Uyghur workers at a garment factory in the Xinjiang region of China, on Aug. 3, 2019. Experts have estimated that roughly one in five cotton garments sold globally contains cotton or yarn from Xinjiang.GILLES SABRIE/The New York Times
U.S. officials, including Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, are urging Canada to co-operate with Washington in blocking imports from China made with forced labour.
Mr. Merkley, as well as officials with the United States departments of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, told a conference in Ottawa on Thursday that Washington has stopped more than 2,600 shipments worth a total of US$500-million since June, 2022, when an American law aimed at banning goods made with forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region went into effect.
Mr. Merkley said Chinese companies have responded to the U.S. ban by sending goods made in Xinjiang to Canada and Europe instead.
“We need to have Canada and Europe also turn them away,” he said. “It needs to be a much more united undertaking to be even more effective.”
Canada committed to barring imports manufactured with forced labour as part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the free trade deal that replaced NAFTA. But Ottawa has not stopped a single shipment of these goods from coming into Canada since the agreement went into effect in July, 2020.
Xinjiang has been a particular concern for rights activists, Western governments and academics, who have said that China has since 2017 imposed an unprecedented system of forced labour on the millions of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims who live in the region.
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A report prepared for Canada’s Department of Global Affairs says China uses “otherwise legitimate programs for retraining and relocation of unemployed workers as instruments of a broader campaign of oppression, exploitation, and indoctrination of the Uyghur Muslim population” into China’s majority Han Chinese culture.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden in 2021, establishes that any goods imported from Xinjiang are presumed to have been made with forced labour. It’s up to importers to demonstrate these products are not made by workers in forced servitude. Otherwise, shipments from the region to the U.S. are blocked. Canada has no law that establishes the same presumption.
Thursday’s conference on combatting forced labour in China was organized by the Uyghur-Canada Parliamentary Friendship Group and the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.
Liberal MP John McKay told the conference that Canada “is a distressing weak link” in efforts to fight forced labour. “For the life of me,” he said, he doesn’t understand why Canada has not managed to intercept any shipments of goods made this way.
Robert Silvers, the U.S. Homeland Security undersecretary for strategy, said the U.S. has managed to implement the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act without any new money to support the effort. “And at the same time, we are not seeing pileups systematically across our ports. The overwhelming, vast majority of trade is coming in expeditiously.”
He offered to make Homeland Security staff available to Canada to explain how enforcing the law works.
Mr. Merkley used a line from former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s memoir to make his case to Canadians: “The law must permit the individual to fulfill himself or herself to the utmost.” Speaking to the conference, which included Canadian government officials and staff from MPs’ offices, he said, “I can think of nothing more counter to that principle than slavery.”
Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan’s office wouldn’t commit to introducing a Canadian version of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, but Hartley Witten, Mr. O’Regan’s press secretary, said the minister plans to introduce new measures aimed at barring goods made with forced labour from Canada.
“We will table strong government legislation by the end of 2024 to eradicate forced labour from Canadian supply chains, no matter where it comes from,” Mr. Witten said in a statement.
He said the minister’s efforts would take their cue from Senate Bill S-211, passed by Parliament and expected to take effect in 2024. It will require Canadian companies and government bodies to report publicly on forced labour in their supply chains.
“Our government legislation will build upon the important transparency measures in Bill S-211 by ensuring that Canadian law not only has the tools to identify these goods, but has the teeth to act on them. It will send a clear message to the world: forced labour has no place in Canada.”
The Global Slavery Index, produced by the Australian philanthropic foundation Walk Free, estimated in a 2018 report that more than $18.5-billion in goods imported annually into Canada are at risk of having been made with forced labour at some point in their supply chains, including clothing, computers, smartphones, gold, seafood and sugar cane.