Powering Performance

After several stalled efforts in recent years (see previous Bennett Jones blog posts on Bill C-423 and Bill S-216), Parliament is poised to pass a supply chain transparency law aimed at preventing and reducing the risk of forced labour and child labour in supply chains. Private members Bill S-211, An Act to enact the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act and to amend the Customs Tariff is expected to pass third reading in the House of Commons shortly and will have immediate implications for Canadian business and importers.

The Forced Labor Technical Expo welcomes industry event attendance as well as stakeholders (max two per company) impacted by the need to comply with UFLPA and §19 U.S.C. 1307. The audience includes the U.S. importing community, partner government agencies with a nexus to forced labor enforcement, and non-governmental organizations.

The grave human rights conditions in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where Uyghur Muslims and other religious and ethnic minorities are subjected to internment and forced labor, among other abuses, demand international response. So far, the centerpiece of the U.S. response has been the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), signed into law by President Joe Biden in December 2021. The law is intended to prevent U.S. consumers from being complicit in these abuses through the purchase of Chinese goods made with forced labor. In doing so, it encourages global firms to take Xinjiang out of their supply chains in order to maintain access to U.S. markets.

What parts of your car were made by Uyghur forced laborers?

If you have bought a car in the last five years, some of its parts were likely made by Uyghurs and others forced to work in China. The Chinese government has deliberately shifted raw materials mining and processing and auto parts manufacturing into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR or Uyghur Region), essentially making international supply chains captive to repressive programs and systematic forced labor. 

The German government’s Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, which addresses human rights in the supply chain, went into force on January 1, 2023.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are a set of guidelines for states and companies to prevent, address, and remedy human rights abuses committed in business operations. They were proposed by UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights John Ruggie and endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011. In the same resolution, the UN Human Rights Council established the UN Working Group on business & human rights.

The German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act went into effect on January 1, 2023, to help address human rights in the supply chain.

The Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILB), which operates under the U.S. Department of Labor, publishes three reports on international child labor and forced labor that serve as valuable resources for research, advocacy, government action, and corporate responsibility.

• Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor
• List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor
• List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor

Human trafficking victims are often held in slave-like conditions and forced to work in the sex trade or other servitude. One international organization estimated about 25 million people were trafficked in 2016.

When the European Union embraced the concept of double materiality in the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which mandated that investors consider risks corporations externalize onto people, the business and human rights movement notched a significant win. Now the notion of double materiality is also taking shape in a different guise beyond Europe:  Investor concerns around systemic risks, including inequality, are rising.