Madam Speaker, I must admit I am a little surprised that this is being discussed on the floor of the House today. I would have liked to have prepared a bit more, but here we are.
I am, surprise, surprise, the obscure backbencher who put forward Bill S-211. I thought I would share with hon. members and the public at large the journey, the four- or five-year journey, to this point when we are saying whatever it is that we are saying.
The concept of the bill was introduced to me at least four or five years ago, when World Vision sponsored some British legislators to come to Canada to talk about their version of this kind of transparency bill. I was kind of attracted to the idea. I thought it was a good idea, so I thought to myself, well, let us put together a piece of legislation.
We put together a piece of legislation and, of course, the process being the process that it is around here, the legislation died on the Order Paper, and we had an election, so that went nowhere. Then I did it again in the interim between 2019 and 2021, and it, too, went nowhere.
Meanwhile, both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party decided that this was something that should be in a platform. If we read the platforms of both parties, the commitments mirror Bill S-211 by some considerable measure. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals thought that transparency legislation would be good.
By this time, we thought maybe we should get a little bit smarter and introduce the legislation in the Senate. Then we would not be hampered by the peculiar rules of the House of Commons, where there is an order of precedence, and if a member is unlucky, their legislation is at the bottom of the order of precedence. However, if the member is lucky, they are at the top and get a chance to run a piece of legislation through the House during a mandate.
Then 2021 came along, and it was in both parties' platforms. We had a draft bill on order, ready to go. Indeed, four cabinet ministers had this kind of legislation in their mandate, and, arguably, this kind of legislation would have fulfilled the mandate obligations in their mandate letters.
We took the bill and made it a stronger piece of legislation than that in England, Australia or California. Canada went from laggard to leader in the process. We started the bill in the Senate this time, as the Senate does not have the peculiar rules of this place, and we were fortunate to be able to get the bill dealt with in an expeditious manner, virtually without amendment. Then it came here.
When it came up on the Order Paper, we had virtually the unanimous consent of members, and I think it was a unanimous vote, to move the bill from the floor of the House to committee.
Then we had other parties, particularly the Bloc and the NDP, wanting to bolt onto the bill a whole bunch of things, which broadly could be described as due diligence. In simple language, due diligence in this case essentially meant that, if one discovers the supply chain flaw, they actually have to fix it. That is in the legislation that is in Germany and in France. It is an appearance of a good idea without actually being a good idea.
The immediate consequence of comparing due diligence in France with Canadian transparency legislation is that it would eliminate 98% of Canadian companies because the threshold for the French legislation was companies with at least 5,000 employees. Canada does not have that many companies with 5,000 employees. Because all the companies below that threshold would not have any obligation to comply with anything, we would have had an appearance of doing something good when the reality was something else, so we resisted the notion that we could bolt on due diligence legislation to this transparency bill.
We did make it a transparency bill on steroids because, unlike what was done with the Australian or English legislation, we brought in obligations to government entities, the theory being that we cannot tell people what to do and then not do it ourselves. If I have a disappointment, as my friend previous alluded to, it is that I wish that, in the final report, the government entities, and they are not just federal government entities but Canadian government entities, would have complied at a more vigorous rate than they ended up doing. However, we put that into the bill.
The other thing that was really unique about this bill that gave it some more teeth was that we obligated the senior leadership of the entity to sign the report. When a CEO or CFO signs a report, it becomes a public document. The consequence of becoming a public document is that various other entities read it. Suddenly, if one is borrowing $100 million, the bank will read their supply chain report. If we had not put that in, one could say whatever they wanted to say. Now one has to have a sign-off from the CEO or CFO and it becomes a board obligation in the same way that, if one files a prospectus, one has to say that the statements in it are true and swear that those statements are true. Therefore, in the ultimate implementation of the legislation, which was over 6,000 entities, there were a lot of lawyers and a lot of compliance officers reviewing these statements for their truthfulness and accuracy. It became a pretty interesting disclosure of a significant amount of data.
When we went to the committee, we lost the support of the Bloc and the NDP, who in my judgment made foolish decisions about bolting onto a piece of legislation something the legislation was not designed for in the enthusiasm to run before one walks or finding perfection before one gets to the good. We then got it to the House for the final debate. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Party supported the bill. The cabinet supported the bill, and it received royal assent in May of 2023.
Then there was a period of time between May 2023 and the coming into force date of January 1, 2024, when guidance was written on how to report. There were extensive consultations with the industry writ large, the entities that would be caught by this legislation. I attended a number of seminars. I know that public safety gave a number of seminars. The information was collated and the drafting of the expectations of the report was put together somewhere about this time last year. That is probably where it ultimately landed.
It came into force on January 1 of this year. The first reporting period was May of this year, and to my surprise, over 6,000 entities responded. The trouble is that we do not know out of how many. Maybe 10,000 entities should have responded. That is one of the flaws in the report.
The report was then tabled in September of this year. I have it on my table here. One thing that is disturbing about it is that 38% of the entities that responded confirmed they had identified that parts of their activities and supply chains carried the risk of forced labour, which means that 38% of 6,000 filing entities say they think they have a problem. These are the entities that responded. We have no information on those that did not respond.
The Speaker and I have spoken personally about this before. Canada has a significant problem with slave products in our supply chains. We are all members of a larger Canadian society, and we need to deal with this issue. I would urge colleagues to urge the government to disaggregate this data so that we know what problem we have. Also, as members have alluded to, we have a problem at the border. It is a real problem, a personal problem, and not only that, but it is becoming an international trade problem. One can be reasonably assured that this will come up in future negotiations for the USMCA and with various other trade groups.
