Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this issue. It is important to recognize the significance of it, because this place and the other place, the Senate, have already passed some legislation with respect to forced labour. However, that fraudulent legislation never did the things for which New Democrats have called for many years. The products and the types of impacts for an economy are certainly significant, not only with regard to the impacts on the individuals, most often being children, but also prisons and other places that we have to compete against with respect to our economy.
With respect to child labour, everybody likes to say that they are opposed to it, but at the same time they are knowingly allowing our supply chains to be affected by those types of economic contributors without repercussions. That is significant.
The argument used to be that forced labour happened in some of the most suspicious companies out there. It may not have been mainstream companies, maybe ones not even traded on the stock market or ones that were from developing countries. In the last couple of years, we have seen an increase of forced labour in the supply chain, including by some companies in the United States, which were called out for this. This also included major automotive manufacturers, some of the gig economy and a number of different groups that we would not normally expect this type of behaviour.
Over the years, we have talked about trade, trade agreements, opening the markets and ending this type of practice. It has been used as an excuse over and over. When we actually needed the fight to happen, thankfully the former member for Essex, Tracey Ramsey, who represented the NDP at that time, fought to include labour and the environment in the new NAFTA. We can call it the USMCA, CUMSA or NAFTA 2.0, but the reality is that we finally have taken some modest steps and have incorporated labour laws in that trade agreement, as well as the environment.
That is significantly different, because the New Democrats raised this concern consistently as the country went down several different paths with regard to trade agreements. One after the other happened during the Harper regime and the Conservatives made sure that every time we tried to move amendments covering human rights, the environment and issues like child labour in the agreements, those amendments were defeated. Many of those countries still continue to have some of the practices we raised and they have an increased impact on our trade and supply chain to this day. The notion was that we were going to diversify our economy with these agreements, but we have seen the increase of these problems, not the decrease, related to the promises that were made.
On top of that, it was often said that Canada would get into a supply surplus with regard to those countries we had signed agreements with, but we have not. With every agreement, except for the United States, we are in a trade deficit. Therefore, not only did we enter agreements where we have lost part of the economy and have become a deficit trading nation, we have also surrendered any opportunity to effectively negotiate improvements for the environment and the economy.
From a mere selfish point of view, with regard to the use of this reprehensible part of our economy, is the self-interest of Canadians. Some who have come from those countries continue to lose their jobs or do not get economic investment because of child and slave labour that is continually used within the system. A recent report talks about some of these things.
The motion we are dealing with was promised before, in 2023, and we were supposed to have improvements. There was well-recognized criticism that what we passed would not improve things whatsoever. Basically, it has done the worst of things, which is to provide a shield for the government to hide behind when we know these practices are increasing.
We have also seen it in key parts of our economy like never before. I introduced legislation on knock-offs and other types of rip-offs related to copyright and other infringement, so CBSA officers could apprehend goods and services at the border and get proper training. Counterfeit issues like that are important for the New Democrats.
We may not think they are that important. Sometimes this involves running shoes, purses, clothing or other items, but it has escalated to airplane, automotive parts and hospital merchandise. One of the things was electrical panels. Even things that appear to be copyrighted properly are part of the sophistication of organized crime that uses child and slave labour as part of their repertoire to bring in profits that go to other types of crime across the globe. It is important to recognize that we are not dealing with this in the supply chain in our country.
In the debates that took place before in this chamber, mostly from the Conservatives and Liberals at the time, it was noted that this would have an ill effect on the Canadian economy and consumers, so they had to risk keeping this and the environment out of trade agreements. The reality is that this will cost Canadians more in the future because the resources and profits from this into our supply chain is then used for other illegal activity. It is not like it goes back into the organizations growing their systems independently from that. The ones that use this are using other types of criminal activity with the resources from it.
It is one of the reasons why I fought for this for a number of years, and we did get the change. At one point, we used to be able to write off any environmental fine, penalty or criminal fine that took place as a business-related expense, and the NDP fixed that and had it eliminated through a budgetary process. I give Ralph Goodale credit. He had to write it into his budget because the rest of us collectively in the industry committee and others supported my motion to hold up the committee, and we doggedly pursued it. A number of different people, including all the opposition parties, were against the Liberals and fought it for over a month and a half until we got the Liberals to agree to do this. They finally did it after breaking their word three times.
