Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to members of the Chamber of Commerce of Metropolitan Montreal, in Montreal, on Jan. 16.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
On Jan. 1, the Forced Labour and Supply Chain Reporting Law, which aims to curb the importation of goods made through forced labour, came into effect. The law is toothless. It merely requires companies to report on their efforts to keep forced labour out of their supply chains.
The U.S. Congress and the Biden administration, in contrast, passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021. That law compels anyone wishing to import products from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to prove that forced labour was not used.
Since its implementation in June, 2022, more than 6,000 shipments entering the United States have been reviewed under the new law, and more than 2,500 denied entry.
But according to Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, not one shipment from China has been denied entry into Canada on the same grounds.
“Canada remains a dumping ground for products made with forced labour,” Mr. Tohti said in an interview.
Canadians buy everything from solar panels to seafood without knowing if it was made with slave labour in China. The new law won’t change that.
The federal government’s refusal to confront China on this issue offers yet another instance of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s strange reluctance to stand up to the regime in Beijing.
Liberals trying to play both sides in Gaza conflict
Why is that? Is it nostalgia for his father’s groundbreaking recognition of China in the 1970s? Or for the Team Canada missions of the Chrétien government in the 1990s? The (mistaken, in my opinion) belief that China is emerging as a dominant – maybe the dominant – global power? The inability to recognize the turn toward increased autocracy under the President Xi Jinping?
We can’t know. All we know is that Uyghur workers, who have been subjected to incredible abuse by the Chinese government, may have helped make things you wear or eat or use, and your government refuses to do much of anything about it.
The Biden administration is not impressed with the reluctance of Canada or of members of the European Union to ban products made with Chinese forced labour.
“We need to have Canada and Europe also turn them away,” Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley said at a conference in Ottawa in December. “It needs to be a much more united undertaking to be even more effective.”
An investigation by Human Rights Watch concluded the Chinese government inflicted “mass arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearances, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, separation of families, forced labour, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights” on its Uyghur population, describing those actions as crimes against humanity.
The United States government has declared that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. So have the Canadian House of Commons, the British House of Commons and the French and Dutch parliaments, among others.
The Trudeau cabinet abstained on the House of Commons motion, one of the many ways in which this government has soft-pedalled its response to the abusive actions of the Chinese government in recent years. There was also the slow walk on banning Huawei from involvement in 5G technology; the reluctance of Mr. Trudeau to convene a public inquiry into Chinese election interference; the lack of strong action in response to allegations of “police stations” in Canadians cities through which the Chinese government seeks to exert influence.
Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, a former senior public servant who is a member of the board of the China Strategic Risks Institute, an international think tank, points to Ottawa’s reluctance to create a registry, similar to one that exists in the United States and elsewhere, of people who work on behalf of other governments.
“I can only speculate that there are Liberals who have the Prime Minister’s ear, and he doesn’t want to take action with which they would disagree,” she told me.
Whatever the reason, it is unconscionable that the Government of Canada takes such a permissive approach to Chinese abuses. And it is beyond offensive that Canadians unknowingly use products created by forced Uyghur labour. Ottawa must end that practice, with something more than this new law. It’s a paper tiger.