehensive. They include labour, environment and human rights.

One of the things we encourage our exporters to do is to undertake due diligence, including that related to forced labour that could be in their supply chains. Our exporters are exporting to foreign markets, but they may also be importers and importing intermediary goods into their manufacturing process. It is important that we encourage our businesses to undertake due diligence, because it is ultimately in their interest.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We go now to Monsieur Savard-Tremblay for six minutes, please.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being with us.

I'm going to start with a question that is both naive and general. I recently submitted a question that was placed on the Order Paper. The figures I'm going to give you are from September, so not that long ago. We found out that Canadian border authorities had seized 34 shipments suspected of containing products made by forced labour or child labour. Thirty-three of those shipments were released, all global regions and provinces combined. Ultimately, only one shipment was actually seized without being released.

Conversely, if we compare ourselves with the U.S., we see that the Americans have seized billions of dollars U.S. worth of goods from a single region in China, the Uyghur region.

How do you explain such a disparity?

[Graeme Hamilton]

Do you want to take it?

[David Hutchison]

Sure.

Madam Chair, I think it would be very difficult for us here to comment on the laws, practices and regulations of a foreign government. I'm sure my colleagues from CBSA would be very pleased to speak to how they approach this important issue.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Can either of the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, witnesses answer my question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Will someone else provide the information?

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Heads up. The ball's in their court.

[Graeme Hamilton]

Madam Chair, I'd like to thank the member for his question.

It's a bit of a detailed answer, so I'm going to switch to English.

My colleague Alexander Lawton may have more information to add.

At the highest level, from the import ban Canada does have in place, the ban itself sits within the customs tariff, which falls under the Ministry of Finance. That works in conjunction with the Customs Act, which is underneath the Minister of Public Safety. Together, they provide a very strong ban on forced labour. It's an absolute ban within the customs tariff. Because of that very high threshold in terms of being able to ban all imports into Canada, there's also a case-by-case determination in terms of goods coming in where that is then applied or not. A rigorous and robust recourse process follows.

What we've seen from that are slightly different statistics and volumes of enforcement from perhaps some of our other counterparts, including those in the U.S. What we have been able to do is also work proactively through elements under the Minister of Public Safety and under former Bill S-211 in terms of putting in place a transparency regime to ensure that Canadian businesses are looking into their supply chain and ensuring that they're rooting out forced labour practices from within that.

There's been proactive engagement undertaken by CBSA in terms of issuing trade advisory notices to companies importing into Canada in a variety of sectors that we understand could be susceptible to forced labour as well as, obviously, enforcement action that has been referenced by the committee member as well.

There are more updated stats in terms of what action has been undertaken by the CBSA other than the ones that were publicly quoted by the member. I'm happy to defer to my colleague, Alex Lawton, if he wants to talk about some of the more recent enforcement action if it's of interest to the committee.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Mr. Lawton, can you give us any figures? It would be helpful to have them.

[Alexander Lawton]

Thank you.

As of November 2025, so as of this month, there have been 48 detentions. Two have resulted in fined determinations of forced labour. One of those determinations was later, on appeal, overturned, essentially. In addition, there were 33 shipments that were released following information provided by the importers.

Of the other eight shipments—and hopefully my numbers are correct—seven were re-exported. Essentially, when we attempted to detain the goods, the exporter or importer decided to, rather than allow their goods to be detained in a warehouse and the process to work its way out, move their goods outside of Canada.

The remainder were abandoned and essentially destroyed. Rather than have the process working itself out, the importer abandoned the goods and essentially gave up ownership.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

If I understand correctly, there were 48 seizures, so the number has gone up slightly. Of those seizures, eight shipments were re-exported and two were actually seized, one of which was released.

Did I get that right?

[Alexander Lawton]

That's correct. I'm sorry. I may have misspoken. Thirty-seven were released; two were prohibited; seven were re-exported, and one was abandoned.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

That means 10 didn't enter the country. Is that right?

When you look at the American regime, would you say we have a strong system?

[Graeme Hamilton]

It wouldn't be appropriate for me, as an official, to criticize the—