What Canadian companies do abroad does not stay abroad; it comes home as our reputation.
When Ottawa announces that a federal office is being eliminated, the instinctive reaction of many Canadians these days is relief. After a decade in which the federal government grew faster than the economy that pays for it, “thank goodness” is an understandable response to almost any cut.
But the elimination this summer of the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise, known as the CORE, deserves a closer look. This was not a redundant agency trimmed in the name of efficiency: it was the only body of its kind in Canada, it was quietly doing work that served both Canadian values and Canadian interests, and the federal government shut it down at the very moment the costs of looking soft on forced labour began landing on Canada’s doorstep in the form of American tariffs.
We write from direct experience. In June 2022, a coalition of 28 civil society organizations, among them Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project, Canadians in Support of Refugees in Dire Need, and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, brought 14 complaints to the CORE. The complaints presented evidence that major apparel brands and mining companies operating in Canada had operations or supply chains in China that used or benefited from Uyghur forced labour. Two of us (Teich and Matas) served as lead counsel to the complainants while one of us (Packer) then directed a co-applicant.
