Bill C-35 makes it unlawful to bring into Canada goods that were produced, wholly or partly, by forced labour. It gives the Minister of Foreign Affairs authority to create a regulated list of suspect goods (including identifying producers or countries), requires importers to provide prescribed information on request, and empowers Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers to determine status, detain shipments for investigatory purposes and treat certain failures to disclose as a prohibition.
The bill matters because it turns human-rights concerns about supply chains into a customs enforcement regime: it ties decisions about forced labour directly to import controls, creates criminal-adjacent cost-recovery exposure for importers and owners, and limits administrative appeal avenues while preserving judicial review. Compliance officers, customs brokers, importers with complex global sourcing, and CBSA operational planners will need to adapt policies and documentation practices quickly if this Act comes into force.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Act outlaws importation of goods produced wholly or partly with forced labour and enables the Minister to publish a regulated list of suspect goods and producers or countries. It integrates enforcement with the Customs Act, authorizes CBSA officers to determine status and detain shipments (90-day baseline detention with possible extension), and makes non-compliance with information requests result in goods being treated as prohibited.
Who It Affects
Primary targets are importers, owners of imported goods and their customs brokers, along with CBSA officers and several federal departments (e.g., Labour, Agriculture, Industry) that may exchange information with the Minister. Foreign producers and countries named on any ministerial list will face market exclusion risk for Canadian trade.
Why It Matters
This is a compliance-first approach: it converts forced-labour risk management into an operational customs workflow and creates immediate commercial consequences (detention, disposal, cost recovery) rather than relying solely on diplomatic or corporate pressure. It also narrows administrative challenge options by removing certain appeals under the Customs Act and leaving judicial review as the primary recourse.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The core rule is simple: goods made with forced labour cannot be imported into Canada. The Act defines forced labour by reference to the ILO Forced Labour Convention and explicitly covers production activities such as growing, assembling, manufacturing and mining.
Rather than leaving enforcement to ad hoc investigations, the Act weaves the new prohibition into the Customs Act framework so customs officers carry the primary investigative and enforcement role.
To operationalize bans, the Minister of Foreign Affairs can, by regulation, compile a list of goods for which there are reasonable grounds to suspect forced-labour production. The list must identify either the producing person or the country/region (or both) for listed goods.
Several federal ministers and CBSA employees are authorized to exchange information with the Minister to help build that list. When goods on the list arrive, a customs officer may require prescribed information from the importer; failing to provide that information when requested causes the goods to be treated as prohibited.CBSA officers are empowered to make on-the-spot determinations about whether imported goods were produced with forced labour.
For investigatory purposes an officer may detain goods for up to 90 days from the first day of detention, and regulations may extend that period. If an importer or owner brings in goods that contravene the prohibition, they become jointly and severally liable to the Crown for costs tied to detention, storage, transport or disposal; those sums are collectible as debts to His Majesty.
The Governor in Council may make regulations to fill out many operational details, including the timing and format for disclosure requests.The Act also contains transitional rules that deal with prior Customs Act determinations and decisions relating to tariff classification tied to forced-labour findings, and it makes narrow consequential amendments to the Customs Tariff. Two sections relating to disclosure (sections 8 and 9) only come into force on a day or days fixed by order-in-council, showing some staging flexibility in implementation.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Minister may make a regulation creating a list of goods for which there are reasonable grounds to suspect production by forced labour, and that list must identify the producer, the producing country/region, or both.
A customs officer designated by the President of CBSA can determine whether imported goods are produced wholly or partly by forced labour and may detain those goods for up to 90 days (extendable by regulation).
If a customs officer requests prescribed information about listed goods and the importer fails to provide it, those goods are automatically deemed prohibited from importation under the Act.
Importers and the owner of prohibited goods are jointly and severally liable to the Crown for costs associated with detention, storage, transport or disposal; such amounts are collectible as debts to His Majesty.
Decisions and determinations made under the Customs Act before the Act’s coming-into-force date are insulated from administrative appeals under the Customs Act but remain subject to Federal Court judicial review under section 18.1 of the Federal Courts Act.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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General ban on importing goods made with forced labour
Section 4 establishes the operative prohibition: any goods produced wholly or in part by forced labour cannot be imported. This is a broad statutory ban tied to an internationally recognized definition (the ILO Forced Labour Convention), which means the law applies across product types and production stages (growing, manufacturing, assembly, mining). Practically, that breadth gives enforcement officials latitude to target inputs and finished goods alike, but it also creates line-drawing challenges when production involves multiple suppliers and processing steps.
Customs enforcement: determinations, detention and appeal limitations
Section 5 attaches this Act to the Customs Act for administration and enforcement. It authorizes designated CBSA officers to determine whether goods are produced with forced labour and allows those officers to detain goods for an initial 90-day period (with regulatory extensions possible). The section also removes the ability to pursue administrative appeals or re-determinations under the Customs Act for actions taken under this Act, while preserving judicial review in Federal Court. Operationally, this centralizes investigatory power in CBSA and limits internal administrative remedies for importers.