Specifically, it involves hundreds of millions of dollars per year. There were cases at that time where drug companies were illegally manufacturing harmful drugs. They went through the court system and were fined up to $40 million, in one example, but then they got $11 million back at tax time as a business-related expense. There were other companies that did environmental damage and would later get part of that money back, up to 50%, at tax time as a business-related expense.
It did two things that were absurd. First, criminal activity should never be subsidized, but it had been for decades under Liberals and Conservatives prior to that. It was attractive to invest in Canada because companies could do whatever they wanted. They would get caught and then they could get some of that money back at tax time. Second, it was also used as a subsidy against businesses that wanted to do the right thing and invest in proper environmental and other practices. Instead of dumping oil down the sewer system or somewhere else or using capture, containment and treatment incentives, which costs more money, the subsidies of the people who got caught later on would be the incentive to do it again and again.
There is no difference with regard to this case. If there are no economic repercussions of any magnitude, from the smallest to the largest, it only encourages reinvestment into child labour or the support of countries that continue to turn a blind eye to child labour and a continued dependency model that does not allow free market forces to enter in a competitive nature and provide products that do that.
One of the saddest examples I have seen of the abuse of this issue, in particular, is the decline in Toronto, but also, more specifically, the decline in Quebec of the garment industry.
For many years, we saw different types of trade agreements go through. Other countries, knowing the problems with that, would get preferential treatment to the Canadian market despite us raising these issues. I think of Jordan as an example. I think of when we went to the Caribbean. I think of other countries that moved their garment industries, especially in the Montreal region and other parts of Quebec, overseas. At that time, we were sold the lie that we could not manufacture anymore because it was not competitive enough. We were told that there was nobody willing to invest, that the workers could not do the jobs and that was why we had to let the industry go overseas.
We had the same philosophy with the tech industry. Everybody is complaining now because of the issues with respect to microchips. At one time, Canada was a world leader of that industry, which was in the Mississauga area of Ontario, but we let that go to a developing country. It is now the world leader. We are seeing the United States and others reshoring.
It was the same with the garment industry at that time. We were told all these different things and the only thing we could do was to accept it as fait accompli. All we did was push the problems further on. Then what happens is that when workers reunite in those countries to push back about that, the operators of this behaviour just move to another country. I think about some of the workers in Mexico and other places like that. This pushes it further away and there still is no solution.
I remember when we were looking at the current agreement under NAFTA with the workers who came from Mexico to Parliament Hill. The argument that was pushed against them, which was put out there by the right wing and those who believed in so-called free trade, was that it would take jobs away from those poor workers. If they wanted the same standards and the same or similar wages, then the companies would close and move those jobs unilaterally.
However, what we heard from those workers was that they needed us to stand up for them because it would never solve itself, that we had to put the actual measures in the agreement so that they could stop these people from reshoring outside of their zone. There would be something legislative related to the trade in the trade agreement between Canada and the United States. It would give them some empowerment, because it made it more difficult for those companies to then close the shops. They were willing to take that risk because they knew, and what had always been the case, that every single time they fought for something it would be diminished, it would be eliminated. Instead of raising everybody up, or partially up, it would then be taken away. By not addressing this issue, we see what has taken place in the Canadian economy.
One report that will come forward is on how child and forced labour continues to grow. Here are some statistics on it.
Canadian imports of risky goods totalled $34 billion in 2016, up from $26 billion in 2012, which is a 31% increase in the value of risky goods coming from countries with a higher incidence of child and or forced labour. It is pretty disturbing when we break out some of the data.
There was a 42% increase in garment imports from Bangladesh. We have also seen what has taken place with climate change in Bangladesh. We have seen the extreme poverty. We have seen all those different things, and we cannot continue to turn a blind eye to it.
