Above Ground welcomes the opportunity to submit recommendations in advance of the review of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). Above Ground works to ensure that companies based in Canada or supported by the Canadian state respect human rights and the environment worldwide. We are on the steering committee of the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA) and of the Global Initiative for Corporate Accountability (GICA) and are an active member of the Coalition Against Forced Labour in Trade (CAFLT).
Our recommendations relate to Article 23.6 “Forced or Compulsory Labor” of the CUSMA chapter on labour. In line with the findings of Global Affairs Canada’s 2024 What we heard report, we reiterate our call for the Government of Canada to significantly strengthen its efforts to prohibit the importation of forced labour goods.
Strong enforcement of the import ban is in line with the government’s commitment to uphold Canadian values, which are reflected in part in Canada’s domestic and international labour and human rights commitments. It would demonstrate that a “Canada Strong” agenda includes Canadian global leadership to protect the rights of workers worldwide and to prevent Canadian complicity in human rights and labour abuses in global supply chains.
Forced labour in North American supply chains and the need for a coordinated response
Forced labour is one of the most urgent human rights and trade challenges of the twenty-first century. The International Labour Organization estimates that forced labour generates annual profits exceeding U.S. $236 billion – earnings effectively stolen from workers’ wages. Across global supply chains, millions of workers are coerced, underpaid, or exploited to produce goods that enter North American markets.
This crisis cannot be solved by one nation acting alone. Canada, the U.S., and Mexico – linked by deep trade flows under CUSMA – have an opportunity to improve their response to this crisis by better coordinating action to block goods made with forced labour from entering their marketplace at any of its access points.
Under Article 23.6, each Party commits to prohibiting the import of goods produced wholly or in part by forced or compulsory labour and to coordinate efforts to prevent the cross-border movement of such goods. This was a landmark inclusion, representing the first time that the prohibition of forced labour has been codified in a North American trade agreement.
In practice, however, Article 23.6 has not yielded significant results, in part due to the absence of coordination and uneven enforcement within North America. In this context, companies are able to exploit jurisdictional loopholes and continue exporting or transshipping forced labour-tainted goods within the continent.
The U.S. has the most extensive experience prohibiting forced labour goods, using Section 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. § 1307). The U.S. has pioneered tools, such as Withhold Release Orders (WROs) and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, to block forced labour products. Yet, concerns have been raised about inconsistent enforcement and the troubling decline in enforcement actions. Only one new WRO was issued in both the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, though enforcement improved in fiscal year 2025 with Customs and Borders Protection issuing four new WROs.1This has been corrected from the submitted version which mistakenly said that five new WROs had been issued.
Although Canada’s forced labour ban came into effect in 2020, since 2021 Canadian border agents have reportedly intercepted a mere fifty shipments of goods on suspicion that they were products of forced labour, and only a single shipment was ultimately denied entry into Canada. The country has faced sharp criticism for failing to enforce the ban, including from other Parties to CUSMA.
Mexico implemented its import ban in 2023, but has yet to take meaningful action. The Secretariat of Labor and Social Welfare dismissed the only known petition under its new law, following an opaque process that has drawn civil society criticism.
In light of these challenges, there is an urgent need for Canada, Mexico and the U.S. to coordinate actions to ensure the success of Article 23.6. The following recommendations set out steps that should be taken to strengthen this provision and to help effect meaningful improvements in the lives of forced workers.
Recommendations for strengthening Article 23.6
To transform Article 23.6 from a statement of principle into a driver of systemic change, it must be strengthened with concrete guidelines for implementation and enforcement. These should include:
- A shared definition of forced labour aligned with ILO Conventions 29 and 105.
- Forced labour intelligence-sharing.
- Mutual recognition of enforcement actions. For example, goods blocked in one country should trigger a forced labour investigation of the same goods in the other two countries.
- Transparency measures. For example, each government should publish an annual report on its import ban enforcement.
- Procedures for civil society participation. For example, when unions, NGOs, and affected workers submit evidence, the procedure should enable them to do so across the three countries at once. Unions, civil society groups and affected workers must also be at the center of any forced labour remediation efforts undertaken by the targeted companies.