Article · Economy · 6 min read
One shipment in six years: Canada's forced-labour import ban exists mostly on paper
The United States has stopped 42,807 shipments under its forced-labour import ban. Canada, bound by the same trade commitment, has stopped one, and later let it go. A June committee hearing put the reasons on the record.
On June 18, a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) official sat in front of the House of Commons international trade committee and confirmed, on the record, what critics had alleged for years: Canada does not publish a single statistic about its forced-labour import ban.
"With respect to forced labour import bans, that is true," said Graeme Hamilton, CBSA's director general for trade and anti-dumping programs. "We have not published statistics in terms of how many goods have been intercepted and whether they're successful, abandoned or re-exported." The reason, he added, is "the limited number of cases." CBSA publishes detailed statistics on drug seizures, gun seizures and inadmissibility. For forced labour, there is so little enforcement that there is nothing worth counting.
The public record backs him up. Since Canada's ban took effect in July 2020, exactly one shipment has ever been classified under the prohibition: a batch of clothing from China seized in the fall of 2021. CBSA later released it. Correspondence obtained by the NGO Above Ground confirmed no further shipments had been classified as of mid-2022, and no official has cited a newer figure since.
The comparison matters because both countries signed the same commitment. The Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) requires each party to prohibit imports of goods made with forced labour. The United States, which has banned such goods since 1930, enforces its ban through the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). Since that law took effect in June 2022, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has stopped 42,807 shipment lines worth 3.96 billion US dollars and denied entry to 24,344 of them.
Two bans, opposite machines
The gap is not about willpower at the border. It is baked into the legal design, and CBSA said so itself.
The American ban works on a presumption. Goods made wholly or in part in China's Xinjiang region, or by a company on a published entity list, are presumed to be made with forced labour and are barred. The importer must prove otherwise, with documentation CBP has warned must be extensive: affidavits, redacted records and incomplete supplier information will not cut it.
Canada's ban, tariff item 9897.00.00 in the Customs Tariff, flips that burden. CBSA must prove that the specific goods in the specific container in front of it were made with forced labour, shipment by shipment. Hamilton walked the committee through what that means in practice.
"The burden of proof is that the particular car that is in front of you has a particular chassis which was made from aluminum that was produced using forced labour," he testified. "Then, for the next shipment of cars, we'd have to re-prove that the exact same supply chain is in place." That standard, he said, "becomes inherently difficult."
Canada also has no public list of suspect companies, goods or regions, five years into the ban. Sara Wilshaw, Global Affairs Canada's chief trade commissioner, confirmed it: "We have not produced a list or published a list at this stage." CBSA works from an internal target list Hamilton described as "fewer than 1,000 but more than a dozen" entities. Importers cannot see it, and neither can the public.
The US approach produces enforcement with teeth. Of everything CBP has stopped under the UFLPA, more than half, 24,344 shipment lines, never entered the American market.
Washington noticed
For years the only pressure on Ottawa came from NGOs and Senate committees. In March 2026 it started coming from Washington, with tariffs attached.
The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) opened investigations into 60 economies' forced-labour import rules on March 12. On June 2 it published its determination: Canada is one of just six economies, alongside the European Union and Mexico, that have a ban on the books but "have failed to effectively enforce" it. USTR proposed an additional 10 per cent tariff on Canadian products as a consequence. Economies with no ban at all face a proposed 12.5 per cent.
There is a significant carve-out: CUSMA-compliant goods are excluded, so the duty would touch only Canadian exports that do not qualify under the agreement's rules of origin. The tariffs are proposed, not final, and public hearings in Washington began July 7. But the finding itself, that Canada does not enforce its own law, is now the official position of its largest trading partner.
Ottawa's response arrived with conspicuous timing. Ten days after the USTR determination, the government tabled Bill C-35, the Ban on Importing Goods Made with Forced Labour Act. Bloc Québécois MP Patrick Bonin put the sequence bluntly at the June 18 hearing: "We had been asking for this for years, but the government wasn't doing anything. Now, Mr. Trump just made an announcement. As if by magic, the bill quickly materializes."
Bill C-35 is the fix. It is not moving.
Bill C-35 would rebuild Canada's ban along American lines. Officials described its two core mechanisms to the committee: a ministerial public list of suspect goods, regions and companies, and regulations imposing a reverse onus, requiring importers of listed goods to hand CBSA documentation proving their supply chains are clean, or be turned away.
That is the UFLPA playbook, adapted. It is also, for now, just a bill. C-35 received first reading on June 12 and has not moved since: no second-reading debate, no committee referral, no recorded votes. The House does not sit again until September 21. And the bill is sponsored by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anita Anand, which places the new regime under Global Affairs Canada rather than under Public Safety, the department responsible for CBSA and the border it is supposed to police.
Canada's other forced-labour law offers a preview of what happens when obligations exist without enforcement. The supply-chain transparency act known as S-211 requires companies to file annual reports on forced-labour risks. In 2025, Public Safety Canada received thousands of them, analyzed 4,313, and took zero enforcement actions: no ministerial orders, no charges. Ninety-one per cent of reporting organizations said remediation questions did not apply to them because they had found no forced labour in their supply chains at all.
The government now says the right things. Officials told the committee the current regime is inherently difficult, that a public list would help, that a reverse onus is the intent. Every one of those statements is an admission about the six years that came before, in which Canada carried a trade obligation, a G7 reputation and a functioning import ban on paper, and stopped one shipment.
The machinery to fix it is drafted, tabled and stalled at first reading. Until Parliament moves it, Canada's forced-labour import ban remains what the record shows it has been since 2020: a law that has never turned away a single shipment for good.