Canada is about to do the right thing for the wrong reason

The federal government has announced new legislation to block imports of forced labour, imposing a burden on companies to prove their goods are free of it. It already made this promise in 2018 when it signed the Canada-United States-Mexico trade agreement. In 2024, it committed to creating an oversight agency to block forced labour goods, but failed to follow through.

So, why the change of heart?

It’s not because of Canada's commitment to labour and human rights protections, which are long standing. The country is a party to key international labour treaties, and has, for more than a decade, expected Canadian businesses to support human rights under the government's Responsible Business Conduct Strategy.

Nor is it because Canada enjoys an international reputation as a protector of human rights, or because most Canadians hold human rights as a shared value.

It’s because the U.S. administration told them to. And that is the problem: legislation built to placate another government risks being designed for appearance rather than effect.

The irony is that Canada has never been short on legislation, policy, or promises. What it has been short on is enforcement. The entire corporate accountability movement in Canada has been built on pledges and good intentions. Take, for example, the Office of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprises (CORE), created with fanfare in 2019 to review complaints about human rights abuses by Canadian businesses. CORE did not review a single complaint in its first four years of operation and had been leaderless for more than a year, with submitted complaints stalled indefinitely. Recently, the prime minister labelled the organization “ineffective” and eliminated it entirely.

Similarly, the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act passed in 2023 imposes reporting requirements on large businesses, but no liability for forced or child labour in their supply chains. The result has been companies focused on procedural compliance rather than meaningful risk reduction.

Even the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), given renewed powers to stop imports of forced or child labour goods, managed to seize only two shipments since 2021.

However, the government's latest initiative, Bill C-35, seems promising on this front. By shifting the onus onto companies to prove their products are free of forced labour, it would make enforcement far easier for the CBSA. Requiring companies to produce extensive, verifiable documentation is a much lower bar than requiring the CBSA to prove a product is tainted. This shift could prove especially valuable for goods that are high-risk in origin but difficult to trace, such as cotton or seafood, since forced labour often occurs deep in the supply chain, far from the finished product.

Still, an import ban—even one that puts the onus on companies—is no substitute for corporate accountability. Import bans are reactive. They catch tainted goods after exploitation has already occurred, but do little to address the business practices or purchasing decisions that enabled that exploitation in the first place.

A government serious about tackling forced labour cannot rely on border controls alone. It must also confront the practices that allow exploitation to take root, which requires mandatory human rights due diligence: companies should be required to identify risks in their supply chains, take concrete steps to prevent harm, and remedy harms when they occur. Most importantly, failure to do so should carry legal consequences. Without liability, corporate responsibility remains largely voluntary; with it, businesses have a real incentive to prevent exploitation.

Canada deserves some credit for finally confronting the weaknesses in its forced labour regime, an issue that long predates current trade tensions with the U.S. Its latest initiative suggests a more serious effort at corporate accountability after years of symbolic gestures.

Still, questions remain about whether the new import ban will be effective. The government's reluctance to include goods from China's Xinjiang region—a known centre of forced labour, and the basis for similar U.S. legislation—suggests politics may shape the list of flagged regions. It also remains unclear what standard of proof companies will need to meet. If the bar is set too low, the ban will do little to protect against forced labour.

Tariffs have finally brought Canada to the point where it can take issues of forced labour seriously. What remains to be seen is whether this marks a genuine turning point in corporate accountability, or simply becomes another entry in its already long list of good intentions.

Barnali Choudhury is a professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School, honorary professor at University College London, and director at York University’s Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime, and Security.

The Hill Times