There was a 97% increase in tomato imports from Mexico. That is significant for our region, which has the greenhouse industry. We have a number of different operators. As supply is increased into the market, we need to address this. This should be forced through our negotiations with NAFTA. We have to push on that harder.
There was a 107% increase in coffee imports from the Dominican Republic. That is another destination of choice for tourism, but at the same time, it has exploited the market.
There was a 124% increase in footwear imports from India. We can see again where we have had a detailed development take place in Canada with regard to the Modi government, not only with respect to how it operates but the difficulty in its own country with regard to human rights and the very openness of many things, including political and others. India's involvement in the Canadian electoral system and with respect to Canadian citizens should be a motivator for the government to bring into effect legislation that will be more significant to push back against that.
It is interesting. I saw this hands-off approach by Conservatives and Liberals first-hand. I am retired from hockey coaching at the moment, but I had a chance to coach for several years, until about seven years ago. Some parents on teams that we coached actually had people coming from India to train in the engineering field, then going back to India. They would take the job out of Canada. They actually had people coming into our country and training for those positions; people would then lose their job after training that person.
When we look at a country such as India, as in this instance, that should be motivation enough for the Liberal government to do this as a way of pushing back, very specifically and very carefully, to the benefit of many Canadians.
There has been an 8,852% increase in palm oil imports from Indonesia. This is another country that has some well-documented issues with regard to its human rights record. In fact, I got involved in politics in Windsor, back in the day; at that time, it was the Indonesian genocide in East Timor that later led to some of my work for the genocide recognition of this place, of Srebrenica and others.
There is a good, well-documented historical case there of problems. Do Canadians actually care about this issue? They do care. Right now, however, we do very little to educate Canadians, or to put information in front of the public, about who are the worst operators of this type of behaviour, and if they are in our supply chain, how we get them out.
If we are going to fall behind global leaders in regard to dealing with this, it would be at the expense of what Canadians want, and it is going to be at the expense of our jobs and our manufacturing. We saw what COVID did with the supply chain. It is interesting because it became attractive. There have been massive subsidies provided for the manufacturers and others over time to deal with the subsidization in other places with regard to the auto industry and other types of industries, including our buying a leaky pipeline and the umpteen billions that we are continuing to pay for, and paying interest on, as we are in a deficit projection right now.
There has been an increase in investment, and that should come with additional conditions in terms of supporting Canadians and their priorities. That is the way to deal with it. I was around all the time when they actually said, “No, we have to get into the service industry. We cannot do manufacturing anymore. It is not cost effective.” They said all that.
Now you see even the right wing in the United States pushing to try to get some of these jobs. We also have some of the right wing in the U.S. funding some of those jobs.
With regard to our position on this particular issue, we want to see the report come forward with the recommendations. We want to see Canada take advantage of tabling something. This is really important: Even if we table legislation here, it is not necessarily going to get through this chamber and the other chamber in time.
If we look at and actually check the government reports on this, five days ago, it was still calling for information with regard to opinions on this. Everything that it is doing right now to say it is coming in at the end of the year is just basically a whitewash of the reality that we saw none of this come forward until this committee report pushed the issue even further. This is something that I support and that New Democrats support.
We warned everyone that we would be in this situation. We warned that it is actually going to have a negative impact not only on the children's lives and the slave labour lives, but also the economy with regard to pushing Canadians with legitimate business interests and investment out of markets that they really should actually have an advantage in. That would provide taxes, resources, jobs and a series of different benefits. Then we would be able to help other countries with regard to bringing them into real compliance with our trade agreements.
As I wrap up here, I would say that it is really important to notice that we are in this situation for a reason. It is because successive Conservative and Liberal governments have been comfortable with this hidden secret, and when the rock is turned over, every single time, we see things scurry out. We know what is in there. It is also in parts of our newer economy as well. When we look at some of the electronics and some of the brands that are involved, we know that this is not going anywhere. In fact, it is getting deeper, as the stats I just read show. It will also play out across the globe with regard to minerals, resources and so forth. We are creating a dependency model, and all members in this chamber should be very uncomfortable because we actually set ourselves up to be at this point.
