Canada’s China EV deal risks breaking forced labour rules, committees hear

Canada’s plan to import Chinese electric vehicles is raising forced labour concerns, according to experts who testified before parliamentary committees over recent days.

With Beijing now making its supply chains illegal to audit, Canada risks violating its own forced labour import ban and might give Washington the ability to add tariffs on Canadian goods, said Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, board director at the China Strategic Risks Institute and a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa.

“Canadians don’t want to be driving cars made by slaves,” McCuaig-Johnston said on Thursday, appearing before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research.

Those concerns were echoed at a separate parliamentary committee on April 20, where the House of Commons subcommittee on international human rights heard testimony on transnational repression.

Zumretay Arkin, vice-president of the World Uyghur Congress, told MPs that forced labour in China is not a corporate compliance problem, it is state policy.

“It’s really a system of forced labour that is systematic and that is also forced by the state. So it’s not implemented by Chinese companies, but really implemented statically,” Arkin said.

Sherap Therchin, executive director of the Canada Tibet Committee and one of the 20 Canadians sanctioned by Beijing in 2024, urged caution about what closer trade ties with China could mean in practice.

“China has used trade to its advantage for a long time to coerce anyone speaking on Tibetan and the human rights issues,” he told the subcommittee on April 20.

2:08 Champagne talks ‘integrity’ of Canada’s supply chain, forced labour concerns ahead of China visit

Marcus Kolga, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who is himself sanctioned by both China and Russia, noted that human rights did not appear to feature in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January visit to Beijing.

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“When the prime minister was in Beijing, I know that a lot of us were concerned that our situation was not at all mentioned during that trip,” he told the committee.

In January, Carney struck a preliminary deal with China to allow 49,000 Chinese-made EVs into Canada annually at a tariff rate of 6.1 per cent, down from 100 per cent imposed in 2024.

In exchange, China agreed to lower tariffs on Canadian canola and remove duties on lobster, crab and peas.

4:34 Doug Ford wants feds to repeal EV mandates after Carney strikes deal for Chinese-made vehicles

McCuaig-Johnston told the committee that forced labour is traceable through the aluminum used in Chinese EVs. In China, Uyghur and other minority workers have been transferred en masse into aluminum smelters and coal mines, both key inputs in electric vehicle manufacturing, she said.

“This isn’t just a handful of people. In 2024, it was 3.4 million transfers of Uyghurs into jobs like this, in forced labour,” she said.

The problem, she said, goes beyond the supply chain itself. On April 7, Beijing passed a new national security regulation prohibiting anyone in China from disclosing information about their supply chains.

“Why would Beijing pass such a regulation? Because they don’t want anyone to know,” McCuaig-Johnston said.

“Now we’re left to accept that the aluminum is made with forced labour, but importing products made in whole or in part with forced labour into Canada is illegal. Given that, I don’t see how we can import the cars at all.”

2:07 Canada opens door to Chinese EV imports

Canada has banned the importation of goods made with forced labour since 2020. But enforcement has been rare. The ban has resulted in just two blocked shipments.

That enforcement gap is now drawing scrutiny from Washington. On March 12, the U.S. Trade Representative launched Section 301 investigations into 60 countries, including Canada, over failure to enforce forced labour import prohibitions. Public hearings begin Tuesday.

If the U.S. determines Canada is not meeting requirements, all Canadian goods entering the U.S. could face tariffs.

“Through S-211, the Supply Chains Act, both government and private companies must report on even potential risks of forced labour in their supply chains. We also work in close coordination with CBSA to address and reduce the presence of forced labour across supply chains,” the statement reads. “We will protect Canada’s interests while upholding labour standards for all workers.”

The forced labour concern is not limited to supply chains inside China. BYD, the Chinese automaker widely expected to be among the brands entering the Canadian market under the new deal, is currently under investigation for labour conditions at its first European factory in Hungary.

In Brazil, labour inspectors found Chinese workers at BYD’s plant living in conditions of severe overcrowding and forced to surrender their passports to subcontractors. Brazil placed BYD on its national forced labour registry.

At the science committee, MP Maxime Blanchet-Joncas asked McCuaig-Johnston whether Canada’s commercial interests were overriding its stated values.

“I don’t think that should come at the expense of human rights, and I don’t think it needs to,” she replied.

“When we say ‘values-based pragmatic foreign policy,’ countries like China hear ‘pragmatic’ and think we’ll just roll over whenever they tell us they want us to do something.”

“If we buy electric vehicles that we know pretty confidently have forced labour in the aluminum in the cars, it implicates us personally in that,” she said. “I think that would be really regrettable if we had those driving around our streets everywhere.”