Ministerial list and required specificity
Section 6 permits the Minister of Foreign Affairs to establish a regulated list of goods suspected of involving forced labour and requires the Minister to specify either the producing person or the producing country/region for listed items. That requirement forces the list to be actionable (it cannot be just a vague category) and creates identifiable targets for enforcement, but it also imports diplomatic and evidentiary sensitivity where whole countries or named entities are listed.
Information sharing, mandatory disclosure and deemed prohibitions
Section 7 authorizes the Minister to exchange information with other ministers and CBSA staff (including Public Safety, Labour, Agriculture and Industry) when compiling or updating the list. Section 8 requires importers of listed goods to provide prescribed information on request; section 9 makes a failure to supply that information the legal equivalent of importing prohibited goods. Together these provisions shift the evidentiary burden toward importers for listed goods and create an administrative trigger that converts non-cooperation into a statutory prohibition.
Cost recovery from importers and owners
Section 10 makes importers and owners jointly and severally liable for costs the Crown incurs for detention, storage, transport or disposal of prohibited goods, and declares such amounts to be debts to His Majesty. This is a powerful enforcement tool: it creates immediate financial exposure and gives the government a direct pathway to recover expenses associated with enforcement actions (including disposal), rather than relying solely on fines or criminal sanctions.
Regulatory authority and delegated specifics
Section 11 grants broad regulation-making powers to the Governor in Council on the Minister’s recommendation to flesh out the Act’s operations, except for limited sections that are reserved for the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness’ recommendation. Regulations may prescribe what information can be shared under section 7, and may set the timing and manner for information requests under section 8. The delegated rule-making authority is extensive, meaning the practical contours of enforcement will largely be defined in secondary regulations.
Transitional rules, tariff amendments and staged implementation
Sections 12 to 17 set transitional rules that limit appeals and re-determinations for determinations and decisions made under the Customs Act before this Act’s coming-into-force (the reference day), while preserving Federal Court judicial review. Sections 18 and 19 amend the Customs Tariff to remove and revise specific tariff descriptions tied to prior forced-labour classifications. Section 20 delays the entry into force of the disclosure provisions (sections 8 and 9) to days set by order-in-council, indicating the government expects to stage implementation and possibly to align operational readiness before enabling automatic deemed prohibitions.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Survivors and human-rights organizations — The Act creates an operational tool that can exclude goods linked to forced labour from Canadian markets, giving NGOs and advocates a firmer legal basis to push for accountability and remediation.
- Importers with certified, transparent supply chains — Firms that already document origin and labour practices gain a compliance advantage because they can respond quickly to disclosure requests and avoid detention risk, making their Canadian market access more secure.
- Canadian consumers and purchasers (including public procurement officials) — The law increases the chance that products available in Canada are free from forced-labour inputs, supporting procurement policies and consumer expectations about ethically sourced goods.
- Domestic producers competing with low-cost imports — Removing imports produced with forced labour can level price competition in some sectors by excluding goods that benefited from exploitative labour practices.
Who Bears the Cost
- Importers and owners of imported goods — They assume documentary burdens, risk of detention, potential cost recovery claims for storage/transport/disposal and a higher compliance bill to trace supply chains.
- Customs brokers and logistics providers — They face increased operational complexity, tighter timelines for producing prescribed information, and potential reputational and financial exposure when goods are detained or deemed prohibited.
- Canada Border Services Agency and partner departments — CBSA must allocate investigative resources, storage capacity and legal support to implement determinations and detentions; other departments named in section 7 may need to provide intelligence and analysis without dedicated funding.
- Foreign producers and exporting countries named on any ministerial list — Those actors face de facto market exclusion from Canada for listed goods, with attendant commercial losses and diplomatic consequences, especially for countries with large export sectors tied to vulnerable labour pools.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The Act pits two compelling objectives against each other: stopping the entry of goods produced with forced labour (which requires robust, sometimes intrusive customs powers and quick exclusion tools) versus preserving predictable trade flows and fair administrative process for importers (which require transparent evidentiary standards and accessible remedies). Strong enforcement reduces human-rights leakage into supply chains but raises due-process, resource and trade-friction questions that the bill deliberately leaves for regulation and administrative practice to resolve.
The bill creates strong, enforcement-oriented tools but leaves several operationally critical details to regulation and administrative practice. The Act refers to "prescribed information" without defining it in statute, so compliance obligations (what documents, provenance chains or certifications are required) will be settled in regulations and CBSA guidance — a process that will determine how burdensome compliance becomes for importers.
Likewise, the ministerial list requirement to name a producer or country is meant to anchor enforcement, but it raises evidentiary and diplomatic thresholds: naming a country can have broad trade effects, while naming an entity demands reliable intelligence that may be difficult to obtain and defend in court.
Another unresolved tension lies in process and due process. The Act removes administrative appeals under the Customs Act for actions taken here and limits recourse to judicial review.
Judicial review is slower, costlier and focused on legality rather than factual re-determination, which may leave importers exposed to long-term commercial disruption without a quick remedial route. Operationally, the 90-day detention baseline—potentially extended by regulation—creates risks of warehousing backlogs and substantial costs that the Crown will seek to recover; these cost-recovery provisions shift financial risk onto private parties but also risk disputes over the reasonableness and calculation of those costs.
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