Mr. Speaker, the Oslo conference on child labour reflects a growing and worldwide concern about child labour, particularly the urgent need to eliminate its most extreme and intolerable forms.
All the delegates at the Oslo conference agreed that the countries of the world must take every step possible to suppress such atrocities as the sale and trafficking of children, forced and compulsory labour, debt bondage and child slavery, and the use of children for any type of work that is likely to jeopardize their health, their safety or their moral and social development. The use of child soldiers in recent armed conflicts was identified as an issue that requires immediate and specific attention. There was less than consensus opinion, however, on how to best address the larger issue of the 250 million child labourers between the ages of 5 and 14 who are forced to work to survive.
Everyone everywhere agrees that poverty is both the root cause and a major consequence of child labour. In that light strategies to fight poverty are central to any serious efforts to alleviate child labour. Canada falls short in this regard. The international community has targeted 0.7% of GDP as the level of industrial development aid. Canada now stands at 0.34%, a drop of $780 million. Both Norway and Great Britain have announced increases to a full 1% of gross domestic product.
Canada falls short in other tangibles as well. The Canadian government says that it does not support the use of boycotts or labelling programs. It does not agree that projects like the Rugmart labelling system will end the exploitation of children in the carpet industry even though there is broad support for that program in many parts of the world. The government does not believe in legislation such as the Harken bill in the United States which bans the importation of goods made by bonded child labour. It has refused for over 25 years to sign International Labour Organization convention No. 138 which deals with the minimum age of workers entering the workforce.
The government does not agree that international trade agreements must include labour standards in spite of the fact that speaker after speaker at the Oslo conference cited liberalized trade agreements as a key cause in the escalation of the use of child labour in the world.
Consumers and governments in developed nations can and must use their purchasing power and any other instruments at their disposal to put pressure on those who participate in the economic exploitation of children. Voluntary compliance with codes of conduct will not help the child who sits chained to a loom as we speak.
Do we know that consumer boycotts and non-tariff trade barriers work? The garment manufacturers of Bangladesh at the merest hint of a boycott by the United States cleared their workplaces of child labour within three years and now use the fact that they are child labour free as a marketing tool.
Critics would say that boycotts result in these children being thrown out of the workplace and winding up in the streets or some worse form of exploitation. My point is that there are 50 million child labourers in India and over 100 million heads of households who do not have meaningful work. It is simple. We take the children out of the workplace. We put their parents in the workplace. We put the children in schools where they belong.
The government has not done enough. When questioned on October 3, the Minister of Foreign Affairs again repeated he was not willing to engage legislation and tools such as the Harken bill in the United States and he was not willing to sign convention No. 138 of the ILO.