The Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) was introduced under former prime minister Justin Trudeau in 2019 to investigate potential abuses, including the use of forced labour.
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The CORE had been criticized for lacking the powers to fulfil its mandate. Advocates have said the office needed the ability to compel documents and testimony from companies, for example.
On Thursday, Carney defended eliminating the office by pointing out that only one of the watchdog’s investigations had led to recommendations being made to a company.
The documents tabled in the House of Commons on Wednesday say that, overall, the CORE had only launched five investigations.
If that entire office only led to 1 recommendation in a half dozen yearsish, either our companies are doing an impeccable job or we need a better office.
The government is expected to table legislation on Friday that Carney said would enhance its enforcement to keep goods made with forced labour out of the Canadian supply chain.
I guess we’ll see…
Yeah, pretty curious myself.
Honestly, forced and child labour are two causes I care about and the lack of public concern/action etc depresses the hell out of me. I’m old enough to remember the 90s when those causes were popular. (In my very cynical days, I can’t help but think social media “rewards” causes which require no personal effort or sacrifice and punishes causes which require lifestyle changes (like not buying clothes made by kids working 14 hour days.)
Jaysus, sorry about the rant.
It’s a good rant.
It’s weird that they’re eliminating an office meant to do that (I guess?) but introducing new legislation meant to do the same thing.
Carney seems to have a thing for ignoring existing organizations to create new ones with very similar mandates. Like CMHC and Build Canada Homes.
I think that’s Carney’s strategy. Instead of bending an ineffective.office to his will, he’ll just (we’ll see) make a better one.
This is an office that cost us whatever and made one recommendation over half a decade, what are we losing?
In the case of CMHC and Build Canada Homes, we lost 6 months waiting for the new org to be created, and since then we’ve lost time for it to be staffed. The new office probably doesn’t have the same expertise as people who have been following (basically) the same mandate for however long they’ve been working there. The BCH goals (4000 housing units in 2026) are laughable, and there aren’t goals for the longer term.
The CORE thing might be different because it doesn’t have a lead, and the article says it doesn’t have the necessary powers.
I don’t know enough about this stuff to know if shutting down CORE would produce better results. But the CMHC/BCH schism seems like a weird choice. I’m sure Carney had reasons, but they aren’t clear to observers.
My understanding is it’s again, fairly similar. I don’t know thr details on CMCH but Build Canada Homes wasn’t particularly effective. The campaign promise was for entirely new aporoaches with more modular housing, 3d printing etc, so I would expect to see a smaller set of trials (the 4000 units) and then a reassessment to see what worked, what could be scaled etc.
I might be jaded from having worked with non profits for decades now but I fully appreciate the idea of starting fresh rather than trying to slowly change a large bureaucratic monstrosity amidst a crisis like the housing crisis.
Ahead of a trip to China in March, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne was asked about potential concerns that Chinese EVs could be made using forced labour. Champagne pointed to the CORE as an example of Canada taking the issue of forced labour seriously.
We just going to outsource our assessments of forced labour to the US now?
