This is a priority for our organization. It's a priority for Mexican labour unions and for United States labour unions as well.
The rapid response labour mechanism in the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement has seen a number of successes. It's been used at least 40 times, as I understand it. Through investigations of facilities directly brought on by workers in those facilities, with help from the United States and Canada, it has resulted in employees being reinstated and votes being redone—for certification of unions, for example, because we know there are a lot of corrupt unions in Mexico that will try to undermine the rights that employees have to free collective agreement and bargaining and freedom of speech. It has been a success, and groups in Mexico are hoping that it is extended in the review.
We understand from the United States Trade Representative—not directly from them, but in hearing from people they are talking to—that they are also interested in keeping this process as part of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, and perhaps making it better in terms of being faster and more accountable.
We're worried the talks are going to split into three—U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico—at which point we lose some control over that in terms of the Canadian government and the Mexican governments working together to improve that mechanism. We would like to see Canada insisting on that, starting the conversation now with the Mexican government. Hopefully we can keep it as a three-way to increase Canada's leverage in those talks.
There is very much agreement in the United States that this is something we could keep, and I would like to see Canada adopting it as its own policy and putting it in agreements, like the one we have with Indonesia, but they didn't. We don't have a rapid response mechanism in Indonesia, where forced labour and child labour are rampant, as we know, in supply chains.