Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague for Lethbridge.
In this debate there have been excellent speeches by members across the House who bring different perspectives and different aspects of knowledge and experience to the table, and I have learned a lot by listening to them. I want to particularly recognize the members of the all-party group who have been working on this issue, and especially my friend for Peace River—Westlock, who has been a tireless champion of justice for the oppressed and for victims of human trafficking since he came to this place. I have no doubt he will continue to be that advocate for as long as this terrible scourge remains with us.
This issue has an international dimension and a domestic dimension. It is important for us to be aware of and respond to both, because while the nature of the violence and the victimization may be similar, the nature of our response, and what we can do about it internationally versus domestically, is quite different. I have the honour of serving for our party as the shadow minister for international human rights, so I will focus on the international dimension, although I will make a few comments about the domestic dimension as well.
Members here are increasingly aware of the horrific situation of Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in China. This is a situation of systemic sexual violence, mass detention in concentration camps, and efforts to reduce or eradicate the population through mechanisms including preventing births within the group by forced abortion, forced insertion of IUDs and forced sterilization.
Another human rights abuse that we see against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims is slave labour. An Australian think tank released a powerful report called “Uyghurs for sale”, which details how people, simply on the basis of their faith and ethnic background, are effectively sold into slavery and are producing products for international markets. They are producing products that recognizable brands are buying and selling to us here in Canada and in parts of the world beyond China. We have a responsibility to become aware of that, respond to it and do all we can to make sure at the very least that we are not complicit in these horrific violations of fundamental human rights: that we are not wearing shirts or eating tomatoes produced by people who were violently enslaved and compelled to work on products that were exported to us. There is so much more that Canada can do.
We have heard testimony at the foreign affairs committee about some of these issues. We heard recently from a representative of the International Justice Mission, an excellent organization working hard to advance justice around the world. We heard that Canada was really behind many other countries in terms of tracking, identifying and responding to the human rights violations that happen within our supply chains.
It is important to know that there are major concerns about production of the personal protective equipment that all of us increasingly rely on in the midst of this pandemic. We have to do more to ensure that the personal protective equipment we may be importing from China is not tainted by the enslavement of people who are forced to produce those products.
Canada has fallen behind, we have heard. We need to do more. Following pressure from our party especially, but also from many individuals in other parties who played key roles in this, the government put forward a policy that, facially at least, addressed the issue of supply chains, specifically in the context of Uighur forced labour. However, in my estimation these measures are far too little and far too late. They do not get to the nub of the issue, which is identification and enforcement. The government said in its release that it was not going to allow products that had been produced by slave labour, but it has still failed to put in place effective mechanisms and tracking to address that.
We had a technical briefing in which these new measures were explained to us, and it was pointed out that many aspects of these measures are still being worked out. The government came out with an announcement saying it was going to do this, but so much has not been done in terms of knowing how to identify a product produced from slave labour. What we have so far is a sense that this process will be complaint-based, and it will be adjudicated by CBSA.
People who are victims of slavery have no way of ensuring that their rights are going to be protected in a process where someone would have to have evidence and make a complaint to the Canada Border Services Agency.
Other measures have been put forward. I am very supportive of Bill S-216, which was discussed previously in this debate. It is a bill that would go farther toward addressing these issues, in terms of the supply chain. However, more work needs to be done, even on top of that.
In the United States, a bipartisan initiative called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act created a presumption that products sourced from certain regions involved slave labour. It was a presumption that in a sense created a reverse onus. If somebody was importing products from there, they would have to prove that slave labour was not involved. If a company is sourcing products from East Turkestan or Xinjiang in China, it should not be a mystery to anyone what is going on there. The extreme risk of slave labour being involved in a place where this is systematically done and supported by the government is too high for us to do anything other than presume that products produced in those regions are indeed tainted by slave labour.
In terms of information gathering and enforcement, Canada could do so much more to collaborate with our allies. There is a lot of work to be done in terms of gathering and tracing this information, but we do not have to do it alone. We could look at best practices from other countries. We could partner with our allies.
I am part of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a global network of legislators working to address various issues of human rights, security and other things created by the current direction of the Chinese government. It is such a pleasure, through that group, to work with legislators from all different political traditions in various countries: U.S. Republicans and Democrats, British Conservatives and Labour members, members from Japan and from other parts of the world.
The collaboration that should be happening, not just at the legislator level but at the government level, to address slave labour in our supply chains is so important.
Finally, we need to note and understand that this is not just an international issue or a supply chain issue, but that violence, human trafficking and slavery are happening right here in our country of Canada.
A few days ago a class action lawsuit was filed against MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, for posting videos of two underage children being drugged and raped. Two weeks ago, at the ethics committee, we heard witness testimony from Serena, who at 14 found an explicit video of herself posted online without her consent. She fought to get the video taken down. Afterwards, every time it was taken down, it was reposted.
I applaud the committees that are looking into this issue at MindGeek, of sexual violence being filmed and posted online. We hear so many stories about incidents of human trafficking here in Canada. Police services in Canada have reported over 1,700 instances of human trafficking since 2009, and about half of all victims were between the ages of 18 and 24. About a third of the victims were under the age of 18.
This is a form of violence that is affecting children and young people, and people of all ages. Other colleagues have spoken in detail, which I do not have time to go into, about the domestic situation and the domestic response.
When we think about human trafficking, it is important to understand that this is something that happens very far away and it is something that happens right here at home. This awareness day, and these efforts to address human trafficking, are critically important, both to recognize and note it in awareness, but also to go further and advance the legislative proposals that I and others have talked about for ending human trafficking here and around the world.