Toronto, Canada (BBN)– The federal ministry responsible for most major uniform and other clothing purchases on behalf of civil servants will begin to disclose the countries where those clothes are made.
The policy change comes after the Star, a local newspaper, questioned the oversight of companies that sell apparel to the Canadian government.
Sales documents obtained by the Star through the Access to Information Act show a key government clothing supplier, R Nicholls Distributors, has sourced clothing for Canadian prison and border guards, as well as other government employees, from factories in Vietnam, Cambodia and Mexico.
R Nicholls sold $6.2 million worth of clothing since 2008 to Public Works and Government Services Canada. The Quebec-based company also sells clothing to provincial and municipal governments.
There is no evidence that R Nicholls’ clothing has been made in sweatshops.
Public Works and Government Services Canada has also granted contracts since 2010 for clothing made in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Pakistan and Bangladesh, ministry spokeswoman Annie Trepanier wrote in an email. The companies involved with those contracts are not publicly known.
In the year since the Rana Plaza disaster, an industrial accident on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, that killed at least 1,129 apparel workers, there has been increasing scrutiny of safety conditions and workers rights in the garment industry. Western retailers, governments and sports associations have been forced to explain and sometimes adjust their garment sourcing protocols.
The Ontario government agreed in December to introduce an ethical sourcing policy for clothing. Hudson’s Bay Co., one of Canada’s largest retailers, has pledged to begin releasing the names of the factories from which it buys clothing.
That disclosure may begin as soon as April, a spokeswoman for the company said.
Workers’ rights activists say the federal government still cannot claim to have an ethical sourcing policy because without insisting companies disclose the names of their factory suppliers, there is no way to check whether sweatshop or child labour has been used to produce the clothing.
“Disclosing the country of origin is a good first step because it shows the Canadian government is at least looking at this, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough,” said Kevin Thomas, a workers’ rights activist. “Within a country, you could have a good factory right down the road from a factory that’s a death trap, so what does the country disclosure tell you?”
While some agencies such as Canada Post handle their own clothing purchases, most tenders for a federal government clothing contract worth at least $25,000 must be administered by Public Works. The majority of the $752 million spent on clothing and uniforms from 2008 to 2012 was used to buy apparel made in Canada, according to government statistics obtained by the Star.
Public Works says 98 per cent of the $677 million spent over the past five years on clothing and uniforms for the RCMP and Department of National Defence was for garments made in Canada. The RCMP and the DND mandate that suppliers make garments in Canada, primarily for security reasons.
But other agencies and departments face no such restrictions.
R Nicholls says on its website it has been selling apparel to Canadian law enforcement, security agencies and military since 1980. Its orders account for nearly 10 per cent of the $75 million spent by Public Works to buy apparel for departments and ministries other than the RCMP and the military.
Public Works contracts “contain a provision requiring compliance with the laws applicable wherever the work is carried out (Canada or elsewhere) under the contract and requiring the supplier to provide evidence of compliance on our request,” Trepanier wrote.
“For all future procurements undertaken by (Public Works), the country of origin will be disclosed and made available to the public as part of the contract agreement. For active contracts, (Public Works) is working with companies to disclose the country of origin, which will be posted on our website.”
Mike Copeman, an R Nicholls spokesman, did not respond to repeated emails and phone messages. A colleague who answered the phone at his office refused to identify herself and said Copeman was unavailable.
One of the contracts R Nicholls has won since 2008 was a $782,135 award to provide the Canadian government with cargo pants for prison guards. The company turned to a factory in Vietnam to fill the order.
For a $4.7-million contract for shirts, belts and coveralls, also for Canada Border Services Agency staff, R Nicholls turned to factories in Cambodia, Mexico and Vietnam.
While a Public Works ministry spokesman told the Star that apparel companies are asked to identify the countries of origin for clothing for “contract management” purposes, even if the country is Canada, in the case of a $720,000 contract R Nicholls won to outfit employees with the Department of Fisheries, an official in the Public Works’ access to information department said no such records exist.
A copy of R Nicholls’ largely redacted Fisheries Department contract says “not relevant” under the heading “subcontractors.”
Scott Nova, executive director of Worker Rights Consortium, a labour rights organization, said Canadians should be concerned that R Nicholls refuses to be transparent, and that the Canadian government has ignored requests to introduce an ethical-sourcing policy.
“These countries, Mexico, Cambodia and Vietnam, are all countries where there are serious reasons to have concerns about whether the garments produced are made in compliance with international law,” Nova said.
By not acting in these types of cases, Canada is missing an opportunity, activists said, to influence positive change.
In 2012, Canada gave $34 million worth of bilateral foreign aid to Cambodia, and $89 million to Vietnam, according to The North-South Institute. That aid money gives Canada influence in those countries, influence that could be used to press for improved working standards.
“There should at least be a formal complaints process for workers who are in these factories overseas making clothing for Canadian government employees,” said Bob Jeffcott, a policy analyst with Toronto-based Maquila Solidarity Network, which monitors safety and workers’ conditions in developing countries.
“The factory safety issues in Cambodia are the same kind of issues as you see in Bangladesh and how would we feel if the garments produced for Canadian civil servants, or police, were made in a factory where children were working, or the conditions were unsafe, or workers were being killed because they were protesting for a better minimum wage?”
While Cambodia’s garment sector exports about $5 billion worth of clothing, making it one-quarter the size of Bangladesh’s apparel industry, Cambodia has been gripped with labour unrest, and is a particular area of concern for activists.
In December, thousands of Cambodian garment workers organized a strike demanding the average $80 monthly wage be doubled. The Asia Floor Wage Alliance, made up of trade unions and labour rights activists, say a living wage in the country would be about $283 per month.
On Jan. 3, military police shot into the crowd and killed at least four protestors, and arrested more than a dozen others, including several union leaders.
Workers’ rights have also been suppressed in Vietnam and Mexico, Jeffcott said.
BBN/SSR/AD-30Mar14-10:17 pm (BST)
